The One Incident Of Our Return Worthy Of Literature Was The Dramatic
Triumph Of A Woman Over A Man And A Mule As We Saw It Exhibited On The
Parapet Of A Culvert Over A Dry Torrent's Bed.
It was the purpose of
this woman, standing on the coping in statuesque relief and showing
against the sky the comfortable proportions of the Spanish housewife, to
mount the mule behind the man.
She waited patiently while the man slowly
and as we thought faithlessly urged the mule to the parapet; then, when
she put out her hands and leaned forward to take her seat, the mule
inched softly away and left her to recover her balance at the risk of a
fall on the other side. We were too far for anything but the dumb show,
but there were, no doubt, words which conveyed her opinions unmistakably
to both man and mule. With our hearts in our mouths we witnessed the
scene and its repetitions till we could bear it no longer, and we had
bidden our cabman drive on when with a sudden spring the brave woman
launched herself semicircularly forward and descended upon the exact
spot which she had been aiming at. There solidly established on the
mule, with her arms fast round the man, she rode off; and I do not think
any reader of mine would like to have been that mule or that man for the
rest of the way home.
We met many other mules, much more exemplary, in teams of two, three,
and four, covered with bells and drawing every kind of carryall and
stage and omnibus. These vehicles were built when the road was, about
1750, and were, like the road, left to the natural forces for keeping
themselves in repair. The natural forces were not wholly adequate in
either case, but the vehicles were not so thick with dust as the road,
because they could shake it off. They had each two or four passengers
seated with the driver; passengers clustered over the top and packed the
inside, but every one was in the joyous mood of people going home for
the day. In a plaza not far from the Triana bridge you may see these
decrepit conveyances assembling every afternoon for their suburban
journeys, and there is no more picturesque sight in Seville, more
homelike, more endearing. Of course, when I say this I leave out of the
count the bridge over the Guadalquivir at the morning or evening hour
when it is covered with brightly caparisoned donkeys, themselves covered
with men needing a shave, and gay-kerchiefed women of every age, with
boys and dogs underfoot, and pedestrians of every kind, and hucksters
selling sea-fruit and land-fruit and whatever else the stranger would
rather see than eat. Very little outcry was needed for the sale of these
things, which in Naples or even in Venice would have been attended by
such vociferation as would have sufficed to proclaim a city in flames.
On a day not long after our expedition to Italica we went a drive with a
young American friend living in Seville, whom I look to for a book about
that famous city such as I should like to write myself if I had the time
to live it as he has done. He promised that he would show us a piece of
the old Roman wall, but he showed us ever so much more, beginning with
the fore court of the conventual church of Santa Paula, where we found
the afternoon light waiting to illumine for us with its tender caress
the Luca della Robbia-like colored porcelain figures of the portal and
the beautiful octagon tower staying a moment before taking flight for
heaven: the most exquisite moment of our whole fortnight in Seville.
Tall pots of flowers stood round, and the grass came green through the
crevices of the old foot-worn pavement. When we passed out a small boy
scuffled for our copper with the little girl who opened the gate for us,
but was brought to justice by us, and joined cheerfully in the chorus of
children chanting "Mo-ney, mo-ney!" round us, but no more expecting an
answer to their prayer than if we had been saints off the church door.
We passed out of the city by a gate where in a little coign of vantage a
cobbler was thoughtfully hammering away in the tumult at a shoe-sole,
and then suddenly on our right we had the Julian wall: not a mere
fragment, but a good long stretch of it. The Moors had built upon it and
characterized it, but had not so masked it as to hide the perdurable
physiognomy of the Roman work. It was vastly more Roman wall than you
see at Rome; but far better than this heroic image of war and waste was
the beautiful old aqueduct, perfectly Roman still, with no visible touch
from Moor, or from Christian. before or after the Moor, and performing
its beneficent use after two thousand years as effectively as in the
years before Christ came to bless the peacemakers. Nine miles from its
mountain source the graceful arches bring the water on their shoulders;
and though there is now an English company that pipes other streams to
the city through its underground mains, the Roman aqueduct, eternally
sublime in its usefulness, is constant to the purpose of the forgotten
men who imagined it. The outer surfaces of the channel which it lifted
to the light and air were tagged with weeds and immemorial mosses, and
dripped as with the sweat of its twenty-centuried toil.
We followed it as far as it went on our way to a modern work of peace
and use which the ancient friend and servant of man would feel no
unworthy rival. Beyond the drives and gardens of the Delicias, where we
lingered our last to look at the pleasurers haunting them, we drove far
across the wheat-fields where a ship-canal five miles long is cutting to
rectify the curve of the Guadalquivir and bring Seville many miles
nearer the sea than it has ever been before; hitherto the tramp steamers
have had to follow the course of the ships of Tarshish in their winding
approach.
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