The pillars of Hercules : $b or, A narrative of travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848; vol. 1Urquhart, David
History
The pillars of Hercules : $b or, A narrative of travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848; vol. 1
Urquhart, David
Morocco -- Description and travel; Spain -- Description and travel
From the top of the cathedral I had observed some old ruins, and a
circular tower, that looked Roman. It was the Moorish castle, and
afforded me the opportunity of verifying a point which previously had
been to me doubtful. These ruins are so built on, and so covered up,
that it is difficult to trace them; but I made out Moorish walls, with
square stones joined with lime. It has been a small castle standing by
itself, opposite the water-gate of the town, and not part of a circuit
of walls. One round tower still stands, about forty feet high. There
is a portion of wall exposed, of between thirty and forty feet in
thickness, in stone and lime. The chamber in the principal tower is,
like all those in Moorish towers, neatly arched and ornamented. The
staircase is in the substance of the wall, not in the centre of the
tower.
At Porta St. Maria, opposite Cadiz, I found a similar Moorish ruin.
This is the point of embarkation of Xeres, or the Port of Sherry. It
is the place for tasting wines,--the Pacharete, Montillado, and most
noble Mansanilla. The cellars are worth seeing--if spacious and lofty
edifices can be so called.
The people of Cadiz neither put their bodies in graves nor their wines
in cellars: the dead are built up in walls, resembling bins of a
wine-cellar; their wines are deposited in structures like cathedrals.
The niches are like the dwellings of the living, some for ever and
a day, others for a term of years; after which the fragments of the
former tenant are ejected, and the place swept clean for another.
I observed, on a placard, the two following signs of progress and
civilization, in titles of new works: “The defender of the fair sex,”
and “The Ass, a beastly periodical.” The words were, “Il Burro,
periodico bestial.”
You may see a long row of boys, very small at one end and full grown at
the other, dressed out in the sprucest and gayest uniforms--blue coat,
single breasted, with standing collar and large flaps; gold buttons
and lace; white trousers most mathematically cut, and strapped down on
very camp-like boots; and, on inquiring what military institution this
belongs to, you are answered, “It is a boarding-school!”
They have, in connection with schools, a practice which might suit
“Modern Athens”--I mean the hyperborean one. A person from each school
goes the round of the town, calling for the boys in the morning,
and dropping them in the evening; just as sheep, goats, or cows are
collected by a common herd.
The “Hospicio” is at once a Poor-house, a house of Industry, a School,
a Foundling Hospital, a Hospital, and a Mad-house;--that is, it
supplies the places of all these Institutions. It is imposing in its
form, embellished in its interior, and as unlike, in all its attributes
and effects, as anything can be, to the edifices consecrated to the
remedying of human misery, by our own charity and wisdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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