“Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.”
This and other hours of delight during a coasting voyage in the Spanish Mediterranean are not soon forgotten, and, though they cannot be translated into words--
“They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude.”
The voyage may be prolonged on the south coast, and, from the time when, on his left, Tarifa lies along the sea, like a line of melting snow under smoothly moulded hills of green, and, on the right, Tangiers shows its white houses indistinctly beneath the bare, grey mountains of Africa, to the time when at Port Bou he bids farewell to the Catalan coast and to Spain, the traveller will not have a dull or unenjoyable moment; if only the gods send him propitious, cloudless days--
“Quién hubiese tal ventura Sobre las aguas del mar!”
It was a cloudless day of November. The Cathedral of Valencia stood grey against a sky of soft blue. In the _Plaza de la Constitución_ the sun shone on the central fountain and marked in dark lines the shadows of the houses and the Cathedral. From the great “Door of the Apostles” came a smell of incense as people went out and in. Surmounted by its large rose-window, the doorway has a worn and ancient air, and the plants growing here and there in the wall add to its look of venerable splendour. Some of the apostles stand there headless, some without arms, some mere trunks of stone. Above, the tall _Miguelete_ tower rises conspicuous here, as it is conspicuous far and wide across the Valencian plain. A few priests passed, a few carts drawn by long strings of mules, a newspaper-seller cried the _Heraldo de Madrid_, and some peasants in black or blue-grey groups talked together, leaning on their sticks. Shortly after eleven a long, green sofa was set up on the pavement immediately in front of the Cathedral door, and a narrow space round it was enclosed with an iron railing. Sofa and railing, carried across the street in sections, bore the inscription _Tribunal de las Aguas_. For it was Thursday, the meeting-day of the tribunal which judges disputes arising from the irrigation of the Huerta.
To the peasant of the Valencian Huerta loss of water for his land means starvation, and the hours at which each is allowed to draw off water from the narrow channels that cross his land are carefully regulated. If one takes water out of his turn the fields of another must suffer, and the case must be brought before the judges sitting in weekly council. Against their sentence there is no protest or appeal; it is absolutely final, and though there must be cases of injustice, the peasants are very proud of their tribunal. There is no writing--the cases are not even recorded--the matter is decided on the spot and in the open air between man and man; there are no clerks or advocates; no table, ink, or papers to confuse the simple;[90] no fees or anxious delays, and the judges, moreover, chosen by and from the peasants themselves, thoroughly understand the questions brought before them. It is a strange sight, the sitting of this all-powerful institution, centuries old, in the _Plaza de la Constitución_, in the twentieth century. There is a dignified simplicity about it, a lack of display which is imposing. The peasants have a conscious pride in being able to arrange their own affairs without interference of the men of learning, just as they are ready to settle their more private quarrels without recourse to the law. The man who has been stabbed in a quarrel will conceal the name of his assailant from the police, always reserving for himself the pleasure of taking vengeance later on. The character of the peasants of the Huerta is indeed a mixture of haughtiness and cunning, of simplicity and shrewdness, and the word that best describes them is the Spanish _socarronería_--a certain malicious humour.[91] Living isolated in the vast open plain, they form a community apart, and resent external interference. Their tribunal is entirely primitive and rustic; in all its years of city life it has adopted none of the city’s ways, and has not even the shelter of a roof.