The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-02-01
CADlZ.
"THE SILVER DTSH'' or MODERN
SPAIN.

Though Eleven Hundred Years Older
Than the Christian Religion, IL Is
city of Southern Enrope-seenes in a
Spanish Seaport.
Especial Correspondence of the Journal
and Courier)
Cadiz, Spain, Jan. 3.-Remembering
that this oldest city of southern Europe
is half as old as the world itself (ac-
cording to the Hebrew traditiom,-
Hercules dwelt here, and that the an
cient philosophers, believing it to be the
very end of the EARTH came here to
study the curious phenomenon of the
tides-one is more and more astoniShed
at it's look of newness. So far as APP
have been laid last year, instead of
more than three thousand years ago.
and search as you may, hardly trace
of antiquity can be found. Even the
familiar ear marks of the Moors are eff
faced, though their five hundred years
supremacy terminated at a compare
lively recent period. The explanation
lies about equally between whitewash,
religious fanaticism and British con-
quest. After the bombardment Of Ca
dir by Lord Essex lin 1596)-which be
gan SPANS bankruptcy, with the sack
ing of her richest city and the capture
of thirteen men-of-war and forty huge
galleons laden to the gunwales with
treasures from her western possessions,
IA loJ In hrN al, OF
built; and it was done according to
English ideas, with wider streets and
tall, commonplace houses. What the
English left of antiquity, Roman zeal
carefully obliterated in the effort to eff
face every trace of heather occupation.
Hence Moorish court-yards disappeared,
and "AzimuP' windows and Mosaics OF
Eoftly-shaded Oriental hues. To-day
Cadiz is the only place in Spain, or any
of her possessions, in which the patio
does not exist. Instead of low walls
rambling around central court-yards,
after the picturesque Moorish fashion,
the free stone houses are three or four
stories in height; most of them WITH
miradores, or open observatories on
top, in which families spend their idle
days gazing into the streets or enjoying
the fine breeze and sea views. The
Moorish custom of hiding the women
folk from public view by penning them
In the patio has given place to the
modern Spanish idea of female liberty,
allowing them to see and be seen of
men, but jealousy guarding them from
speech and touch in the little glass
cage, or mirador, on the house-top.
The worst of reconstructed Cadiz is
that everything is SO glaringly, painful
", deadfully white! No wonder there |
are thousands of beggars in the streets
and nearly everybody you meet has
some disease of the eyes. The law COM
pells house-owners to add at least one
coat of whtewash every year. The
monotonous white, COM
oined with the vivid blue of sea and
ky, brilliant sunshine and lack of
shade trees, gives the foreigner con-
Ita;nt~w.headache and necessitatees
gfass goggles, as for mountain
climbing amid eternal SHOWS. One
ongs to "paint. the town red"-to paint
blue, or green, or any other color
han this relentless, dazzling sight-de-
troying white. The name, by the way,
s pronounced as if spelled Kah-deeth.
The flowery Spanish historian, Cabal-
ero, called it can ivory model set in
but nowadays the natives
lelight to speak Of it as Una taxa de
Oliver Dish"-so clean and
Inning it is, compared to anything else
n Spain. Its population is probably
bout seventy thousand, but as the CEN
us is never taken and the race is noto-
iously given to crowding into close ]
quarters, it is difficult to arrive at a
correct estimate. Situated on it's long
md narrow promontory, with the At
antic on one side and a deep-sea inlet
n the other, Cadiz has been unpoeti- '
ally likened to a ham in contour. The
lily proper forms nearly a perfect !
quare, about two miles on each side. {
ts straight, well paved, well-lighted |
treets all begin and end at the waters {
dge-or rather at the ramparts which t
urround the town from fort to fort. {
his high sea-wal1 is one of Cadiz' c
hief attractions. 1t is topped with lit J
e gardens, full Of bright scarlet gera- 1
iums and fragrant heliotrope; and i
ere and there a larger space, such as t
ne Alemada, and the Marine Prone t
ade where bands play every evening S
nd all the local world comes out to +
1joy the music and the sunset view S
cross the western ocean. All day long 5
ndalusan nurse-maids loiter about the S
singing to their charges and t
rting with the soldiers, and fishermen a
spute with flocks of screaming sea-
rds for the salmonete or delicious red
ul1et. There are so many of the lat
r with their long angling canes for
yer dangling over the water, that their o
atience has passed into proverb-"la g
acienca de I'm pescador de cana" d
he Alameda is a charming walk, pro- IL
ded with trees, benches, fountains and Il
ridiculous statue of Hercules, the g
under of Cadiz, whose effigy, Crap o.
ing with two lions, forms the arms of Ii
e city and appears everywhere upon te
gn-boards and facades. At the east es
n end of the Alameda stands the tt
laint old church of Carmen, in which | IL
the tomb of a Spanish hero, Admiral So
tavina, who commanded the fleet at d
'afalgar, where he received his death to
ound. 1t
There are several great gates in this tc
markable wall, each presenting a diff 81
rent series of moving pictures" of CO
,anish life, The Puerto de San Carlos 1T
Ids to the custom ! house, with its as