NOT one perhaps in a hundred of those who visit Seville and Granada sees more than a glimpse of the beautiful country and curious villages of AndalucÍa; yet there is much pleasure and interest to be had from a journey through all this region. In February an early start with the sun will enable the traveller on horseback or on foot to accomplish a fair day’s journey, since the sun has not yet begun to burn and force him to rest for some six central hours of the day, as later in the year. And the outlines on every side are exquisitely clear, the sky usually cloudless, and streams flow where later there will be but dry channels. In parts the fields and roadside spaces are blue and purple with dwarf-irises (the peasants call them simply lirios, lilies), and the almond-trees are in flower; and at no time of the year is there a greater and more delightful contrast between spring in the valley and winter on the hills. Near Seville the immense plains stretch interminably to the faint mountains, brown and dull-green pastures of heather and dwarf-palm, flecked with silver-white streaks of water; herds of cattle, glossy black with white horns, pigs, horses, and great flocks of sheep graze there. Or the country is gently undulating like Sussex downs, but with softlier-moulded outlines and a horizon of faint blue mountains, in February exquisitely distinct in faintness. A village often entirely covers one of the small hills, not a house venturing forward to form an outskirt, but all clustered and compact. Steep, perfectly straight streets of sharp narrow cobbles, without side pavements, run up to the church at the top through rows of low, whitewashed houses, of a single storey and of a dazzling whiteness. At evening the labourers come in from the far distant fields in a continuous line, on foot or on mules and donkeys, and children go out to meet them and are given a ride back into the village. Sometimes their return is of several kilomÈtres, over deep earthy or stony paths, and, with their gleaming mattocks (pioches, azadones) over their shoulders, they are now to be seen clearly outlined on the evening sky, and now are lost from view in one of the many hollows of the hills. Far and near there is no tree, “neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all,” and the winds seem to have sifted and moulded the hills into softly folding mounds and hollows. In February the winds still blow occasionally with icy breath, and you will meet men on crimson and magenta-tasselled mules and donkeys, closely wrapped in old-fashioned capas of brown, only their eyes visible. On the road there are few travellers—charcoal-burners coming down with troops of laden donkeys from the hills, or a slow cart drawn by a string of mules, the driver lazily asleep, and the reins appearing from between the soles of his sandals,[92] or a troop of gipsies, or orange sellers with the panniers of their mules brimmed with oranges, now selling at six reales, a little over a shilling, the hundred. Sometimes the country is all grey-pinched and icy, and but a little further (as near snow-white Arcos de la Frontera) are great hedges of shrubs and aloes and brambles and cactus, with a sound of bees, and hovering white and yellow butterflies, and wide spaces of tall branched flowers of asphodel and grey scented rosemary. Or in a corner of windswept hills you may find a sheltered huerta with thick hedge of tall black cypresses; the oranges crowd the trees with gold, and the almond-trees shed across the dusty road a thick carpet of broken flowers, pink and white. To Grazalema leads only a steep and narrow foot-path after one has left the road not far from Algodonales (pronounced by the peasants in a torrent of vowels Aooae) and crossed the river Guadalete. In the valley the oranges gleam in myriads, and the hills immediately above are coloured with a continuous spray of almond-trees in flower, entirely covering their sides, and sometimes crowning them in triumph. And far above, over woods of cork and evergreen oak from which rise frail blue lines of smoke from charcoal-burners’ fires, appear two or three peaks of snow clear against a pale blue sky. The path goes up along hedges of brambles through asphodels and hundreds of trailing periwinkles, with stepping-stones and flowing streams; here and there a snow-white olive-oil mill with sentinel cypresses. And, below, the pale snow-fed Guadalete flows swiftly over white stones through groves of oranges. From a distance Grazalema gives the fanciful idea of broken shells on a stony shore, with its houses of white and pink and brown, many of them overhanging and seeming to grow out of steep rocks. From the village a path leads through corkwoods, the stripped trunks of the trees a deep maroon colour, to Ronda on its sheer hill. From Antequera to MÁlaga by road is some fifty kilomÈtres, and here, too, are wonderful contrasts and sudden change from winter to summer. In the unsheltered plains round Bobadilla the almond-trees show no sign of flower, and the grey mountains above the stern frowning towers of Antequera are ice-bound. Turning the pass, appears a magnificent view of six or seven serrated hill-ranges to the line of sea beyond hidden MÁlaga—on the left