540 
FOREST AND STREAM 
October, 1920 
window is a representation of the cock 
that crew when Peter denied his Master. 
The government of Spain has a mo- 
nopoly of the tobacco business, and not 
far from the Alcazar is a very large 
factory, more like a palace in appearance, 
where more than five thousand dark-eyed 
girls are employed in making cigars and 
cigarettes. Although they are quite 
adept, their nimble fingers scarcely keep 
pace with their tongues. Over the main 
entrance to the factory is the recumbent 
figure of a colossal angel with a trumpet 
to his lips. There is a saying in Seville 
that when a virtuous girl passes the por- 
tal for the first time the angel blows a 
loud blast on his trumpet, but so far it 
seems altogether likely that the angel 
Gabriel will sound his trumpet first! If 
it was still the custom, as formerly, to 
furnish a hundred virgins as wives for 
the reigning monarch, it is exceedingly 
questionable if any part of the quota 
could be furnished from this factory. 
T HE city of Cordova is about eighty 
miles eastward of Seville by rail, and 
is beautifully situated on the banks 
of the Guadalquiver, where an old Roman 
bridge crosses the river. Under the 
shadow of this bridge, one day, while 
watching a boy fishing, I happened to see 
a fine fish nibbling the mossy growth on 
the stones of the abutment. I bargained 
with the boy for the use of his outfit for 
a few minutes, and baiting the hook with 
a fat worm I soon inveigled the unfortu- 
nate victim to swallow it. It was a soft- 
finned fish, nearly a foot in length, and 
put up a good fight, requiring some 
care to land it with the rule tackle. Pay- 
ing the lad for the use of it I gave him 
the fish also, much to his surprise. 
A little latter I came across him in the 
centre of a group of envious boys, to 
whom he was relating the old, old story of 
his capture of the fish, giving the details 
of hooking, playing and landing the prize, 
suiting the action to the word and the 
word to the action, to the wonder and ad- 
miration of his audience. I then realized 
how very small the world really is, after 
all, when a fellow-feeling makes the whole 
world kin, and how all anglers, great and 
small, are as prone to deceit as sparks to 
fly upward, and are imbued with the same 
spirit of piscatorial prevarication. 
In its best days Cordova was the cap- 
ital of the Moors in Spain, and is said to 
have possessed two hundred mosques and 
a population of a million souls; but its 
glory departed with the dim receding 
centuries of time, and it now has but fifty 
thousand all told, dons, donnas, senors, 
senoras and senoritas. It is rather a 
gloomy town, with streets narrow and not 
too clean. There are but few notable 
buildings. The Bishop’s Palace is sadly 
out of repair and not at all pleasing. The 
once splendid palace of the Moorish kings 
was, centuries ago, converted into a stable 
for the breeding of the famous Andalu- 
sian horses. 
But there is one great redeeming fea- 
ture in the Moorish mosque, the most 
magnificent Mohammedan structure in 
Europe, and the most remarkable in 
Spain. It has several hundred pillars and 
columns, dividing it into longitudinal and 
transverse aisles, numbering twenty or 
more. The pillars are highly polished, of 
many varieties of stone, including jasper, 
porphyry, verd-antique and other mar- 
bles, all of which were brought from the 
Orient. At one side is the Moorish Sanc- 
tury in which the Koran was kept. It is 
octagonal in shape and is ornamented in 
the most gorgeous manner by carved 
traceries and arabesques. Its dome, some 
fifteen feet in diameter, is in the shape of 
a scalloped-shell, and is carved from a 
single block of white marble. All of the 
designs and carvings are also of white 
marble, and not of the usual stucco. 
Half a dozen centuries ago this superb 
Moorish temple was converted into a 
Christian Cathedral by building a wooden 
altar and choir stalls near its center, and 
though the carvings of the altar and stalls 
are exquisite, it does not seem to be, in 
an artistic sense, an adequate compensa- 
tion. Passing to the rear of the altar one 
day after mass had been celebrated, our 
attention was attracted by an unusual 
noise, and upon closer investigation we 
discovered two altar boys, in red vest- 
ments, engaged in a rough and tumble 
fight, biting, scratching and pummeling 
each other as they rolled on the floor! 
Our guide, Manuel, declared that the ca- 
thedral boys were the worst in the city. 
As we emerged from the mosque we ob- 
served, on two converging streets, a pro- 
cession of theological students on one, 
and a batallion of soldiers marching to 
the blare of trumpets on the other. 
“There,” said Manuel, “is the curse of 
Spain; priests and soldiers!” Manuel, 
who was rather an old man, told us that 
some fifty years before he had gone to 
the United States with some Andalusian 
horses, and was employed for several 
years as a stable boy at the old Union 
Race Course on Long Island, and at one 
time was a groom to the famous racer 
Fashion. His constant regret was that 
he had not remained in America. 
The traffic in the food and fuel supply 
of Cordova, as in all other towns in Anda- 
lusia, is carried on by means of mules and 
donkeys. During the early morning 
hours they are driven into town by mule- 
teers and venders, the panniers filled 
with such vegetables and fruits as are 
in season, as antichokes, beans, lettuce 
and lentils, and oranges, lemons, citrons, 
etc. The milk supply is furnished by 
flocks of goats, which are driven to dif- 
ferent neighborhoods, where the milk is 
delivered into pitchers of various shapes 
and sizes, fresh and warm from the ud- 
ders of the goats Meanwhile the house- 
wives regale each other with the latest 
gossip of the neighborhood, while they 
wait, and not always, I fear, tinctured 
with the milk of human kindness. Their 
merry laughter harmonizes well with the 
silvery tinkle of the bells of the goats. 
The goats seemed to us to be of a bet- 
ter breed and larger than those seen in 
other towns, probably due to the fact 
that formerly Cordova was renowned for 
the manufacture of leather made from 
goat skins and known as cordovan. Fuel 
is very scarce in every part of Andalusia 
owing to the lack of forests or timbered 
sections. Small bunches of twigs, or 
little fagots of dried sprouts, or for those 
who could afford it, charcoal, are hawked 
and peddled about the streets. The role 
of perambulating panaderias, or travel- 
ing bakeshops, is performed also by 
mules, their panniers being filled with 
bread, rolls, cakes and other farinaceous 
products fresh from the ovens. 
T HE journey from Cordova to Gran- 
ada, like that from Seville to Cor- 
dova, is through a region entirely 
destitute of trees. The bare rocky hills 
and naked arid slopes have been denuded 
of arboreal growth for many centuries, 
probably beginning in the tenth century 
with the occupation of the Moors, and 
continuing forever afterward. This is 
not surprising, for in our own country, 
with scarcely two centuries of civiliza- 
tion, we are already feeling the effect of 
(continued on page 563 ) 
The Fish Pond in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain 
