Morning journal and courier., 1890-02-22
MIR. WA AREMAN,sJOUR


 MIR. wAKEMAN'sJOUR The Highways About MadrId-Qualnt
 and Curious Sights - Vermillion
 Walled 0ranada-Medissval Spain
 Tho Manxanares River-The Bridge
 Puente de Sevovla-Madrld's Wash-
 sub-Who the Laundresses Are-The
 Bill of Fare of the Administrations
 at Toledo Gate-Campo Santo Ceme-
 tery-Queen Christina.
 MADRID, Spain, Jan. 27. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 You will see more oiden, quaint and culi- ous sights in the great calzadas or stone GOV cred highways leading into Madrid than you will find in the Spanish capital itself. For old Madrid, the Madrid that was once but the advanced post to Toledo. when the latter city was in the hands of the Arabs, has en- tirely disappeared. The Madrid of to-day Is @ modern city, with modern architecture; and only when now and then one stumbles upon @ musty, old and forgotten corner where antiquity and filth have been unwit- tingly overlooked, or when you come upon the gigantic apartment houses with their cheap renaissance of Moorish traoery and UulCOAAccS WILL y0uA OAp0opnhV Cy0o AOoV 0Pou aught of Byzantine flavor or design. To the traveller, primed with romantic fancies of Moorish conquest, occupancy and relics, it is the most disappointing city in all Spain. To the cities of the south one must go to Toledo, Seville, Cordova, Cadiz and to ver- million walled Granada for the enchantment and exultation promised in one's far away 10 of
 One might better see New York, Boston or Philadelphia to know historic ground; lowly life along the Thames in London will fur nish more interesting studies of characteris- tic clasees; and Paris in a score of quarters can show infinitely greater piquancy and zest. Madrid is bleak, solemn, ponderous. It's streets are wide, clean, but without life or color. Its royal palace is a vast granite and marble barn. Its Escurial Is . huge, damp out of doors collar. Its squares, plazas and paseos, the resort of dolorous idlers, convey a sense of austere solemnity and loneliness. It's royal picture gallery, admitting of no equal in the world in point of rare works of the oldest and greatest mas ters, may also with equal justice admit of no equal in the world as the most inadequate collection of representative schools of art extant. 1t has not single great piece of sculpture among it's hundreds of public stat ues. Its most tremendous and costly foun- tains look like gay show pieces of some opu- lently advertised American foundry of yes~ terday. It does not possess single cathe~ drsl; and you cannot find a church within it's Afu nkk,y I~,k student of ecclesiastical art. It's river of high sounding name, the Manzanares, is 8 spatter of wet from the Guadarrama moun- tains in winter, Q muddy torrent in epring. 8 sand blown ditch in the summer, and hardly a capable sewer at any time of the year. Its people ape the French in dress, attempt English manners in the saddle or carriage; aud possess none of the better, and all of the worst, characteristics and qualities of the entire nation. Madrid is simply the great prison house of tottering Spanish royalty; the breeding spot of aiMless revolution and disorder; socially the most corrupt of all European cities; and, as an abiding place, from it's inexpressably wretched climate, tho certain beginning and end of lingering death. All this being true, and tmmeasurably moro emphatic in the experience than ing it in print, my own interest quickly passed from contemplation of Madrid as the royal city of Spain, with nothing truly | Spanish about it. to the study of two lowly | classes, the lavanderas, or washerwomen of the Manzaneres; the Spanish gipsies of the quarter known as the Barrie de las Injurias v cambroneras and to few hours idling in l the Campo Santo, at the lowly grave of Es- pronoeda, the "mad poet of Spain."
 This dripping thing they call 2 river, the l Manzanares, comes down from the cold, gray heights to the north of Madrid, and winds half way around the city from the north- l west to the southeast. What water flows through it breaks in sandy shallows, forming innumerable little islands, and curiously bounded strips of land, all accessible by any barefoot boy or girl; and 1t is an odd fact that though there are two vast and preten- tious bridges across it, the Puente de ssvoyia, nearly seven hundred feet long with nine arches, designed by the great architect, Her rera, and the Puente de Toledo, nearly foul hundred feet in length, crowned by the stat ues of San Isidro and his holy wife, it's sole use to the city of Madrid Is that of an end lessly used and all sufficient wash tub. Ter thousand women soak and splash, and souse and beat the linen of Madrid within itf scant waters every day. Not an article o clothing Is elsewhere washed. No other thar these Manzanares lavanderas are permitted to labor as laundresses; and for three milel up and down the stream, from opposite tn, infantry and artillery barracks upon tn, heights of Montana del Principe, past th
 windows of the queen regents apartments il the royal palace, and circling around ava, and blue, yellow and gray, comprise thi
 great army of Amazons with arms and leg
 On them like tree trunks; with yoluptuou
 breasts and RhapeIy necks; hard musoled an