THE NEW-ENGLAND MAGAZINE. NOVEMBER, 1835. ORIGINAL PAPERS. your A PEEP AT CADIZ. A VOYAGER'S welcome to thee, storied Spain- Pilgrimage of Nemo. READER, dear! Have you ever been in Europe? or anywhere else, as far off, provided it be on an opposite continent? Of course you have. Well then, be you lymphatic or vivacious, curious or blind, you must remember the prolonged gaze you took, and the corresponding feeling of interest, (overcoming, perhaps, even your appetite for dinner) when the hazy outline of a foreign strand' first met your eye. The land might have wheeled up from the horizon, like a railroad car, with all the abruptness of thirteen knots an hour, or coyly curtsied and sidled, and baffled advances for a series of days; might have scowled at you, in the shape of a tall Welch promontory, in a green turf jacket and chalk unmentionables, or peered upward, in all the graceful recumbence of the Biscayan coast of France; the simple, strong impression of novelty is what I would recall; the prettiest conceivable climax to the relish of a pleasant voyage, and the most grateful interruption to a dull one. There is a peculiar halo about a sunny shore, seen under such circumstances; though be the weather as sullen and the landfall as gloomy as they may, one can patch up, haply, some kind of a wreath of dear old associations, as a countercheck. But what a flood of excitement, as the cloudy chaos brightens into distinct landscape, and assumes its own ten thousand cherished tints and outlines to shame the monotony of 'the unchanging sea.' You feel somewhat like a 'ready-made Adam, superintending the process of a second creation. Each hill and dale, each deep'ning glen and wood,' each blue summit and sombre cliff and clustering village and restless wood, throws out a new fibre of attraction, till you find yourself immeshed beyond the extricating powers of anything but an anchovy sandwich or a laughing girl. Then the getting ashore. Travelers have spoken of the bewildering contrast of scenes and manners, which arrests the American visitant to England. Methinks the transition in this case, though somewhat startling, no doubt, is anything but violent, and too much like the Christmas call of a country child upon an aristocratic grandpapa in town, to allow the feeling of wonder adequate scope. England is, in fact, a kind of trusty and familiar gentleman usher-wearing Jonathan's dress and speaking his language, and most admirably calculated to break the abruptness of his fall among strangers, and introduce him gently and decently. But to ensure a due expansion of eye and a proper relaxation of the lower jaw, let me recommend the continent, by all means, to the incipient voyager. Some old greybeard of a city, almost coeval with the deluge, will do for debarkation; where language, costume, architecture, and immemorial custom, are all at utter variance with the notions' of our land of shingle palaces and half-rescued cornfields. Let me see. ( Fair Cadiz rises on the dark blue sea,' at a most convenient crisis for illustration: the strong-hold of Geryon; the arena of Hercules; the olden site of a temple of Juno-and, for aught I know, of the itinerary pulpit of St. Paul. Darling reader, pray revisit Cadiz with me. It may be done, to all intents and purposes, before you have finished smoking that cigar (i. e. if you improve your time, always supposing that your brain has been trained to such tarry-at-home excursions.) There- give us your hand; one long leap - here we are, on the deck of a staunch ship, with Cape St. Vincent just abaft the beam, standing in cautiously for The city of fruits and kind ladies, Most white and voluptuous Cadiz.' 'Tis nightstarlight-and no moon; wind steady; time, about six bells in the second watch. In the morning, you and I will land; the crew - poor fellows-must linger out a fortnight's quarantine. Keep a bright lookout forward there! Aye, aye, sir. 'Another man at the larboard cat-head!' Ah, here we have it, at last : 'Land ho!' Come forward now; don't stumble over that spare anchor-stock and land in the cook's dishwater; let's hear what the watch have to say-hist! Them's chalk hills, by Guy!' 'Avast-it's a white sand-beach!' • Noa 'tis n't'ts walls and buildins.' And walls and turrets they are, sure enough, whose timid sheen, through the darkness, gives the eye its first intimation that we are nearing the prettiest town that ever was clapped on the brow of ocean, by way of a mural crown. We must stand off and on' till daybreak, and the rosy dawn shall give us a true, legitimate, oriental welcome. Earliest morning-beautiful here, is it not? Wake up, most lethargic reader! One would think the guns might have sufficed to rouse you. I imagine it must be a special holiday; for Cantera and St. Banez are pealing as if the Corsican were again intruding on the volcanic apathy' of the Andaluz. How do you like the light-house? I'm inclined to thing it very tasty. And here are the guarda costas, hurrying in, three abreast, for a tumbler of aquadente, a lunch, and a morning nap. Do look at the harlequin array of shipping! Danes, Levantines, Dutch, Spanish, English, French, with here and there a Yankee the three latter alas! - the only national representatives tidily rigged and manned. Our pilot has been on board three quarters of an hour; but of course you recognized his egregious lingua Franca,' and now, unless you choose to tarry for the health boat, we'll to the landing at once. * What an old-world air everything wears about this venerable pier! and what a sublime illustration of the dolce far niente, is that whiskered porter, with his little, round, romantic hat, his laconic breeches, and smart crimson sash, struggling with the draggletail intrusion of an ample white cotton shirt; how voluptuously he leans on that post, inhaling the questionable fragrance of a dingy brown paper cigar! What! not yet up the steps? Fie upon you! - Come, toil on, and you shall have a ripe pomegranate for your pains directly; we are within the walls—and fatigue is out of the question, as we have but just reached the verge of the habitable earth, if one may credit renowned geographers of old, into whose hearts it never entered (no wonder!) to conceive a down-easter.' 