LITERALLY worn out with the noise of Seville's Holy Week, we took the night train, that chill, rainy Good Friday, and left the Andalusian excitement behind. As carriages are forbidden in the city on both Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we had expected to walk to the station—they told us that the King, the year before, had walked to his train—but the regulation ceased at sunset on Friday and we were able to drive.

As usual we had the Reservado para SeÑoras compartment to ourselves, and so exhausted were we that we slept heavily with only an occasional waking to look out on the cold hills we were crossing. There was a moon which hurrying black clouds obscured fitfully. Under the somber sky the desolate hills seemed like the fantastic sepia drawing of a Turner: swift unforgettable memories one carries away from night journeys in Spain.

We left the train at MÉrida, now a poor place with some few thousand inhabitants, but up to the fourth century a splendid Roman city, the capital of Lusitania. The castle built by Romans, Moors, Knights of Santiago, and bishops; the theater, the aqueduct, the bridge, the triumphal arch, and the baths show what it once was. We could not have visited this solitary province at a happier hour. Field flowers made the countryside as beautiful for the moment as Umbria or Devonshire; the wheat fields, always so articulate and lovely, had their own charm even after the magnificent outburst of roses and orange blossoms a month earlier in Seville.

MÉrida is small,—frugal and neat, as are the larger number of Spanish towns. As we explored it, the people greeted us with kindly "Vayan Ustedes con Dios"; we had left behind the tourist-infested south with its insolent city loafers. It seemed too good to believe that we had come again among the grave, dignified Spaniards of the north. In order not to miss the Holy Saturday services, I hastened to the Cathedral. There was a cracked old organ and the singing was little better, but devout, heart-moving peasants rose and knelt, up and down, during the long Flectamus Genua! Levate! ceremony of that day, and the bells burst into the riotous clamor they seem to achieve so individually all over Spain. It may have been ungrateful, but it was without the slightest regret that I thought of the display going on at the same hour in Seville.

We had taken the trip into Estremadura to see the Roman remains, the best in the Peninsula. The ruins are more fortunate in their setting here than in many places, for there are none of the bustling cafÉs nor electric cars of NÎmes or Verona. Paestum is more poetic, Baalbec a hundred times more grandiose, but MÉrida on a showery, sunshiny day in spring is an ideal spot for musing and rambling. In the city itself are some ancient remains, such as a temple of Mars, and the fluted columns of a temple of Diana built into a mediÆval house, which, by the way, has a lovely Plateresque window, but most of the ruins lie completely outside the present town. The amphitheatre, when we saw it, had a comfortable troop of goats asleep in the warm shelter of its oval, and the remarkable theatre, known as Las Siete Sillas, from the seven divisions of its upper seats that crown it like a coronet, was gay with poppies and buttercups,—the national colors gleamed everywhere. Swallows in cool, metallic, blue-black coats, dipped and swept in their swift, graceful way. Looking out on the view which embraced MÉrida on one side and a line of rugged hills on the other, we lingered for hours in that Theatre of the Seven Seats. Children, like gentle fawns, one by one crept out from the town suburbs and gathered in a smiling, lovable circle round the strangers. We talked to them tranquilly, our map of their city seemed a fascinating wonder to them. They came and went smiling; now one returned to the town to fetch his mother, now a shy little girl laid an armful of poppies beside us, with no thought of pennies, but just out of primitive human kindliness. The dear Don's age of gold seemed a reality. And a day before we had angrily scattered those diabolical little pests, the street children of Seville! Could these enchanting little people belong to the same race, and live only a hundred and fifty miles away? Journeys in unfrequented parts of Spain give one a truer picture than is possible for the hurried tourist on the beaten track; every time we turned aside into the unspoiled country we met the people and ways which Cervantes has described. Never were gentler human beings than those little girls of MÉrida, those young mothers, those big half-awkward lads, whose gazelle eyes would gaze at us inquiringly, then turn to look at the scene we so obviously admired, then back to us with pleasure at our appreciation of what they too held most beautiful. We are told that peasants get no Æsthetic pleasure from landscape, but I am sure romantic Roman ruins and perfect spring-time weather had much to do with giving those children faces of such pure outline.

Copyright, 1910, by Underwood & Underwood A Roadside Scene in Spain
Copyright, , 1910, by Underwood & Underwood
A Roadside Scene in Spain

Perhaps later, when the sun scorches the first freshness, MÉrida may be a desolate enough spot; we probably knew her best hour, the lovely April of her prime. We were loath to tear ourselves away; we read to our interested audience accounts of their city's past, when Emperors' armies marched along the Roman road that led from Cadiz north, and alert to catch the meaning, they listened with that vividness of the eye that shows the imagination is roused. Then from the daily paper we read to them that in Madrid on Holy Thursday, two days before, the King had washed the feet of a dozen poor men, kissed them in humility, then waited on them at table, assisted by the grandees of Spain; that on Good Friday he had set free some criminals. When the bishop's words rang through the church: "SeÑor, human laws condemn these men to death," Don Alfonso answered with moved voice: "I pardon them, and may God pardon me!" And somehow, Alfonso XIII is not jarring or theatric among such ancient usages of Spanish Christianity. Very modern with his automobile, his polo, his careless ease, this charming king is one with his people in a radical sympathy with ways that symbolize soul and heart emotions.

