Читать книгу In Quest of El Dorado онлайн

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But one would not have been surprised to find Toledo printed fine, for there truly, famous though it be in history, we have an obscure, unchanging seat of the past. Toledo is more truly Spain than is Bilbao or Barcelona. It is the Spain that was. Toledo is a close-packed, mountain-built city of winding, narrow, shady ways and high, overhanging, ancient houses. It reminds one of the Saracen villages high up on the cliffs above the sun-bathed Riviera. It was Moorish and Jewish before it was Spanish, famous throughout the Middle Ages for its steel. They try to sell you Toledo swords in a score of little shops to-day. And, in the past, has not Toledo steel pushed its way through the vitals of innumerable duelists? And Spanish mail, Spanish armor, Spanish shields and Spanish swords have had an immense repute. It was the southern counterpart of Swedish steel. But Solingen has gone on and made domestic cutlery for the teeming populations of industrialism whilst Toledo still makes swords. Toledo has no street-cars. Toledo has no cinema. It has no Cable office. Its hotels, spacious and quaint, have no rooms with bath, no room telephones. There are barber shops, but the poles do not revolve. Nothing revolves.