Southern Spain
AlbertFrederick Calvert
9781465509321
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
CADIZ CADIZ was the prettiest of all the towns of Spain, thought Byron. I would rather say that she was the most beautiful. She rises out of the sea—the boundless salt ocean that stretches from pole to pole—and the crests of the waves which lick her feet are not whiter than her walls. And these by day are bathed in liquid gold, for the sun seems to linger here ere he says good-night to Europe. By night the city gleams like washed silver, and her sheen is more magical than that of the dark yet phosphorescent water. Of sun and sea, light and air, is Cadiz compounded. She is the Gateway of the West, not sultry and southern, but salt and windy and dazzling white. It is thus she appears to you, especially when you come to her over the sea—that sea which hereabouts has so often been splashed with British blood. How often the pale yellow cliffs of Spain to the southward, and those of the lovely shore of Algarve to the north, have reverberated with the booming of the cannon; how often the strand has been littered with dead men, whose gaping wounds the kindly ocean had washed clean! Browning's lines recur to the memory: "Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away, Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay." For you can see the lighthouse on Cape Trafalgar, and the Bay of Cadiz itself has been the scene of some of England's most glorious and desperate feats of arms. There is little stirring now in the wide harbour, where the ships ride lazily at anchor, and their crews crowd to the bulwarks and exchange pleasantries with your boatman as he pulls you towards the quay. And so you step on shore, and enter the fair city. It looks so fresh and fragrant that you would not think it ancient. But Cadiz is the first-born city of Spain, probably the first foothold of civilization on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. It marks a new and tremendously important step forward in the world's progress. After Heaven knows how many attempts and false starts, the Phœnicians dared what no people of the ancient world had dared before. The Pillars of Hercules were regarded as the western boundary of the world: beyond was nothingness. And one day, with the east wind filling his sails and fear in the hearts of his crew, some forgotten Columbus of Sidon or of Tyre passed through the strait, and turning northward, beached his little galley on the peninsula where we stand. Civilization—arts and letters, commerce and social life, and all that makes life dear to modern men—had burst the narrow limits of the Middle Sea, and first hoisted its flag o'er Cadiz. The thought is not uninspiring. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the first keel that ever ploughed the Atlantic grazed this strand. It is likely enough that the fleets of lost Atlantis, if that mystical isle possessed a ship, resorted hither, for the copper and precious metals of Tarshish. What voyages have begun from this port, from the little Phœnician craft setting forth in quest of the Tin Islands of the far north, to brave Cervera leading out his squadron to its preordained doom! "It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down, It may be we shall touch the happy isles." And careless of fate, all these dauntless sailors have adventured forth into the deep
