IDLE as a “painted ship upon a painted ocean,” fair Cadiz sleeps beneath her white mantle and dreams of the succeeding storms that she has endured since Hercules brought her into being eleven hundred years before the advent of the Messiah. For century after century Cadiz played her important part in the world—the world that ended at her glistening shores. Yet it might, from external evidence, have been built yesterday, and whitewashed this morning. But beneath that white covering lies the rust of three thousand years. The natives compare their spotless city to a silver dish; Fernan Caballero describes it as an ivory model set in emeralds. It is an architectural symbol of purity. Extreme neatness and scrupulous cleanliness are its leading characteristics—white is its prevailing and only colour. The Venice of Spain, so far as my opportunities of making a comparison extends, is decidedly the best-kept city in the Peninsula. The impression is heightened by the ever-ready brush of the whitewasher, which keeps the houses and walls in the most immaculate condition.

Although Cadiz is slowly recovering from the decadence into which it was sunk for so long, there is small activity either of commerce, trade, or manufacture to support its seventy thousand inhabitants; and suitable docks have yet to be constructed to enable it to take the commercial rank to which its situation entitles it. Its resemblance to Venice is remarkable. Lying as it does seven miles at sea, the inhabitants could, if they wished it, have had canals instead of streets, for most of the thoroughfares begin and end at the ocean. Coming straight from the

ultra-Moorish Seville with its narrow winding streets, the traveller wonders why in neighbouring Cadiz, which also belonged to the Moors for over five hundred years, the streets should be so much wider and straighter, and why they possess so few patios and other Arabian characteristics. The explanation lies in the fact that almost the entire town was newly laid out and rebuilt after the bombardment in 1596. Cadiz being practically on an island is much cooler than Seville, so that Moorish patios are not essential to comfort, and their places are taken by the turrets on the top of the houses, from whence sea-breezes and a magnificent view can be obtained at the same time.

The history of Cadiz is an epitome of the progress of civilisation up to the time when Spain was the chiefest nation of the world. It capitulated to Hamilcar Barca in B.C. 237, it was fortified by CÆsar, rebuilt in marble by Balbus, and destroyed by the Goths. Its greatness was its misfortune. So rich it was that England in 1596 fitted out an expedition to sack the city. Lord Essex did his work so thoroughly that Cadiz was brought to the verge of bankruptcy, and Spain received the first blow to her supremacy. Two other English expeditions against this place proved unsuccessful; but it was bombarded at the end of the eighteenth century, it was devastated by the plague, and was the theatre of the horrible massacres in the revolution of 1820. Cadiz supplied the ancient Roman epicures with salt fish and anything but proper dancing girls; and was resorted to by philosophers, who came here to study the curious phenomena of the tides. A city with such a history might be expected to be full of antiquarian records; yet, from a mere archÆological point of view, it is by no means a place of great attractiveness. In the convent of San Francisco is to be seen the last Murillo, the picture upon which the artist was engaged when he fell from the scaffold and sustained his fatal injuries; but beyond this and the cathedral, which is not remarkable, the city is destitute of works of art.

Moreover, Cadiz is one of the noisiest cities in Spain; but it is, none the less, a delightful city to live in. Here the beggar nuisance is unknown, its society is, with the exception of that of Madrid and Barcelona, the most cultivated in the Peninsula, and its women are the most graceful in Andalusia. The Alameda, where everybody promenades in the evening, commands lovely views of the ocean, the blue of which is varied, according to the light, with rich dark green and royal purple. And in a walk along the sea walls surrounding the city one passes large mercantile storehouses, and mixes with sailors from all parts of the world—negroes and Moors (betokening the nearness of Africa), troops of soldiers who are always at the quick step, and crowds of hardy, picturesque, and sun-browned fishermen.

One does not find in Cadiz the virile gaiety that prevails in Seville. The tone is quieter, more subdued and less fitful. If the Sevillians are not intensely joyous, they are in tears—the people of Cadiz take their happiness as it comes, rather than make it a sacrifice to their subsequent peace of mind. They are as tidy and attractive as their own orderly, sunny streets, and invariably courteous both between themselves and towards strangers. The women are taller than their sisters of Seville, a trifle darker, and a shade less languishing, but—they are Andalusian, and in that admittance the highest compliment to feminine fascination is paid.

