IN dipping into Spanish liquids we shall not mix wine with water, but keep them separate, as most Spaniards do; the latter is entitled to rank first, by those who prefer the opinion of Pindar, who held water to be the best of things, to that of Anacreon, who was not member of any temperance society. The profound regard for water of a Spaniard is quite Oriental; at the same time, as his blood is partly Gothic and partly Arab, his allegiance is equally mixed and divided; thus, if he adores the juice of flints like a Moslem, he venerates the juice of the grape like a German.

Water is the blood of the earth, and the purificator of the body in tropical regions and in creeds which, being regulated by latitudes, enforce frequent ablution; loud are the praises of Arab writers of wells and water-brooks, and great is their fountain and pool worship, the dipping in which, if their miraculous cases are to be credited, effects more and greater cures than those worked by hydropathists at Grafenberg; a Spaniard’s idea of a paradise on earth, of a “garden,” is a well-watered district; irrigation is fertility and wealth, and therefore, as in the East, wells, brooks, and water-courses have been a constant source of bickering; nay the very word rivality has been derived from these quarrel and law-suit engendering rivers, as the name given to the well for which the men of Gerah and Isaac differed, was called esek from the contention.

The flow of waters cannot be mistaken; the most dreary sterility edges the most luxuriant plenty, the most hopeless barrenness borders on the richest vegetation; the line of demarcation is perceived from afar, dividing the tawny desert from the verdurous garden. The Moors who came from the East were fully sensible of the value of this element; they collected the best springs with the greatest care, they dammed up narrow gorges into reservoirs, they constructed pools and underground cisterns, stemmed valleys with aqueducts that poured in rivers, and in a word exercised a magic influence over this element, which they guided and wielded at their will; their system of irrigation was far too perfect to be improved by Spaniard, or even destroyed. In those favoured districts where their artificial contrivances remain, Flora still smiles and Ceres rejoices with Pomona; wherever the ravages of war or the neglect of man have ruined them, the garden has relapsed into the desert, and plains once overflowing with corn, gladness, and population, have shrunk into sad and silent deserts.

The fountains of Spain, especially in the hotter and more Moorish districts, are numerous; they cannot fail to strike and please the stranger, whether they be situated in the public walk, garden, market-place, or private dwelling. Their mode of supply is simple: a river which flows down from the hills is diverted at a certain height from its source, and is carried in an artificial canal, which retains the original elevation, into a reservoir placed above the town which is to be served; as the waters rise to their level, the force, body, and altitude of some of the columns thrown up are very great. In our cold country, where, except at Charing Cross, the stream is conveyed underground and unseen, all this gush of waters, of dropping diamonds in the bright sun, which cools the air and gladdens the sight and ear, is unknown. Again there is a waste of the “article,” which would shock a Chelsea Waterworks Director, and induce the rate-collector to refer to the fines as per Act of Parliament. The fondest wish of those Spaniards who wear long-tailed coats, is to imitate those gentry; they are ashamed of the patriarchal uncivilised system of their ancestors—much prefer the economical lead pipe to all this extravagant and gratuitous splashing—they love a turncock better than the most Oriental Rebecca who comes down to draw water. The fountains in Spain as in the East are the meeting and greeting places of womankind; here they flock, old and young, infants and grandmothers. It is a sight to drive a water-colour painter crazy, such is the colour, costume, and groupings, such is the clatter of tongues and crockery; such is the life and action; now trip along a bevy of damsel Hebes with upright forms and chamois step light yet true; more graceful than opera-dancers, they come laughing and carolling along, poising on their heads pitchers modelled after the antique, and after everything which a SÈvres jug is not. It would seem that to draw water is a difficult operation, so long are they lingering near the sweet fountain’s rim. It indeed is their al fresco rout, their tertulia; here for awhile the hand of woman labour ceases, and the urn stands still; here more than even after church mass, do the young discuss their dress and lovers, the middle-aged and mothers descant on babies and housekeeping; all talk, and generally at once; but gossip refresheth the daughters of Eve, whether in gilded boudoir or near mossy fountain, whose water, if a dash of scandal be added, becomes sweeter than eau sucrÉe.

