The Magic of SpainBell, Aubrey F. G. (Aubrey Fitz Gerald)
History
The Magic of Spain
Bell, Aubrey F. G. (Aubrey Fitz Gerald)
Spain -- Description and travel; Spanish literature -- History and criticism
faded-green leaves of sugar-cane, with their scent of hay. Sometimes the
road is lined with poplars, and ox-carts go laden with grass and trefoil
and leaves from the sugar-canes. Elsewhere the road winds inland through
grey rocky hills and woods of strong-scented pines, with glimpses of
blue sea; or passes high above cliffs, the sea swelling dull green
immediately below or foaming round dark rocks. From Motril or some other
point one may go up to Granada, the Sierra Nevada appearing and altering
continually; and thoughts of the Alhambra and other names of magic
shorten the road, though it has many a beautiful view and village, such
as Pino to the left on the mountain side, with its white houses and deep
red-brown roofs. But of the many fair districts of Andalucía perhaps the
most delightful in scenery is that lying between the Guadalquivir and La
Mancha, a region of brushwood and mountain. The road from Marmolejo runs
up through hills covered with shrubs of every shade of green, from
grey-blue to shrill yellow, many of them scented, lentiscus, escalonia,
_adelfa_, cistus, rosemary, and a hundred more; even in February the
mid-day sun scents the whole air with them. Near the village of
Cardeña, some thirty miles from Marmolejo, a ruin is supposed to be that
of the inn where many scenes of “Don Quixote” occurred, but only a few
stones remain. Leaving the village in early morning in frost and ice in
order to go down to Montoro on the Guadalquivir, the road at first is
wild, bordered by oak-trees, with flocks of sheep, a few patches of
corn, many magpies, the plaining of birds and the occasional whirr of a
partridge. Yet even here in a few hollows are vines and almond-trees,
and spaces of scented plants and wild yellow jonquils, with white or
brown or yellow butterflies, a humming of bees and rustling of lizards.
The road now cuts through hills of scented shrubs, so various and
ordered with such careful harmony as could be rivalled by no garden
planted by man. On either side are range and range of hills
shrub-covered, dull green, brown and blue, brown where the shrubs have
been cut for firing. To the right is a wide deep gorge with tiny river
far below, and glimpses of blue distances and valleys of more hills. To
the left more hills, and across a blue distance of hill valleys the
Sierra de Jaen with its beautiful pyramid-shaped peak of deepest snow,
and far to the right of it the two more pointed peaks of Granada’s
Sierra Nevada, marvellously clear in distance. Between them and the
Sierra de Jaen runs the snow-sprinkled range above the village of Los
Villares de Jaen. In the transparent might of even a February noon the
more distant and the higher of the near hills are purple, and the great
snow-mountains below the snow-line grow faint and grey. Montoro is a
beautiful quaint town rising above the Guadalquivir in seven or eight
storeys of houses of red stone and whitewash. The tall church-tower,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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