I entitle this volume “Picturesque Spain". Much will be unknown to many. I begin however with a spot famous throughout the world.--And yet I was bound to. Like the pilgrim who is drawn to the fabled Fontana Trevi once he has drunk of its waters, so too was I drawn again and again to Granada in my wanderings. I believe too that I have succeeded in presenting the Alhambra from one or two different points of view. Who indeed could exhaust this well of beauty?
Nor could I pass heedlessly by Cordoba, Seville and Toledo, for these towns are starting points.--Finger-posts to unknown Spain. Without these monuments of ancient times, those parts of Spain situate far from the high-roads remain an almost insolvable riddle.
My pictures must speak for me. Those who know how to ask them will find that they tell much. For this reason I shall limit myself to but a few initiatory words. They serve to connect the known with the unknown; to throw light on the paths along which I journeyed in Spain.
=Granada!= Thy name is music; a joyous chord of beauty! To pass the spring within thy gateways is to walk the heights of life.
Spring has cast a shower of blossoms over the town and woven a delicate green carpet around the Alhambra. How many many centuries has it not worshipped thus yearly at the feet of the castle? Long ago passionate Moorish women decorated their raven hair there with rosy almond blossoms.--It is long since that the glory of those days has departed. Perhaps this is why the castle walls look down so sadly at the beauty of this blissful vernal soil.
Bidding defiance in the grandeur of their strength the towers of the Alhambra arise. Their fiery red lights skywards like the flames on giant altars.[A]
Is it possible that these massive cyclopean walls should hide a fairy-land?
Impatiently we climb the castle mount. Reaching an old stone gateway ornamented with pomegranates, the noise of the streets is left behind as we enter a yew grove whose ancient giant stems are ivy-grown; blue myrtle covers the ground, the lights gleam golden through the foliage, the wind murmurs among the branches, nightingales sing in the boscage, swallows dart twittering over the tree tops, water hurries babbling down the hilly slope.