The Lands of the Saracen - Bayard Taylor
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At last, we rolled out of Catania. There were in the diligence, besides
myself, two men and a woman, Sicilians of the secondary class. The road
followed the shore, over rugged tracts of lava, the different epochs of
which could be distinctly traced in the character of the vegetation. The
last great flow (of 1679) stood piled in long ridges of terrible
sterility, barely allowing the aloe and cactus to take root in the hollows
between. The older deposits were sufficiently decomposed to nourish the
olive and vine; but even here, the orchards were studded with pyramids of
the harder fragments, which are laboriously collected by the husbandmen.
In the few favored spots which have been untouched for so many ages that a
tolerable depth of soil has accumulated, the vegetation has all the
richness and brilliancy of tropical lands. The palm, orange, and
pomegranate thrive luxuriantly, and the vines almost break under their
heavy clusters. The villages are frequent and well built, and the hills
are studded, far and near, with the villas of rich proprietors, mostly
buildings of one story, with verandahs extending their whole length.
Looking up towards Etna, whose base the road encircles, the views are
gloriously rich and beautiful. On the other hand is the blue Mediterranean
and the irregular outline of the shore, here and there sending forth
promontories of lava, cooled by the waves into the most fantastic forms.
We had sot proceeded far before a new sign called my attention to the
mountain. Not only was there a perceptible jar or vibration in the earth,
but a dull, groaning sound, like the muttering of distant thunder, began
to be heard. The smoke increased in volume, and, as we advanced further to
the eastward, and much nearer to the great cone, I perceived that it
consisted of two jets, issuing from different mouths. A broad stream of
very dense white smoke still flowed over the lip of the topmost crater and
down the eastern side. As its breadth did not vary, and the edges were
distinctly defined, it was no doubt the sulphureous vapor rising from a
river of molten lava. Perhaps a thousand yards below, a much stronger
column of mingled black and white smoke gushed up, in regular beats or
pants, from a depression in the mountain side, between two small, extinct
cones. All this part of Etna was scarred with deep chasms, and in the
bottoms of those nearest the opening, I could see the red gleam of fire.
The air was perfectly still, and as yet there was no cloud in the sky.
When we stopped to change horses at the town of Aci Reale, I first felt
the violence of the tremor and the awful sternness of the sound. The smoke
by this time seemed to be gathering on the side towards Catania, and hung
in a dark mass about half-way down the mountain. Groups of the villagers
were gathered in the streets which looked upwards to Etna, and discussing
the chances of an eruption. "Ah," said an old peasant, "the Mountain knows
how to make himself respected. When he talks, everybody listens." The
sound was the most awful that ever met my ears. It was a hard, painful
moan, now and then fluttering like a suppressed sob, and had, at the same
time, an expression of threatening and of agony. It did not come from Etna
alone. It had no fixed location; it pervaded all space. It was in the air,
in the depths of the sea, in the earth under my feet--everywhere, in fact;
and as it continued to increase in violence, I experienced a sensation of
positive pain. The people looked anxious and alarmed, although they said
it was a good thing for all Sicily; that last year they had been in
constant fear from earthquakes, and that an eruption invariably left the
island quiet for several years. It is true that, during the past year,
parts of Sicily and Calabria have been visited with severe shocks,
occasioning much damage to property. A merchant of this city informed me
yesterday that his whole family had slept for two months in the vaults of
his warehouse, fearing that their residence might be shaken down in the
night.
As we rode along from Aci Reale to Taormina, all the rattling of the
diligence over the rough road could not drown the awful noise. There was a
strong smell of sulphur in the air, and the thick pants of smoke from the
lower crater continued to increase in strength. The sun was fierce and
hot, and the edges of the sulphureous clouds shone with a dazzling
whiteness. A mounted soldier overtook us, and rode beside the diligence,
talking with the postillion. He had been up to the mountain, and was
taking his report to the Governor of the district. The heat of the day and
the continued tremor of the air lulled me into a sort of doze, when I was
suddenly aroused by a cry from the soldier and the stopping of the
diligence. At the same time, there was a terrific peal of sound, followed
by a jar which must have shaken the whole island. We looked up to Etna,
which was fortunately in full view before us. An immense mass of
snow-white smoke had burst up from the crater and was rising
perpendicularly into the air, its rounded volumes rapidly whirling one
over the other, yet urged with such impetus that they only rolled outwards
after they had ascended to an immense height. It might have been one
minute or five--for I was so entranced by this wonderful spectacle that I
lost the sense of time--but it seemed instantaneous (so rapid and violent
were the effects of the explosion), when there stood in the air, based on
the summit of the mountain, a mass of smoke four or five miles high, and
shaped precisely like the Italian pine tree.