The Iberians were decided water-drinkers, and this trait of their manners, which are modified by climate that changes not, still exists as the sun that regulates: the vinous Greek AthenÆus was amazed that even rich Spaniards should prefer water to wine; and to this day they are if possible curious about the latter’s quality; they will just drink the wine that grows the nearest, while they look about and enquire for the best water; thus even our cook Francisco, who certainly had one of the best places in Seville, and who although a good artiste was a better rascal—qualities not incompatible—preferred to sacrifice his interests rather than go to Granada, because this man of the fire had heard that the water there was bad.

The mother of the Arabs was tormented with thirst, which her Hispano-Moro children have inherited; in fact in the dog-days, of which here there are packs, unless the mortal clay be frequently wetted it would crumble to bits like that of a figure modeller. Fire and water are the elements of Spain, whether at an auto de fÉ or in a church-stoop; with a cigar in his mouth a Spaniard smokes like Vesuvius, and is as dry, combustible, and inflammatory; and properly to understand the truth of Solomon’s remark, that cold water is to a thirsty soul as refreshing as good news, one must have experienced what thirst is in the exposed plains of the calcined Castiles, where coup de soleil is rife, and a gentleman on horseback’s brains seem to be melting like Don Quixote’s when Sancho put the curds into his helmet. It is just the country to send a patient to, who is troubled with hydrophobia. “Those rayes,” to use the words of old Howell, “that do but warm you in England, do roast you here; those beams that irradiate onely, and gild your honey-suckled fields, do here scorch and parch the chinky gaping soyle, and put too many wrinkles upon the face of your common mother.”

Then, when the heavens and earth are on fire, and the sun drinks up rivers at one draught, when one burnt sienna tone pervades the tawny ground, and the green herb is shrivelled up into black gunpowder, and the rare pale ashy olive-trees are blanched into the livery of the desert; then, when the heat and harshness make even the salamander muleteers swear doubly as they toil along like demons in an ignited salitrose dust—then, indeed, will an Englishman discover that he is made of the same material, only drier, and learn to estimate water; but a good thirst is too serious an evil, too bordering on suffering, to be made, like an appetite, a matter of congratulation; for when all fluids evaporate, and the blood thickens into currant jelly, and the nerves tighten up into the catgut of an overstrung fiddle, getting attuned to the porcupinal irritability of the tension of the mind, how the parched soul sighs for the comfort of a Scotch mist, and fondly turns back to the uvula-relaxing damps of Devon!—then, in the blackhole-like thirst of the wilderness, every mummy hag rushing from a reed hut, with a porous cup of brackish water, is changed by the mirage into a Hebe, bearing the nectar of the immortals; then how one longs for the most wretched Venta, which heat and thirst convert into the Clarendon, since in it at least will be found water and shade, and an escape from the god of fire! Well may Spanish historians boast, that his orb at the creation first shone over Toledo, and never since has set on the dominions of the great king, who, as we are assured by SeÑor Berni, “has the sun for his hat,”—tiene al sol por su sombrero; but humbler mortals who are not grandees of this solar system, and to whom a coup de soleil is neither a joke nor a metaphor, should stow away non-conductors of heat in the crown of their beavers. Thus Apollo himself preserved us. And oh! ye our fair readers, who chance to run such risks, and value complexion, take for heaven’s sake a parasol and an Alcarraza.

This clay utensil—as its Arabic name al Karaset implies—is a porous refrigeratory vessel, in which water when placed in a current of hot air becomes chilled by evaporation; it is to be seen hung up on poles dangling from branches, suspended to waggons—in short, is part and parcel of a Spanish scene in hot weather and localities; every posada has rows of them at the entrance, and the first thing every one does on entering, before wishing even the hostess Good morning, or asking permission, is to take a full draught: all classes are learned on the subject, and although on the whole they cannot be accused of teetotalism, they are loud in their praises of the pure fluid. The common form of praise is agua muy rica—very rich water. According to their proverbs, good water should have neither taste, smell, nor colour, “ni sabor, olor, ni color,” which neither makes men sick nor in debt, nor women widows, “que no enferma, no adeuda, no enviuda;” and besides being cheaper than wine, beer, or brandy, it does not brutalize the consumer, nor deprive him of his common sense or good manners.

