Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-01-31
Inspiring Scenes at the Medi-
terranean's Entrance.
WAKEMAN'S WAN behring's.
Glowing Pen Pictures OF the Shores of Two
COntinent's-LandinE at Tangiers.
Weird Night Experience insES
the Moorish City.
Copyright, 1892, by Edgar L. wakenan-l

once the emporium of the world and still
the most winsome and beautiful city of
Spain, we sailed on smaller vessel, little
better than a ferryboat, for the African
coast, touching an hour at Tarifa, the
southerrmost city of Continental Europe,
but fifteen miles southwest of Gibraltar.
In this less than one hundred miles from
CadiZ there are innumerable scenes and
memories of wondrous impressiveness.
CadiZ itself was the Tarshish of Bible his
tory, Jupo's wondrous island, and the glori-
GUS Iberia Of Anacreon and Homer. Atthe
end of the Fourth century it was the rich
est, most brilliant and most prohigate city
in the world. Then the Goths and the Arabs
possessed it, the latter for 500 years from
the Eighth century, when Alfonso the
Learned retook il in 1862. What a vision
Of riches and pillage comes with vanish
ing sight of the beautiful city, when its
American treasure is remembered. The
old writers tell that in the one year 1893
the gold and silver imported at Cadiz from
America amounted to I25, 0O0. GOO; and
away back of this, when the English Lord
Essex sacked and pillaged Cadiz the booty
amounted to forty great galleons and thir-
teen ships of war laden with American
gold.
In an hours time you have come abreast
of Cape Trafalgar. Your steamers course
is through the very waters where Nelson
won his immortal victory over the combined
fleets of Gravina and Villenueve All the
mighty paintings you have seen, all the
majestic monuments to Nelson underneath
whose shadows you have stood, all the
thrilling prose and Terse you have read
upon this inspiring theme fill and thrill
your mind and heart, until the air is
dimmed with smoke, the hoarse bellowings
of cannon deafen you, the sheets of fame
from those two solid columns of war-ships
blind you, the shrieks of wounded and dy-
ing and the crashing OF masts add to the
cOnjured horror-all for an instant, may be;
but no poet or painter has ever brought its
glory and savagery to your comprehension
so matchlessly as your own brief presence
there.
And now Tarifa is reached; Tarifa cele-
brated of all cities of the Latin race for
the fatal beauty of its women; Tarifa,
where the besieging Moors put to death the
son Of Don Alfonso before his eyes in an
where mighty battles between the kings of
CASTLE and Spain against the Moors were
fought beneath its walls; where once 1000
Roman sons came and took to themselves
their pick of Spanish women; where the
Berbers first met the dispirited armies of
Roderick, last of the Goths; Tarifa with its
scores Of towers and gates, labarynthine
streets, balconies hidden behind masses OF
flowers, and its half-Spanish, half-Moorish
scenes and life which taunt and tempt raw
ishingly to dafying and delay.
From this point, as your course is set to
zhe southwest for Tangier almost
Straight across the strait of
Gibraltar, the scene on every hand is one of
4natchleSs beauty and grandeur. Back to
the northwest stretches the Spanish coast
line to Trafalgar, low lying along the sea,
but with background of undulating foot
hills, breaking into deep gorges, and capped
by lofty sierras, the whole checkered by
vineyards and dotted with cities and ham
lets, in the distance as white as fakes Of
snow. Back across the waters to the north
east looms gray old Gibraltar, line of fish
ing vessels, arsenals, quays and moles at its
base like a slender ribbon of foam, its
thousands of threatening cannon above hid
den and submitted by terraces bright and
vines and gardens fair.
Before you is Africa, warm and glowing
beneath midwinter sun. Away to the
southeast is the shadowy peak of Apes
Hill, at whose base Ceuta lies. A grand
and diversified coast stretches westward
past as yet invisible Tangier, to Cape Spar
tel, the northwesternmost point in Africa
Portions of the coast are grandly precipi-
tous. Again great forests sweep from noble
heights into slumberous valleys which IN
dulate softly to the sea. The lights and
shades are strange. The green of the mid
die strait blends into rosy puce towards
land, this into a brilliant blue further on,
and the coast line at the waters edge seems
like thread of lustrous onyx. Above this,
brown; then purple; then emerald; and be-
yond there is glowing of faint orange, as
though the valleys palpably flung back the
sunlight which fingered lovingly above. Be
You'd this, a line of tender purple, jagged
with feathery, misty fronds, This is where
the Atlas mountains are. And then between
the mountain passes and peaks and the sky
is a faint thread of saffron pale pink, some
thing like a gauze of lavender laid on a
bank of roses. That CLEAN Of color flashes
the mental vision to the vast Sahara and
the far Soudan.
F'easting with eager and selfish delight
uDOn the glorious shores of two continents,
I had lost sight of honest Dobrado Dobrado
who was to have returned to his place by
the babbling fountains of Lisbon, from
Beta. should l persist in tramping thence 10
Tavira and the sea; Dobrado who was now
sworn servitor and friend: Dobrado broad
of grin as Gargantua, and of beam as
QUiXote'S no less faithful squire; Do brado |
whom 1 found with lowering eyes ana
hidous face. as rapt as 1 had been, scowling |
with uuutterable hate at the fair land of |
the Moors. In his attitude, looks, mutter- |
ings and unconscious gesuculations, in |
every moment in rapidity and in |
tensity, the whole story of the irrevocabIe |
of Christian against MosIem |
was theme for poet; subject for artist |
Europe the implG5a0le foe of Africa: the |
cross against the crescent; incarnate hate. !
the outgrowth of incarnate love, burning to |
annihilate incarnate fanaticism; Christian |
savagery thirsting for the life of Moslem |
barbarism.
I touched the Gallegan gently upon the |
shoulder and my eyes sought his inouir- |
iugly. He trembled and was woefully con- |
fused for moment. Then his great blue |
eyf3s saddened and he said softly and |
SLOWLY. as though his heart meanwhile |
tuSveled a long and bitter way:
'eThere is not choza cabin from Fiuis- |
ferre to Paleucia in which there does not |
hang some forefather's gaita or hoz (sickle) |
or sword upon the wall, under which the !
Gallegan boy is no. daily brought to swear |
vengeance for the murders of the Moorr'
AS l pondered over Dobrado's dramatic |
action and words / could not but feel that. |
after all, it is q pleasant thing to live, as |
we Americans do, SO far removed from the |
endless mental, if not physical, clashings |
OF these awful hereditary religious hatreds |
of the centuries.
Bus lust now we have rounded Cape |
MaIdaar and Tangier lies before US like, a |
mass BIZ foam churned in the seething tides |
81 tie Gibraltar strait and tossed into |
semblauce upon the mountain |
riXkned shore of the bay. Soon the mass of |
sshite resolves itself into splatches of more
brilliant white and seams and checkers of |
shade. then into white cubes of varying d.
mansions. Gradually projecting corners |
and heights of snowy masonry take shape |
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