Words cannot paint the grandeur of this mighty tree. Its trunk of columned
smoke, one side of which was silvered by the sun, while the other, in
shadow, was lurid with red flame, rose for more than a mile before it sent
out its cloudy boughs. Then parting into a thousand streams, each of
which again threw out its branching tufts of smoke, rolling and waving in
the air, it stood in intense relief against the dark blue of the sky. Its
rounded masses of foliage were dazzlingly white on one side, while, in the
shadowy depths of the branches, there was a constant play of brown,
yellow, and crimson tints, revealing the central shaft of fire. It was
like the tree celebrated in the Scandinavian sagas, as seen by the mother
of Harold Hardrada--that tree, whose roots pierced through the earth,
whose trunk was of the color of blood, and whose branches filled the
uttermost corners of the heavens.
This outburst seemed to have relieved the mountain, for the tremors were
now less violent, though the terrible noise still droned in the air, and
earth, and sea. And now, from the base of the tree, three white streams
slowly crept into as many separate chasms, against the walls of which
played the flickering glow of the burning lava. The column of smoke and
flame was still hurled upwards, and the tree, after standing about ten
minutes--a new and awful revelation of the active forces of
Nature--gradually rose and spread, lost its form, and, slowly moved by a
light wind (the first that disturbed the dead calm of the day), bent over
to the eastward. We resumed our course. The vast belt of smoke at last
arched over the strait, here about twenty miles wide, and sank towards the
distant Calabrian shore. As we drove under it, for some miles of our way,
the sun was totally obscured, and the sky presented the singular spectacle
of two hemispheres of clear blue, with a broad belt of darkness drawn
between them. There was a hot, sulphureous vapor in the air, and showers
of white ashes fell, from time to time. We were distant about twelve
miles, in a straight line, from the crater; but the air was so clear,
even under the shadow of the smoke, that I could distinctly trace the
downward movement of the rivers of lava.
This was the eruption, at last, to which all the phenomena of the morning
had been only preparatory. For the first time in ten years the depths of
Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at Malta, and
the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here, to his very base,
to witness a scene, the impression of which I shall never lose, to my
dying day. Although the eruption may continue and the mountain pour forth
fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot but think that the first
upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned forces, will not be equalled
in grandeur by any later spectacle.
After passing Taormina, our road led us under the hills of the coast, and
although I occasionally caught glimpses of Etna, and saw the reflection of
fires from the lava which was filling up his savage ravines, the smoke at
last encircled his waist, and he was then shut out of sight by the
intervening mountains. We lost a bolt in a deep valley opening on the sea,
and during our stoppage I could still hear the groans of the Mountain,
though farther off and less painful to the ear. As evening came on, the
beautiful hills of Calabria, with white towns and villages on their sides,
gleamed in the purple light of the setting sun. We drove around headland
after headland, till the strait opened, and we looked over the harbor of
Messina to Capo Faro, and the distant islands of the Tyrrhene Sea.
* * * * *
I leave this afternoon for Naples and Leghorn. I have lost already so much
time between Constantinople and this place, that I cannot give up ten
days more to Etna. Besides, I am so thoroughly satisfied with what I have
seen, that I fear no second view of the eruption could equal it. Etna
cannot be seen from here, nor from a nearer point than a mountain six or
eight miles distant. I tried last evening to get a horse and ride out to
it, in order to see the appearance of the eruption by night; but every
horse, mule and donkey in the place was engaged, except a miserable lame
mule, for which five dollars was demanded. However, the night happened to
be cloudy so that I could have seen nothing.
My passport is finally _en regle_. It has cost the labors of myself and an
able-bodied valet-de-place since yesterday morning, and the expenditure of
five dollars and a half, to accomplish this great work. I have just been
righteously abusing the Neapolitan Government to a native merchant whom,
from his name, I took to be a Frenchman, but as I am off in an hour or
two, hope to escape arrest. Perdition to all Tyranny!
Chapter XXXII.
Gibraltar.