Different, quite different from Cadiz, different in situation, tone, and complexion is Malaga. Seen from the shore, the houses stand out in violet and yellow against a background of green and reddish hills, and on either side of the town the mountains stretch out into the distance as far as the eye can reach. The site of the city is excellent; its harbour is one of the best in the kingdom; and in importance it ranks next to Barcelona among the commercial centres of Spain. Its merchants are men of substance, and their villas are objects of beauty in suburbs that are naturally beautiful. But Malaga does not appeal to the heart of the visitor as does Cadiz or CÓrdova. The certain grandeur that one notes from a distance dwindles almost to vanishing point as one comes nearer; and when one plunges into the narrow, ill-kept, malodorous streets of the lower town, the delusion is dispelled altogether. But one has only to leave the city behind one to regain the first impression of its picturesqueness. If one would see Malaga at its best, an expedition must be undertaken to the summit of the high hill which overlooks the city. The tramway takes one the first part of the journey—the only part that the average Spaniard ever attempts. I am not sure that I blame him for stopping short there. The walk up that brown-baked hill under the fierce rays of the morning sun is an achievement that makes some call upon one’s powers of endurance, but the view from the summit fully atones for the discomforts of the climb. At one’s feet lies picturesque Malaga, set in a huge garden of tropical and semi-tropical floral vegetation; beyond it the blue, clear, glinting Mediterranean stretches far out to where, in the distance, the shores of Africa are dimly visible.

Although the land winds are occasionally variable and trying, the climate of Malaga is one of the most equable in Europe. Winter as we know it is unknown here; and the sugar cane, which is destroyed by the merest suspicion of frost, is cultivated on a large and profitable scale. As an invalid resort it has a considerable repute, but it is as a flourishing commercial centre rather than a sanitorium that Malaga is best known. The raisins of Malaga are famous, the manufacture of sugar gives employment to some thousands of hands, while its wines are widely celebrated. The port receives visits from upwards of 2,500 vessels annually; and although the air of thrift and prosperity is not so marked as it is in Barcelona, and its people lack the sterling integrity and moral balance of the Catalans, there are unmistakable evidences of progress and improvements in its streets. Much building is in progress, the paving of the thoroughfares is receiving attention, and the new stores and warehouses that are being erected are constructed on the most modern plan. Like Cadiz, Malaga is of immemorial antiquity; and, like the white city on the west of Gibraltar, it is singularly deficient in antiquarian monuments. Phoenicians, Carthagenians and Romans occupied it in turn; the Moors caused it to be styled “a paradise on earth;” and the French sacked it in 1810 and walked off with twelve millions of reals in gold and silver. The present cathedral, which was nearly 200 years in the making,

presents a motley appearance. Many architects have put much bad art into its decoration, and with the exception of the magnificently-carved Silleria del Coro, archÆologists find little in it to engage their attention.

The reports as to the amount of ignorance that prevails in Malaga are probably exaggerated, since commercial progress and ignorance do not usually go hand-in-hand. But there is no gainsaying the fact that superstition, which is most nearly allied to, and has its foundation in ignorance, is widespread; and the people are notorious for their republican tendencies. The sacredness of human life is only imperfectly understood here; and juries are even, according to official report, culpably averse to bringing in adequate verdicts in cases of manslaughter. The Andalusian is quick-tempered and impulsive—he acts without thinking when he is provoked—and stabbing cases are the not infrequent outcome of the most trifling disagreements. The Procurator Fiscal of Malaga has commented severely upon the leniency with which juries regard such offences. But how can one bring home the heinous nature of manslaughter to a number of men who know themselves capable of committing it within the hour if the provocation should arise; and who realise, moreover, that the person charged only acted on the spur of the moment, and was desperately sorry for his hastiness the moment afterwards? And if the Malaga people are prone to swift individual action, they will act collectively with equal passion and the same entire want of conviction. One might, and possibly would, live all one’s life in the city without coming to any harm, but the reading in the newspapers of frequent impetuous blood-lettings conduces to a feeling of insecurity.

After bustling, thriving Malaga, one finds in Ronda—“the Tivoli of Andalusia”—a haven of wondrous peace and infinite loveliness. Half-a-century ago Ronda was one of the gayest, the most flourishing, the most beautifully-situated towns in the south of Spain. Half-a-century ago it was the grand centre of smuggling for the mountain district of which it was the capital; and at that date “free trade” was a very feasible, highly profitable, and eminently virtuous method of earning a livelihood. But

the decay of smuggling meant the diminution of prosperity and joyaunce. No longer are the streets alive with dancing and the strumming of guitars. Contrabandists in costumes of picturesque splendour no longer linger in its shadows. Ronda has lost its air of thrift and light-heartedness, but the situation of the town still remains to maintain its world-wide renown for beauty. A long tract of table-land terminates, with the abruptness of an ocean-cliff, in a precipice varying in height from 800 to 1,000 feet. On this natural platform stands Ronda above an Alpine valley, in which the orange and olive flourish in rich luxuriance. The view from the bridge is a sheer delight. A chasm, 300 feet wide, divides the old town from the new. It is spanned by a massive wooden bridge, under which, at a depth

of some 700 feet, the Guadalvin rushes forth into open day from the caverns which hitherto have imprisoned its waters. In a bound it clears a huge ledge of rock and dashes onward down the slope, until, having fertilised the green meadows of the valley, it finally empties itself into the green-hued and romantic Guadairo. The sides of the cliff are covered with festoons of moist, fresh creepers; and nothing could be more delightful than the transition from the sun-baked town into these cool depths, where the spray of the waterfall, dropping like unseen, gentle dew, maintains a perpetual freshness.