The Houses Stood At No Great Distances From One
Another, But Were Nowhere Grouped In Villages.
There were commonly no
towns near the stations, which were not always uncheerful; sometimes
there were flower-beds, unless my memory deceives me.
Perhaps there
would be a passenger or two, and certainly a loafer or two, and always
of the sex which in town life does the loafing; in the background or
through the windows the other sex could be seen in its domestic
activities. Only once did we see three girls of such as stay for the
coming and going of trains the world over; they waited arm in arm, and
we were obliged to own they were plain, poor things.
Their whitewash saves the distant towns from the effect of sinking into
the earth, or irregularly rising from it, as in Old Castile, and the
landscape cheered up more and more as we ran farther south. We passed
through the country of the Valdepenas wine, which it is said would so
willingly be better than it is; there was even a station of that name,
which looked much more of a station than most, and had, I think I
remember, buildings necessary to the wine industry about it. Murray,
indeed, emboldens me in this halting conjecture with the declaration
that the neighboring town of Valdepenas is "completely undermined by
wine-cellars of very ancient date" where the wine is "kept in caves in
huge earthen jars," and when removed is put into goat or pig skins in
the right Don Quixote fashion.
The whole region begins to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from
the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the
inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among
these little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for
presuming to attempt collecting their rents when the people did not want
to pay them. This is what I seem to remember having read, but heaven
knows where, or if. What is certain is that almost before I was aware we
were leaving the neighborhood of Valdepenas, where we saw men with
donkeys gathering grapes and letting the donkeys browse on the vine
leaves. Then we were mounting among the foothills of the Sierra Morena,
not without much besetting trouble of mind because of those certain
circles and squares of stone on the nearer and farther slopes which we
have since somehow determined were sheep-folds. They abounded almost to
the very scene of those capers which Don Quixote cut on the mountainside
to testify his love for Dulcinea del Toboso, to the great scandal of
Sancho Panza riding away to give his letter to the lady, but unable to
bear the sight of the knight skipping on the rocks in a single garment.
III
In the forests about befell all those adventures with the mad Cardenio
and the wronged Dorothea, both self-banished to the wilderness through
the perfidy of the same false friend and faithless lover. The episodes
which end so well, and which form, I think, the heart of the wonderful
romance, have, from the car windows, the fittest possible setting; but
suddenly the scene changes, and you are among aspects of nature as
savagely wild as any in that new western land where the countrymen of
Cervantes found a New Spain, just as the countrymen of Shakespeare found
a New England. Suddenly, or if not suddenly, then startlingly, we were
in a pass of the Sierra called (for some reason which I will leave
picturesquely unexplained) the Precipice of Dogs, where bare sharp peaks
and spears of rock started into the air, and the faces of the cliffs
glared down upon us like the faces of Indian warriors painted yellow and
orange and crimson, and every other warlike color. With my poor scruples
of moderation I cannot give a just notion of the wild aspects; I must
leave it to the reader, with the assurance that he cannot exaggerate it,
while I employ myself in noting that already on this awful summit we
began to feel ourselves in the south, in Andalusia. Along the mountain
stream that slipped silverly away in the valley below, there were
oleanders in bloom, such as we had left in Bermuda the April before.
Already, north of the Sierra the country had been gentling. The upturned
soil had warmed from gray to red; elsewhere the fields were green with
sprouting wheat; and there were wide spaces of those purple flowers,
like crocuses, which women were gathering in large baskets. Probably
they were not crocuses; but there could be no doubt of the vineyards
increasing in their acreage; and the farmhouses which had been without
windows in their outer walls, now sometimes opened as many as two to the
passing train. Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical
illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the
offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old
Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha
than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable
as the scene of even Don Quixote's first adventures.
But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the
Sierra Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene
which did all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to
rest in that more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first
station the engine of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in
front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back.
It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with us
after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course,
everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, went
forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it;
others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way
back what was the matter.
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