Unwritten Links of Travel--Departure from Southampton--The Bay of
Biscay--Cintra--Trafalgar--Gibraltar at Midnight--Landing--Search for a
Palm-Tree--A Brilliant Morning--The Convexity of the
Earth--Sun-Worship--The Rock.
------"to the north-west, Cape St. Vincent died away,
Sunset ran, a burning blood-red, blushing into Cadiz Bay.
In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray."
Browning.
Gibraltar, _Saturday, November_ 6, 1852.
I leave unrecorded the links of travel which connected Messina and
Gibraltar. They were over the well-trodden fields of Europe, where little
ground is left that is not familiar. In leaving Sicily I lost the
Saracenic trail, which I had been following through the East, and first
find it again here, on the rock of Calpe, whose name, _Djebel el-Tarik_
(the Mountain of Tarik), still speaks of the fiery race whose rule
extended from the unknown ocean of the West to "Ganges and Hydaspes,
Indian streams." In Malta and Sicily, I saw their decaying watch-towers,
and recognized their sign-manual in the deep, guttural, masculine words
and expressions which they have left behind them. I now design following
their footsteps through the beautiful _Belad-el-Andaluz_, which, to the
eye of the Melek Abd-er-rahman, was only less lovely than the plains of
Damascus.
While in Constantinople, I received letters which opened to me wider and
richer fields of travel than I had already traversed. I saw a possibility
of exploring the far Indian realms, the shores of farthest Cathay and the
famed Zipango of Marco Polo. Before entering on this new sphere of
experiences, however, it was necessary for me to visit Italy, Germany, and
England. I sailed from Messina to Leghorn, and travelled thence, by way of
Florence, Venice, and the Tyrol, to Munich. After three happy weeks at
Gotha, and among the valleys of she Thueringian Forest, I went to London,
where business and the preparation for my new journeys detained me two or
three weeks longer. Although the comforts of European civilization were
pleasant, as a change, after the wild life of the Orient, the autumnal
rains of England soon made me homesick for the sunshine I had left. The
weather was cold, dark, and dreary, and the oppressive, sticky atmosphere
of the bituminous metropolis weighed upon me like a nightmare. Heartily
tired of looking at a sun that could show nothing brighter than a red
copper disk, and of breathing an air that peppered my face with particles
of soot, I left on the 28th of October. It was one of the dismalest days
of autumn; the meadows of Berkshire were flooded with broad, muddy
streams, and the woods on the hills of Hampshire looked brown and sodden,
as if slowly rotting away. I reached Southampton at dusk, but there the
sky was neither warmer nor clearer, so I spent the evening over a coal
fire, all impatience for the bright beloved South, towards which my face
was turned once more.
The _Madras_ left on the next day, at 2 P.M., in the midst of a cheerless
rain, which half blotted out the pleasant shores of Southampton Water, and
the Isle of Wight. The _Madras_ was a singularly appropriate vessel for
one bound on such a journey as mine. The surgeon was Dr. Mungo Park, and
one of my room-mates was Mr. R. Crusoe. It was a Friday, which boded no
good for the voyage; but then my journey commenced with my leaving London
the day previous, and Thursday is a lucky day among the Arabs. I caught a
watery view of the gray cliffs of the Needles, when dinner was announced,
but many were those (and I among them) who commenced that meal, and did
not stay to finish it.
Is there any piece of water more unreasonably, distressingly, disgustingly
rough and perverse than the British Channel? Yes: there is one, and but
one--the Bay of Biscay. And as the latter succeeds the former, without a
pause between, and the head-winds never ceased, and the rain continually
poured, I leave you to draw the climax of my misery. Four days and four
nights in a berth, lying on your back, now dozing dull hour after hour,
now making faint endeavors to eat, or reading the feeblest novel ever
written, because the mind cannot digest stronger aliment--can there be a
greater contrast to the wide-awake life, the fiery inspiration, of the
Orient? My blood became so sluggish and my mind so cloudy and befogged,
that I despaired of ever thinking clearly or feeling vividly again. "The
winds are rude" in Biscay, Byron says. They are, indeed: very rude. They
must have been raised in some most disorderly quarter of the globe. They
pitched the waves right over our bulwarks, and now and then dashed a
bucketful of water down the cabin skylight, swamping the ladies' cabin,
and setting scores of bandboxes afloat. Not that there was the least
actual danger; but Mrs. ---- would not be persuaded that we were not on
the brink of destruction, and wrote to friends at home a voluminous
account of her feelings. There was an Irishman on board, bound to Italy,
with his sister. It was his first tour, and when asked why he did not go
direct, through France, he replied, with brotherly concern, that he was
anxious his sister should see the Bay of Biscay.