MÉrida has a bridge built by the Emperor Trajan. And it has ruins of a very stately aqueduct standing in wheat and poppy fields. This is built of stone and brick ranged in regular lines, and though only about a hundred feet high, is truly majestic, the entrancing touch being given by the hundreds of storks who have built nests on the top of the arches. Some of our little friends had accompanied us through the fields to the aqueduct, and when we took a final ramble through the town, many were the smiling greetings, "Buenas Tardes." MÉrida is too small to have visitors pass a day there without making friends among its courteous people.

We took an evening train on to CÁceres ten miles away, for its hotels sounded inviting; and a second happy day, a holy and tranquil Domingo de ResurrecciÓn, gave us another memory of Estremadura. CÁceres is an unspoiled mediÆval town climbing up a crag, just such a place as Albrecht DÜrer loved to paint. It is very individual. From the plaza with its acacia trees we mounted the steep grass-grown streets, past one baronial mansion after another, with old escutcheoned doorways blazoned with plumed helmet and shield. In one of them, the house of the Golfines, los Reyes CatÓlicos stayed on a visit. Nowhere in the world save in Spain could such a bit of the Middle Ages stand untouched and unnoticed, giving one that thrilling sensation of the traveler, the meeting unheralded with a very rare thing. The views caught between the granite mansions were lovely, for CÁceres lies in the most cultivated district of the county. Across the river rose another steep crag, turned into a Way of Calvary, with a picturesque church crowning it.

The town has some excellent hotels, and we were well-fed and slept well for five pesetas a day in one of them. Easter Sunday morning I awoke to the sound of bleating animals, and looking out, there at every doorway was tied a tiny white or black lamb, with a bunch of soft greens to nibble on. It is the custom for each family to have this symbol of peace and innocence on the Christian Passover. All day long the children played with them, and toward evening when the toy-like legs trembled with fatigue, the little boys carried the lambs across their shoulders as shepherds do. In the midst of patriarchal ways, we kept congratulating ourselves that we had escaped the noisy city to the south, whose Easter crowds were pouring in eager excitement to the first bull-fight of the year; it was the thought of the scene being enacted in Seville that made us a little unjust to the city where so happy a winter had been passed.

After Mass in a gray old church on the hill, a procession formed to carry the pasos of CÁceres. Each house was hung with the national colors, and on the balconies tall men of the hidalgo type and proud Spanish ladies (Madrid has not drained the provincial places of their leading families) knelt respectfully as the cortÈge passed. The statues were simple and poor, they were borne by pious peasants, and the silent crowd dropped to its knees on the pavement with a prayer. Not a tourist was there, save two who felt so in sympathy with old Spain that they disclaimed the title. To think that the gorgeous materialistic pasos of Seville had once begun in this way! Easter afternoon made as pastoral a memory as the hours in MÉrida. We walked out with the people to the hill of the Stations of the Cross. Life seemed a happy and normal thing when all, old and young, grandee and peasant, gave courteous greeting to those who passed; also it was a joy to hear pure Castilian after the somewhat slovenly Andalusian dialect.

However, the week in Estremadura was not to end on an idyllic note. We attempted an excursion beyond our strength and got well punished; the moral is, avoid all diligence journeys in Spain, they are only for those who have the nerves of oxen. The real reason why we had come into this little-visited province was because that old emperor born in Italica near Seville, Trajan, the bridge builder, had in the year A.D. 105 put up one of his bridges at AlcÁntara, a town now on the Portuguese frontier. Such a reason sounds slightly absurd, but many who read certain descriptions of the bridge must feel the same impulse to hunt it up. Richard Ford calls it one of the wonders of Spain, "the work of men when there were giants on the earth," worth going five hundred miles out of one's way to see as it rises in lonely grandeur two hundred feet above the Tagus River. So it no doubt appeared to the English traveler who stumbled on it eighty years ago, for it was then an unrestored, picturesque ruin, probably unused since one of its arches had been blown up by the English in the Peninsula War. At any rate, it was such glowing words that enticed us into the wilderness of Estremadura.