a fantastically jagged range, sprinkled in parts with snow; on the right a long line of snow-mountains that ends in a bare range rising purple from the sea. And the ice soon grows thin and vanishes, giving place to irises, tiny jonquils, and periwinkles, and descending half-way down the mountain side, to Villanueva, the almond-trees have already lost half their blossoms, grass and white dusty road and dark new-ploughed soil are thickly strewn with their petals, and the fields of broad beans are in scented black and white flower. Along the coast full summer reigns, the balconies are heavy with trailing flowers, the sea is deepest blue, and the wind blows half-sultrily across the fields of beans and the faded-green leaves of sugar-cane, with their scent of hay. Sometimes the road is lined with poplars, and ox-carts go laden with grass and trefoil and leaves from the sugar-canes. Elsewhere the road winds inland through grey rocky hills and woods of strong-scented pines, with glimpses of blue sea; or passes high above cliffs, the sea swelling dull green immediately below or foaming round dark rocks. From Motril or some other point one may go up to Granada, the Sierra Nevada appearing and altering continually; and thoughts of the Alhambra and other names of magic shorten the road, though it has many a beautiful view and village, such as Pino to the left on the mountain side, with its white houses and deep red-brown roofs. But of the many fair districts of AndalucÍa perhaps the most delightful in scenery is that lying between the Guadalquivir and La Mancha, a region of brushwood and mountain. The road from Marmolejo runs up through hills covered with shrubs of every shade of green, from grey-blue to shrill yellow, many of them scented, lentiscus, escalonia, adelfa, cistus, rosemary, and a hundred more; even in February the mid-day sun scents the whole air with them. Near the village of CardeÑa, some thirty miles from Marmolejo, a ruin is supposed to be that of the inn where many scenes of “Don Quixote” occurred, but only a few stones remain. Leaving the village in early morning in frost and ice in order to go down to Montoro on the Guadalquivir, the road at first is wild, bordered by oak-trees, with flocks of sheep, a few patches of corn, many magpies, the plaining of birds and the occasional whirr of a partridge. Yet even here in a few hollows are vines and almond-trees, and spaces of scented plants and wild yellow jonquils, with white or brown or yellow butterflies, a humming of bees and rustling of lizards. The road now cuts through hills of scented shrubs, so various and ordered with such careful harmony as could be rivalled by no garden planted by man. On either side are range and range of hills shrub-covered, dull green, brown and blue, brown where the shrubs have been cut for firing. To the right is a wide deep gorge with tiny river far below, and glimpses of blue distances and valleys of more hills. To the left more hills, and across a blue distance of hill valleys the Sierra de Jaen with its beautiful pyramid-shaped peak of deepest snow, and far to the right of it the two more pointed peaks of Granada’s Sierra Nevada, marvellously clear in distance. Between them and the Sierra de Jaen runs the snow-sprinkled range above the village of Los Villares de Jaen. In the transparent might of even a February noon the more distant and the higher of the near hills are purple, and the great snow-mountains below the snow-line grow faint and grey. Montoro is a beautiful quaint town rising above the Guadalquivir in seven or eight storeys of houses of red stone and whitewash. The tall church-tower, also of red stone, stands massively above the town, and precipitously steep and cobbled streets lead up to it. Houses look sheer down from windows, balconies, and gardens to the river far below, which flows over a weir above and below the town, so that there is a perpetual sound of rushing water. From Montoro one may follow the Guadalquivir, now a majestic river, through its olive groves to the famous bridge of Alcolea, and the low white line beneath bare hills and wooded mountains which is CÓrdoba, seen from the East. Everywhere on the roads and in the inns of AndalucÍa the peasants are courteous, pleasant, intelligent, picturesque; always ready to give any service in their power, often immensely ignorant. They will ask if “Ingalaterra” is not Spain’s border-country and confuse it with Gibraltar, or if the Queen was a Christian before her marriage. For the most part they cannot read or write;[93] yet they converse willingly on the most various subjects, especially on politics and religion, the mayor and the priest. Here a woman complains: “Nine children I had, and the nine are dead; it’s better so in these times of misery”; there a peasant describes the snowy Sierra in the month of August, how it glows whiter than lilies across the plain—mÁs blanca, que una azucena; or tells how beautiful is the country in later spring when the quinces, apples, and pomegranates are in flower, que es un paraiso—a very paradise. As they sit round the candela, in the cold evenings of early spring, talk flows on into the night, always pleasant and courteous, as of one gran seÑor to another.