Читать книгу In Quest of El Dorado онлайн

28 страница из 42

From this to the blue sea, what a change! From this to the fresh and breezy harbor of Cadiz. To Spain's window on to the New World, her most romantic starting point in all her history.

It is a long journey! I prefer to go third class. It makes a tremendous difference, for the carriages are always full, always emptying, changing, filling again with Spanish humanity. The second- and first-class coaches are more or less empty; empty also that curious apartment called a "Berlin." There is a train de luxe from Madrid to Cadiz. In that, of course, you can travel in comfort and sleep at night, sleep also by day, and pass the scenery and Spain as rapidly as a millionaire could wish.

This train is called a "mixto," like the smeshanny in Russia. When it comes to a halt the engine-driver gets out. A man on an ass starts off to tell the village that the train has come and that if any one wants to catch it he had better begin packing. It doesn't matter where you get to or when you get there. I took my first day's ticket to a name of a place at random—Vadollano. The booking clerk bade me repeat it, and then sold me the ticket. I occupied myself trying to imagine what sort of a hotel I'd find there. The train commenced its uneasy retardation onward, crawling upward over Spain. Dark but gentle-looking folk filled the carriage, always saluting with a buenos dias when they entered and an adios when they got out, and never starting to eat or drink anything without offering all around to do the same. My wife and I kept a nicely filled basket and a bottle of sherry, and we joined very happily in the children's game of offering our food, knowing it would be declined. We found, however, that two invitations to a glass of sherry usually overcame the modesty of the peasants who, surprised and pleasantly shocked at finding the wine to be of Xeres, seemed, upon drinking it, to become our friends for life.