IN the midst of the warm Seville winter the thought of sea breezes tempted us to Cadiz for a week. The hundred miles' run down there was through a charming corner of Andalusia, with orange groves, olive plantations, woods of stone pines, hedges of cactus, in the meadows herds of most royal bulls. It was the eighteenth of January, yet the fruit trees were in blossom, and over the streams floated a lovely white-flowering verdure. We passed Jerez, source of English sherry, where on our return to Seville we stopped some hours to see the bodegas and sample the native wine. As we neared the coast big pyramids of salt covered the marshes, telling of another industry; in fact, every part of Andalusia which I saw was well cultivated, despite the guide book laments over its backwardness.

Soon came whiffs of the sea air. The first view of Cadiz, set right out to sea, is very striking. Only a narrow strip of sand, eight miles long, connects it with the mainland, and as we skirted the coast, past San Fernando,—where there is a naval station and an astronomical observatory,—the compact, sturdy little city out in the Atlantic made a stunning picture; the sea so very blue, the town so dazzlingly white.

And inside the treble line of walls and moats that defend its one land-entrance, the "silver dish," as its citizens love to call it, has as individual a character as its distant prospect. It is miraculously clean, its streets seem swept and scrubbed like a Dutch village. Down these narrow lanes you catch the gleam of the sea to east, to north, to west. When it rains, Seville turns into a muddy distress, but well-drained Cadiz grows more proper still in wet weather. The patio of the rest of Andalusia is not found here, for being confined to its ledge of shells, the town could not spread itself about, but had to build itself up in the air. On top of the high houses, whose vivid green balconies add to the general air of trig neatness, are miradores, small towers formerly built by the merchants as look-outs from which they could spy their returning galleons. The view of Cadiz from a mirador is like nothing else ever seen: the clean whiteness of hundreds of roof terraces, the church towers of colored tiles and a host of other miradores, made it seem like a second city in itself, suggestive of the Orient; a strange city set in the blinding blue circle of the ocean.

The town is almost surrounded by high sea walls, four miles of them, and on the Atlantic side the surf breaks in thundering eternity, throwing up spray twenty feet high. There is something splendidly plucky about Cadiz. One of the few spots in Europe forced to battle for her existence, with a devouring enemy at her door, she thrives and continues century after century. She is the oldest town in Spain, founded by Phoenician mariners more than a thousand years before the Christian Era.

Spain has influenced them all, all the strangers, the heterogeneous throng, that have gone to the making of the Spanish race. Phoenician, Roman, Iberian, Goth, Jew, and Moor, she has imprinted on them all her own distinguishing mark, has breathed into them her own intense soul. For this psychological reason it is true to say that Seneca was a Spaniard, that the wonderful Jew Maimonides and the Moor AverroËs, and the Gothic bishop, Isidoro, Doctor of the Church were all of them Spaniards. The Catalan, RamÓn Lull rang out the national note with no uncertain sound, mystic hermit and active missionary. And with the centuries "christened in blood and schooled in sacrifice," the spirit grew more convincingly apparent: Domingo de GuzmÁn, Francisco Ximenez, Gonsalvo de CÓrdova, Luis de LeÓn, IÑigo de Loyola are very brothers with a like high fealty that tells what majestic mother nurtured them on her battlefield of ages.

Cadiz, the oldest spot in Spain, has known each of the conquering races in turn. She was four hundred years old when Rome was founded. She has had tremendous ups and downs of fortune; at her height during the age of the CÆsars, who saw her importance as key to Andalusia, then with the fall of Rome dropped into insignificance, her name almost forgotten. She rose again with the discovery of the New World, whose ships of treasure anchored off her ramparts. A strange outlook on the passing of power lies in the statement that in 1770 this town was a wealthier place than London. With the loss of the Colonies, Cadiz has sunk back to be a mediocre city in the world, but she is contented and self-respecting.

Though so remotely ancient, there is nothing of old architecture here. The ramparts have been turned into esplanades, where it is a joy to walk, for the views are beautiful past description; now across the bay to the mainland and the mountains of Ronda, and down on the quay of the town itself with its bay full of fishing boats; then to the north the eye seeks farther along the coast toward Palos whence three caravels, the Pinta, the NiÑa and the Santa MarÍa turned westward on a memorable third of August, 1492. On the other side of Cadiz is the ocean itself and I hope the enterprising town will some day carry the park along this western wall, where the rollers break so magnificently. Just past the public gardens, a narrow causeway leads to the lighthouse of San SebastiÁn, set well out to sea, a favorite walk for us at sunset time to watch the fishing boats with their high prows come sailing back to the harbor each evening. The sunsets we saw in Cadiz were flaming pink and gold and red like those of the world on the other side of the Atlantic; also we saw a sunrise exquisite as a dream. It was here the ancients first met the suggestive wonder of the open ocean, and their philosophers pondered over the phenomenon of the tides. They thought that subterranean animals or winds sucked them in; and the sun, they said, when it had sunk in the western ocean, returned to the east by subterranean passages,—guesses about as wise as some that we are making to-day on phenomena of the soul.