'Much food for marvel he enjoys, I ween, on each side of us, as we stroll beneath the walls, towards the seaboard entrance of the town; and much irritation of nerves, too, may be anticipated from the incessant clatter of ill-tuned voices, where all seem to possess the gift of tongues, and none, alas! that of controling them. The custom-house officers, who attend at the gate, are anything but mutes, and incline to be very Cerberine, unless baited with a 'consideration.' But suppose us free of all detention, loungingly threading the narrow portal, under the grateful unction of gracias à ustedes, senores,' and just in full view of the Plaza del Mar. We shall need much traveling, to find a livelier panorama; mart, lazzaretto and exchange - the rallying-point of all that is novel, bustling, or grotesque; hedged 6 in by tall Venetian-looking houses, and surrounded by the outlets The merry matins, which, from tower to tower, Oh I need not call your attention to the ghastly group of mendicants in this square, as you seem to be their nucleus already. I shall make no remarks, either on the feasibility of relieving them, for fear of involving myself with the political economists; but I shall call your attention for a moment, to that pretty Gaditana, who glides so gracefully up the street, which, as it leads to a chocolate-house, we had better follow, and enable ourselves to study the species- a kind of modern Proserpines, ever in black. The basquina seems to me, in its effects, almost a renewal of the ancient cestus; it certainly lends a wonderful symmetry to the bust, and is exquisitely fitted to entrap the unwary. Have you seen the manual exercise of the fan, as practised by senoras of the present day? if not, you shall soon have an opportunity. 6 A Spanish café: a cool, spacious, inviting apartment, a few feet above the street level, has the honor to receive us; a marble pavement is under foot, and a marble colonnade, of two stories, surrounds the area; lemons and citrons and almond and jonquil, in pots and boxes, are, or should be, at hand the air redolent of their perfume; before us is a marble table, whereon, limpid as nectar, is placed a sturdy pitcher of aqua fresca.' Start not, zealous and unlearned votary of temperance! I mean fresh water. Were you a Gaditan, you would know how to prize it, as the drinkable water in Cadiz is brought from a distance, and has been sold here-aye, and for a pretty price-during a 'solano,' that most unwelcome wind, which occasionally strays hither from Barbary, bearing despatches from the deserts beyond. On the counter (of a neat marble, too) is chocolate, in classic cups; and O, such chocolate! 't is as if the most elaborate cake of that wholesome preparation were reduced, by chymic fusion, to a liquid so intensely hot and so substantial! Then the delicate maceration therein of finely crystallized sugars! but I dare not dwell upon it, as I seldom indulge in the pathetic; besides, (between ourselves) it was once the means of excoriating my mouth, and (shall I say it?) of very nearly choking me, in addition. As for wines will you have some Sherry?-secondly, are you at all enterprising ?-if so, to Xeres we will go, and imbibe the blessing at its fountain, (i. e. when the chocolate is duly honored, and we have read the Madrid papers.) Xeres is so near, (I forget the number of miles) that we may visit it and return to supper. I would recommend a felucca to Santa Maria, and, should we meet with a Levanter, which is not improbable, we may drift over the lost fane of Hercules, for our consolation; it was snatched away, in past ages, with its site, and a sad mouthful of land besides, by the Sea; so say the antiquarians—and as every one knows of the later encroachments hereabouts of that hungry personage, I doubt he must be brought in guilty. Forgive my pedantry, cherished reader! but I must warn you that in this temple were deposited Teucer's belt, and Pygmalion's golden olive, and that costly statue of Alexander, before which Cæsar wept, when quæstor in Spain, on comparing his own early achievements with those of Philip's warlike son. Now, is not the very ' dust inurned' of such a ruin worth floating over? One would expect the very fish of the neighborhood to have acquired a taste for vertú; and I have noticed, among those which I have caught here, a peevish fretfulness at being pulled out of their twilight element, that savors strongly of the nervousness of mouldy research. * Here we are, at St. Mary's-far-famed for dark-eyed girls. Did the boatmen doff their hats and patter a prayer, on passing the Guadalete?—for I have been quite asleep, from the lulling effect of the chocolate. They were used thus to interest themselves for the souls of the many passengers drowned, as the surf at times is highly dangerous-swamping a felucca with a giant wave, conjured up from the ripple at a moment's warning, as if by a freak of some sour-tempered old river-god. Shall we take a mule or a calesin to Xeres? The route is pleasanter as we recede from the shore, and we may possibly find a fringe of dwarf almond trees by the road-rather scanty and irregular, however, and reminding one (if such a thing might be ') of a ragged sapgreen ruffle to a brown shirt. But Xeres is very attractive, with its vines and its jennets and its legendary honors, and hallowed to the patriot and the historian, as well as in the ruddy eyes of the worshipful fraternity of wine-bibbers. It was, as you are proba |