As Spaniards at all times are as dry as the desert or a sponge, selling water is a very active business; on every alameda and prado shrill voices of the sellers of drinks and mouth combustibles—vendedores de combustibles de boca—are heard crying, “Fire, fire, candela—Water; who wants water?”—agua; quien quiere agua? which, as these Orientals generally exaggerate, is described as mas fresca que la nieve, or colder than snow; and near them little Murillo-like urchins run about with lighted ropes like artillerymen for the convenience of smokers, that is, for every ninety and nine males out of a hundred; while water-carriers, or rather retail pedestrian aqueducts, follow thirst like fire-engines; the Aguador carries on his back, like his colleague in the East, a porous water-jar, with a little cock by which it is drawn out; he is usually provided with a small tin box strapped to his waist, and in which he stows away his glasses, brushes, and some light azucarillos—panales, which are made of sugar and white of egg, which Spaniards dip and dissolve in their drink. In the town, at particular stations water-mongers in wholesale have a shed, with ranges of jars, glasses, oranges, lemons, &c., and a bench or two on which the drinkers “untire themselves.” In winter these are provided with an aÑafe or portable stove, which keeps a supply of hot water, to take the chill off the cold, for Spaniards, from a sort of dropsical habit, drink like fishes all the year round. Ferdinand the Catholic, on seeing a peasant drowned in a river, observed, “that he had never before seen a Spaniard who had had enough water.”

At the same time it must be remembered that this fluid is applied with greater prodigality in washing their inside than their outside. Indeed, a classical author remarks that the Spaniards only learnt the use of hot water, as applicable to the toilette, from the Romans after the second Punic war. Their baths and thermÆ were destroyed by the Goths, because they tended to encourage effeminacy; and those of the Moors were prohibited by the Gotho-Spaniards partly from similar reasons, but more from a religious hydrophobia. Ablutions and lustral purifications formed an article of faith with the Jew and Moslem, with whom “cleanliness is godliness.” The mendicant Spanish monks, according to their practice of setting up a directly antagonist principle, considered physical dirt as the test of moral purity and true faith; and by dining and sleeping from year’s end to year’s end in the same unchanged woollen frock, arrived at the height of their ambition, according to their view of the odour of sanctity, insomuch that Ximenez, who was himself a shirtless Franciscan, induced Ferdinand and Isabella, at the conquest of Granada, to close and abolish the Moorish baths. They forbade not only the Christians but the Moors from using anything but holy water. Fire, not water, became the grand element of inquisitorial purification.

The fair sex was warned by monks, who practised what they preached, that they should remember the cases of Susanna, Bathsheba, and La Cava,—whose fatal bathing under the royal palace at Toledo led to the downfall of the Gothic monarchy. Their aqueous anathemas extended not only to public, but to minutely private washings, regarding which Sanchez instructs the Spanish confessor to question his fair penitents, and not to absolve the over-washed. Many instances could be produced of the practical working of this enjoined rule; for instance, Isabella, the favourite daughter of Philip II., his eye, as he called her, made a solemn vow never to change her shift until Ostend was taken. The siege lasted three years, three months, and thirteen days. The royal garment acquired a tawny colour, which was called Isabel by the courtiers, in compliment to the pious princess. Again, Southey relates that the devout Saint Eufraxia entered into a convent of 130 nuns, not one of whom had ever washed her feet, and the very mention of a bath was an abomination. These obedient daughters to their Capuchin confessors were what Gil de Avila termed a sweet garden of flowers, perfumed by the good smell and reputation of sanctity, “ameno jardin de flores, olorosas por el buen odor y fama de santidad.” Justice to the land of Castile soap requires us to observe that latterly, since the suppression of monks, both sexes, and the fair especially, have departed from the strict observance of the religious duties of their excellent grandmothers. Warm baths are now pretty generally established in the larger towns. At the same time, the interiors of bedrooms, whether in inns or private houses, as well by the striking absence of glass and china utensils, which to English notions are absolute necessaries, as by the presence of French pie-dish basins, and duodecimo jugs, indicate that this “little damned spot” on the average Spanish hand, has not yet been quite rubbed out.

However hot the day, dusty the road, or long the journey, it has never been our fate to see a Spanish attendant use a single drop of water as a detergent, or, as polite writers say, “perform his ablutions;” the constant habit of bathing and complete washing is undoubtedly one reason why the French and other continentals consider our soap-loving countrymen to be cracked. Under the Spanish Goths the HemerobaptistÆ, or people who washed their persons once a day, were set down as heretics. The Duke of Frias, when a few years ago on a fortnight’s visit to an English lady, never once troubled his basins and jugs; he simply rubbed his face occasionally with the white of an egg, which, as Madame Daunoy records, was the only ablution of the Spanish ladies in the time of Philip IV.; but these details of the dressing-room are foreign to the use made in Spain of liquids in kitchen and parlour.