I do not know if it was just chance good fortune, but Cadiz will always be an exhilarating memory. Its air was so bracing, balmy yet full of vitality. The moral atmosphere seemed joyous and contented; a hurdy-gurdy would strike up below in the street with the bang of a tambourine, and from all the windows near, pennies would gayly rattle down. The people were courteous without second thought. A working man walked out of his way for ten minutes to direct us through the complicated streets, and then ran off with a laugh to avoid the fee; a shopman straightened eye-glasses and genuinely refused to be paid for so small a service; wonder of wonders when our luggage got carried in the wrong hotel diligence, the landlord refused to let us pay. Three such episodes of disinterestedness in one morning give one a pleasant impression of a place; and this town has presented itself to other travelers as happily. Byron, to whom this "renowned romantic land" as he called her, was eminently sympathetic, wrote to his mother, in 1809, "Cadiz, sweet Cadiz! it is the first spot in the creation. The beauty of its streets and mansions are only excelled by the loveliness of its inhabitants, the finest women in Spain."

Cadiz is enough of a place, with a bishopric and a garrison, to have the air of a capital; we noticed many men of the best hidalgo type, like those who stand behind SpÍnola in the "Surrender of Breda." In the park was an outdoor theater; children played diavolo; and nice little Spanish girls walked up and down with their English governesses. One could write or sew outdoors without exciting a glance of surprise. We used to spend hours under the palm trees of the Alameda sewing and reading and watching the groups about us, for in spite of its being mid-winter, the air was warm enough for spending the day out-of-doors. Cleanliness and godliness: Cadiz can boast of excellent public institutions. The new hospital that faces the Atlantic breezes, and where only a fraction of a franc is paid daily, could well be envied by the rich of new world cities. Its poor house is noted, and it has a host of minor charities; a Casa de Viudas for widows, a Casa de Hermanos, a Casa de Locos for the insane, tended, as are the others, by alert, willing nuns. It is a public-spirited little city, with a school of music and art, an Instituto whose physical laboratory is the best in Spain, two Public Libraries, for that of the Bishop is also open free to the people.

The tourist sights here are soon seen; the Capuchin church where Murillo painted his last picture, and where he fell from the scaffold, soon after dying in Seville from the accident. There are two Cathedrals, one so sacked by English bucaneers that there is little to be seen, and the other a quite dreadful eighteenth century affair. The dull Museo has some good modern works, a bishop's head in profile by GarcÍa y Ramos that is first rate art; and there is a triptych by a very early painter, Gallegos, the Spanish Primitive, which to my mind is more religious than the Murillos and the Zurbarans. It is a PietÀ, and the eyes of the mourners are naÏvely red from weeping, like Francia's PietÀs in Parma.

Almost impregnable walls and moats shut off the isthmus that leads to the mainland, and their strength explains how Cadiz could have defied the French for two years during the War of Liberation, without suffering the horrors of the Gerona siege. The blockade began in 1808, soon after the heroic Dos de Mayo in Madrid. Quintana's poem rang like a trumpet call over the land: "Antes la muerte que consentir jamÁs ningÚn tirano!" No idle boast! Spain was celebrating the centenary of the second of May during our visit, and the scenes were moving and patriotic. You realized Lord Peterborough's remark, that this was an unconquerable land if her people resisted the invader. Statues and tablets for the war heroes were unveiled, and songs and marches composed for the anniversary. The artillery officers organized a splendid parade of children that marched under the arch of MontleÓn, where Ruiz, and Velarde, and Daoiz fought, and there the King, holding the baby Prince of Asturias in his arms, showed him how to kiss his country's flag. Memorial Mass was said in the street outside the house where Velarde died, and toward evening one of the Madrid parishes marched out, its priests leading, to the cemetery where the Dos de Mayo victims were buried, and deposited wreaths in patriotic reverence.

Cadiz' old church, St. Philip Neri, is where the permanent endurance of the first outburst of patriotism in 1808 was made possible. Here the Cortes met again after three hundred years' suppression under the Hapsburgs and Bourbons, here they abolished the Inquisition, and here they drew up the Constitution of 1812, which was to be tossed backward and forward during the next half century of disorders, to emerge finally with victory.

An eloquent priest was the first speaker to open the historic meeting, and as he laid down the program, the sovereignty of the nation to lie in the Cortes, and the King to exist for the people, not the people for the King as heretofore, Spain again had her foot on the ladder of progress. No wonder that the national military air of Spain is the Marcha de CÁdiz. The clean, smokeless, plucky little city has right to a proud stand out in the Atlantic. Her age-long enemy, the ocean, had trained her well to strike a first blow for freedom.