It is strange in Spain how little they know of districts that lie at no appreciable distance. At the inn at CÁceres we asked for information about AlcÁntara, and they could give none. The landlord himself came over to our table to look at us in astonishment. "But there is nothing to see there!" he assured us, too polite to ask the question that showed in his voice,—why were two ladies seeking a dismal spot such as AlcÁntara? I positively blushed as I answered there was a bridge. "A bridge!" He beat a hasty retreat to his wife in the office, where their merriment burst out. The next day he told us, that having inquired, he found we could take the train to Arroyo, an hour away, whence a diligence ran in a short time to AlcÁntara. We left the train at Arroyo, and on the other side of the station found the smallest diligence ever seen, so packed already with big countrymen that we could just force our unwilling selves in. When we were well started, we found to our consternation that we did not reach AlcÁntara before ten hours, the distance being about thirty miles. Una legua una hora runs the saying, and this part of the world is ruled by its wise old proverbs. Too late to turn back, we tried to make the best of it. When in each of the desolate villages long pauses were made, we got out to visit the market or church. In the first village the altar was dressed with coarsest but freshest linen. Artistic pewter, unconscious of its charm, held the water and wine, and a score of sturdy young peasants came in from selling in the plaza outside, knelt on the very steps of the altar, then having made their serious preparation, each bashfully approached a white-haired priest who sat there all market day in readiness to hear confessions. The dismallest corner of Spain has compensations.

The first ten miles of the journey reminded me of New England, with its stone walls and semi-cultivated land. The next ten miles were indeed the proverbial desolation of Estremadura; hardly an inhabitant was to be found on those bleak hills. We had stumbled on one of the three days of the yearly fair of Brozas, so we passed flocks of sheep, cattle with a royal spread of horns, and dozens of the nervous Andalusian horses. Even automobiles went by, and one Portuguese noble drove abreast three truly glorious cream-white mules. Seeing them, one could understand how a mule here can cost more than a horse. The fair was held in meadows outside the town, and it looked so animated that we should have liked to stop, but no time was given us. A mile outside Brozas we found we had to change from the tiny diligence, a primitive enough way of travel, and to continue the remaining miles to AlcÁntara in the mail cart, which consisted of a board laid across two wheels, and that one seat had to be shared with the driver. Fuming did no good, not another vehicle would take us. The cold wind howled across the treeless upland, our umbrellas could not break its biting force, and we were far too thinly clad from the warm Seville winter; I could feel the chill seize on me that was to lead to a month's bad illness. The final touch was when the young scamp who drove the mail cart found it impossible to forego his eternal cigarette, which, despite remonstrance, he smoked continuously. That evening (we had left CÁceres in the pitch dark at 5 A.M.) we were set down at an inn whose spacious rooms and staircase told of former prosperity, but so shrunken was its hospitality that it could offer nothing fit to eat; yet, curiously enough, the old landlady made the best coffee I have tasted in Europe. We kept her busy grinding and boiling it.

AlcÁntara is one of the most God-forsaken places in the world. Pigs walk the ill-kept streets, and the vast buildings of the monkish-knights who formerly guarded the frontier pass are crumbling into such universal ruin that the lanes are a mass of broken rubbish. They are not romantic ruins, but depressing and almost terrifying. When we climbed down the precipitous hill that led to the bridge, our shoes were cut to pieces by the flinty stones.

And the bridge, that lode-star of our pilgrimage, worth going five hundred miles to see! We thought with exasperation of the sixty we were wasting on it. No doubt Trajan did build it eighteen centuries ago, but they have chipped off the beautiful gray toning of ages, filled in with mortar the boulders after they had stood unaided till our time, and made a modern boulevard from Portugal. All solitude and sublimity are well eliminated from the scene. We sat on the benches of that banal little park and glared at the disappointing thing. The Tagus, Lope de Vega's hidalgo Tajo, was here a low stream, yellow with mud, flowing beneath bleak, unimposing hills. The bridge, in spite of its two hundred feet of height, did not appear as high as the aqueduct at MÉrida, an effect due probably to the arches standing on stilts. And it may sound blatant, but a memory of once passing under that superb thing the Brooklyn Bridge, at dawn, made this ancient monument suffer in comparison. The ludicrousness of our having traveled out of our way to see this sight struck us at last, and when we recalled the CÁceres landlord's astonishment, and that of Brazilian friends at Seville who had tried to persuade us our Estremadura plan was quite mad, we too burst into a hearty laugh, soon sobered at the prospect of the next day's weary return to Arroyo. We climbed back to the inn and dined on glasses of coffee.

The following morning, after some more glasses of our only modus vivendi, we explored the decayed town. In it is a pearl of architecture built by the Benedictine knights in 1506, the now ruined church of San Benito, with lofty slender piers, one of the most gracefully proportioned of semi-Renaissance things. Truly was the transition from Gothic to Renaissance a most harmonious moment in Spanish architecture. This interesting discovery could not do away with the fever and cold of the awful drive back to Arroyo. Such petty miseries are best passed over. More dead than alive, late the second night we reached again the comfortable hotel at CÁceres, where we were glad to pause a few days to pick up strength to push on.