One word on chocolate, which is to a Spaniard what tea is to a Briton—coffee to a Gaul. It is to be had almost everywhere, and is always excellent; the best is made by the nuns, who are great confectioners and compounders of sweetmeats, sugarplums and orange-flowers, water and comfits,

It was long a disputed point whether chocolate did or did not break fast theologically, just as happened with coffee among the rigid Moslems. But since the learned Escobar decided that liquidum non rumpit jejunium, a liquid does not break fast, it has become the universal breakfast of Spain. It is made just liquid enough to come within the benefit of clergy, that is, a spoon will almost stand up in it; only a small cup is taken, una jicara, a Mexican word for the cocoa-nuts of which they were first made, generally with a bit of toasted bread or biscuit: as these jicaras have seldom any handles, they were used by the rich (as coffeecups are among the Orientals) enclosed in little filigree cases of silver or gold; some of these are very beautiful, made in the form of a tulip or lotus leaf, on a saucer of mother-o’-pearl. The flower is so contrived that, by a spring underneath, on raising the saucer, the leaves fall back and disclose the cup to the lips, while, when put down, they re-close over it, and form a protection against the flies. A glass of water should always be drunk after this chocolate, since the aqueous chasse neutralizes the bilious propensities of this breakfast of the gods, as LinnÆus called chocolate. Tea and coffee have supplanted chocolate in England and France; it is in Spain alone that we are carried back to the breakfasts of Belinda and of the wits at Button’s; in Spain exist, unchanged, the fans, the game of ombre, tresillo, and the coche de colleras, the coach and six, and other social usages of the age of Pope and the ‘Spectator.’

Cold liquids in the hot dry summers of Spain are necessaries, not luxuries; snow and iced drinks are sold in the streets at prices so low as to be within the reach of the poorest classes; the rich refrigerate themselves with agraz. This, the Moorish Hacaraz, is the most delicious and most refreshing drink ever devised by thirsty mortal; it is the new pleasure for which Xerxes wished in vain, and beats the “hock and soda water,” the “hoc erat in votis” of Byron, and sherry cobler itself. It is made of pounded unripe grapes, clarified sugar, and water; it is strained till it becomes of the palest straw-coloured amber, and well iced. It is particularly well made in Andalucia, and it is worth going there in the dog-days, if only to drink it—it cools a man’s body and soul. At Madrid an agreeable drink is sold in the streets; it is called Michi Michi, from the Valencian Mitj e Mitj, “half and half,” and is as unlike the heavy wet mixture of London, as a coal-porter is to a pretty fair Valenciana. It is made of equal portions of barley-water and orgeat of Chufas, and is highly iced. The Spaniards, among other cooling fruits, eat their strawberries mixed with sugar and the juice of oranges, which will be found a more agreeable addition than the wine used by the French, or the cream of the English,—the one heats, and the other, whenever it is to be had, makes a man bilious in Spain. Spanish ices, helados, are apt to be too sweet, nor is the sugar well refined; the ices, when frozen very hard and in small forms, either representing fruits or shells, are called quesos, cheeses.

Another favourite drink is a weak bottled beer mixed with iced lemonade. Spaniards, however, are no great drinkers of beer, notwithstanding that their ancestors drank more of it than wine, which was not then either so plentiful or universal as at the present; this substitute of grapeless countries passed from the Egyptians and Carthaginians into Spain, where it was excellent, and kept well. The vinous Roman soldiers derided the beer-drinking Iberians, just as the French did the English before the battle of Agincourt. “Can sodden water—barley-broth—decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?” Polybius sneers at the magnificence of a Spanish king, because his home was furnished with silver and gold vases full of beer, of barley-wine. The genuine Goths, as happens everywhere to this day, were great swillers of ale and beer, heady and stupifying mixtures, according to Aristotle. Their archbishop, St. Isidore, distinguished between celia ceria, the ale, and cerbisia, beer, whence the present word cerbeza is derived. Spanish beer, like many other Spanish matters, has now become small. Strong English beer is rare and dear; among one of the infinite ingenious absurdities of Spanish customs’ law, English beer in barrels used to be prohibited, as were English bottles if empty—but prohibited beer, in prohibited bottles, was admissible, on the principle that two fiscal negatives made an exchequer affirmative.