This youth's perceptions were of such an emerald hue, that a lot of wicked
Englishmen had their own fun out of him. The other day, he was trying to
shave, to the great danger of slicing off his nose, as the vessel was
rolling fearfully. "Why don't you have the ship headed to the wind?" said
one of the Englishmen, who heard his complaints; "she will then lie
steady, and you can shave beautifully." Thereupon the Irishman sent one of
the stewards upon deck with a polite message to the captain, begging him
to put the vessel about for five minutes.
Towards noon of the fifth day, we saw the dark, rugged mountains that
guard the north-western corner of the Spanish Peninsula. We passed the Bay
of Corunna, and rounding the bold headland of Finisterre, left the
Biscayan billows behind us. But the sea was still rough and the sky
clouded, although the next morning the mildness of the air showed the
change in our latitude. About noon that day, we made the Burlings, a
cluster of rocks forty miles north of Lisbon, and just before sunset, a
transient lifting of the clouds revealed the Rock of Cintra, at the mouth
of the Tagus. The tall, perpendicular cliffs, and the mountain slopes
behind, covered with gardens, orchards, and scattered villas and hamlets,
made a grand though dim picture, which was soon hidden from our view.
On the 4th, we were nearly all day crossing the mouth of the Bay of
Cadiz, and only at sunset saw Cape Trafalgar afar off, glimmering through
the reddish haze. I remained on deck, as there were patches of starlight
in the sky. After passing the light-house at Tarifa, the Spanish shore
continued to be visible. In another hour, there was a dim, cloudy outline
high above the horizon, on our right. This was the Lesser Atlas, in
Morocco. And now, right ahead, distinctly visible, though fifteen miles
distant, lay a colossal lion, with his head on his outstretched paws,
looking towards Africa. If I had been brought to the spot blindfolded, I
should have known what it was. The resemblance is certainly very striking,
and the light-house on Europa Point seemed to be a lamp held in his paws.
The lights of the city and fortifications rose one by one, glittering
along the base, and at midnight we dropped anchor before them on the
western side.
I landed yesterday morning. The mists, which had followed me from England,
had collected behind the Rock, and the sun, still hidden by its huge bulk,
shone upwards through them, making a luminous background, against which
the lofty walls and jagged ramparts of this tremendous natural
fortification were clearly defined. I announced my name, and the length of
time I designed remaining, at a little office on the quay, and was then
allowed to pass into the city. A number of familiar white turbans met me
on entering, and I could not resist the temptation of cordially saluting
the owners in their own language. The town is long and narrow, lying
steeply against the Rock. The houses are white, yellow and pink, as in
Spanish towns, but the streets are clean and well paved. There is a
square, about the size of an ordinary building-lot, where a sort of
market of dry goods and small articles is held The "Club-House Hotel"
occupies one side of it; and, as I look out of my window upon it, I see
the topmost cliffs of the Rock above me, threatening to topple down from a
height of 1,500 feet.
My first walk in Gibraltar was in search of a palm-tree. After threading
the whole length of the town, I found two small ones in a garden, in the
bottom of the old moat. The sun was shining, and his rays seemed to fall
with double warmth on their feathery crests. Three brown Spaniards,
bare-armed, were drawing water with a pole and bucket, and filling the
little channels which conveyed it to the distant vegetables. The sea
glittered blue below; an Indian fig-tree shaded me; but, on the rock
behind, an aloe lifted its blossoming stem, some twenty feet high, into
the sunshine. To describe what a weight was lifted from my heart would
seem foolish to those who do not know on what little things the whole tone
of our spirits sometimes depends.