Our plans had been to go to Trujillo, the birthplace of Pizarro. It was Estremadura that produced many of the rude, energetic conquistadores of Peru and Mexico, and the province never has recovered from that drain on its population. Just as the number of Jewish and Moorish exiles and the loss to their country's vitality has been exaggerated for partisan reasons, so there has been an underestimation of the more serious drain which Spain suffered when hoards of sturdy adventurers set out for the New World. The emigration was untimely; it came a century too early. The country had just been brought from political chaos to law and order by Isabella's great reign; but before the fruit of her planting could ripen (by peace and its natural sequence of settled trade) it was plucked from the bough. I have never been able to see that the expulsion of two hundred thousand Jews, the execution of thirty-five thousand heretics, and the exile of under a million Moriscoes, are sufficient causes to explain Spain's decay. Other countries of Europe, prosperous to-day, suffered from evils quite as bad. Why did Segovia, with an "old Christian" population independent of Moorish banishment, have thirty-five thousand weavers of cloth in the beginning of the seventeenth century and but a few hundred in the next generation? A score of questions similar to this can be asked to which the hackneyed explanation of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Moors gives no answer.

The causes of Spain's decay must be sought farther afield than in single acts of bad government which crippled the country for a time but were not irremediable. Through emigration, just when with the ending of the seven hundred years' crusade the nation should have turned to peaceful industries, she lost her agriculturists and her possible traders. And following swift on this, for emigration does not permanently weaken a strong race, Spain was bled of her best blood by Charles V's senseless European wars. She profited nothing by them, in fact they lowered her to the position of a mere province in the Empire. The treasure that poured in from the New World was poured out over Europe, it merely passed through Spain. American gold was a curse for her; it undermined the national character; the spirit of adventure, not of patient work, was fostered. The policy of the Emperor was continued by his descendants, and for two hundred years more Spain was at war. AnÆmia of the whole race followed: so true is it that the nation of fighters to-day runs the risk of being the nation of weaklings to-morrow.

Good government might have helped the ill, but Charles V pursued in that line a policy as fatal as his continental wars. He tried to force on these subjects whom he never understood an iron autocratic rule, ruthlessly crushing their tenacious spirit of independence. The death of Ximenez and the execution of the Comuneros leaders may be said to mark the ending of the sensible old rÉgime of self-centering her resources, exclusive and provincial perhaps, but it had been Spain's salvation. To meet the expenses of ceaseless wars in Europe, when the first influx of colonial gold ceased, the Peninsula was heavily taxed: a fourteen per cent tariff on all commodities will soon kill trade. For the same reason, to pay for wars, the currency was debased under Philip III; and the Crown held monopolies on spirits, tobacco, pottery, glass, cloth, and other necessities, a system always bad for commerce. The agrarian laws were neglected, too much land was in pasturage, which tends to lower the census, and too vast tracts were held by single nobles. The loss of population went on; in 1649 an epidemic carried off two hundred thousand people. The economic discouragement was aggravated by a host of minor reasons, such as the insecurity of property along the coast from African pirates; a too generous allowance of holidays; the prejudice against trading inherited from crusading ancestors; and there being no alien element—for this Moor or Jew would have served—to give the spur of competition which keeps a nation in health. Hapsburg and Bourbon misgovernment and wars blighted Spain for three centuries. But to-day new life is stirring in her. She is returning to Ximenez's wise rule of not scattering but of concentrating her powers. Happily those unhealthy growths, the colonies, are lopped off at last:

In the mountains, not far from Trujillo, lay Yuste, the solitary monastery to which retired that dominating figure of his age, Charles V, who was so decidedly interesting as a man, but so pernicious as a ruler. When he came to this distant inheritance he could scarcely speak the Castilian tongue; he did all in his power to stifle the indomitable character of the race,—and alas! he succeeded but too well in starting her downward course. Yet the magical something in the soul of Spain vanquished even him, as it had impermeated the conquering Roman, the Goth, the Israelite, and the Arab. With all Europe from which to choose, Charles came back voluntarily to the Peninsula, to its most untamed province, to spend the last days of his jaded life.

Reading at home accounts of Yuste, it had been easy to plan a trip there, and to Guadalupe, the famous monastery which also lay among these hills; but one diligence drive can quench all further foolhardy adventuring. With a feeling that illness was threatening, and it was wiser to get away from this "extrema ora," we again took the local line to Arroyo, and there gladly boarded the express that passed through from Lisbon to Madrid.