But if an even balance was restored yesterday, the opposite scale kicked
the beam this morning. Not a speck of vapor blurred the spotless crystal
of the sky, as I walked along the hanging paths of the Alameda. The sea
was dazzling ultra-marine, with a purple lustre; every crag and notch of
the mountains across the bay, every shade of brown or gray, or the green
of grassy patches, was drawn and tinted with a pencil so exquisitely
delicate as almost to destroy the perspective. The white houses of
Algeciras, five miles off, appeared close at hand: a little toy-town,
backed by miniature hills. Apes' Hill, the ancient Abyla, in Africa,
advanced to meet Calpe, its opposing pillar, and Atlas swept away to the
east ward, its blue becoming paler and paler, till the powers of vision
finally failed. From the top of the southern point of the Rock, I saw the
mountain-shore of Spain, as far as Malaga, and the snowy top of one of the
Sierra Nevada. Looking eastward to the horizon line of the Mediterranean,
my sight extended so far, in the wonderful clearness of the air, that the
convexity of the earth's surface was plainly to be seen. The sea, instead
of being a plane, was slightly convex, and the sky, instead of resting
upon it at the horizon, curved down beyond it, as the upper side of a horn
curves over the lower, when one looks into the mouth. There is none of the
many aspects of Nature more grand than this, which is so rarely seen, that
I believe the only person who has ever described it is Humboldt, who saw
it, looking from the Silla de Caraccas over the Caribbean Sea. It gives
you the impression of standing on the edge of the earth, and looking off
into space. From the mast-head, the ocean appears either flat or slightly
concave, and aeronauts declare that this apparent concavity becomes more
marked, the higher they ascend. It is only at those rare periods when the
air is so miraculously clear as to produce the effect of _no
air_--rendering impossible the slightest optical illusion--that our eyes
can see things as they really are. So pure was the atmosphere to-day,
that, at meridian, the moon, although a thin sickle, three days distant
from the sun, shone perfectly white and clear.
As I loitered in the Alameda, between thick hedges of ever-blooming
geraniums, clumps of heliotrope three feet high, and luxuriant masses of
ivy, around whose warm flowers the bees clustered and hummed, I could only
think of the voyage as a hideous dream. The fog and gloom had been in my
own eyes and in my own brain, and now the blessed sun, shining full in my
face, awoke me. I am a worshipper of the Sun. I took off my hat to him, as
I stood there, in a wilderness of white, crimson, and purple flowers, and
let him blaze away in my face for a quarter of an hour. And as I walked
home with my back to him, I often turned my face from side to side that I
might feel his touch on my cheek. How a man can live, who is sentenced to
a year's imprisonment, is more than I can understand.
But all this (you will say) gives you no picture of Gibraltar. The Rock is
so familiar to all the world, in prints and descriptions, that I find
nothing new to say of it, except that it is by no means so barren a rock
as the island of Malta, being clothed, in many places, with beautiful
groves and the greenest turf; besides, I have not yet seen the
rock-galleries, having taken passage for Cadiz this afternoon. When I
return--as I hope to do in twenty days, after visiting Seville and
Granada--I shall procure permission to view all the fortifications, and
likewise to ascend to the summit.
Chapter XXXIII.
Cadiz And Seville.
Voyage to Cadiz--Landing--The City--Its Streets--The Women of
Cadiz--Embarkation for Seville--Scenery of the Guadalquivir--Custom
House Examination--The Guide--The Streets of Seville--The Giralda--The
Cathedral of Seville--The Alcazar-Moorish Architecture--Pilate's
House--Morning View from the Giralda--Old Wine--Murillos--My Last
Evening in Seville.
"The walls of Cadiz front the shore,
And shimmer o'er the sea."
R. H. Stoddard.
"Beautiful Seville!
Of which I've dreamed, until I saw its towers
In every cloud that hid the setting sun."
George H. Boker.
Seville, _November_ 10, 1852.
I left Gibraltar on the evening of the 6th, in the steamer Iberia. The
passage to Cadiz was made in nine hours, and we came to anchor in the
harbor before day-break. It was a cheerful picture that the rising sun
presented to us. The long white front of the city, facing the East, glowed
with a bright rosy lustre, on a ground of the clearest blue. The tongue of
land on which Cadiz stands is low, but the houses are lifted by the heavy
sea-wall which encompasses them. The main-land consists of a range of low
but graceful hills, while in the south-east the mountains of Ronda rise at
some distance. I went immediately on shore, where my carpet-bag was seized
upon by a boy, with the rich brown complexion of one Murillo's beggars,
who trudged off with it to the gate. After some little detention there, I
was conducted to a long, deserted, barn-like building, where I waited half
an hour before the proper officer came. When the latter had taken his
private toll of my contraband cigars, the brown imp conducted me to
Blanco's English Hotel, a neat and comfortable house on the Alameda.