Spain and Her People (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Cordova The railroad station is a short distance from the city, and we found several carriages and a hotel omnibus waiting for the passengers. The old Moorish wall that surrounds Cordova is a picturesque though .crumbling ruin; a witness to the departed glory. We enter the attractive gateway, and then suffer the affliction of her wretchedly paved streets, for Cordova has the distinction of having been the first city of Europe to have paved streets. That was many years ago, and if they have never been paved since, that fact may account for their present condition. Never before had we ridden over such rough streets, and we attributed it in part to the omnibus, sadly regretting our choice of this heavy vehicle, and resolving that we would not return in it. As soon as we reached the hotel, we engaged a carriage to see the sights and congratulated ourselves that we had escaped the worst, but to our dismay the worst was yet to come, for the light vehicle bounded up and down over the rough and uneven cobble stone pavement, and we were jolted and thrown from side to side, so that the exercise became painful and almost beyond a endurance. At times we tried to suspend ourselves between the two seats, but that was a dreadful state of suspense, so we hoped that soon the driver might find a better street. How we wished for an asphalt or brick pavement, or a country mud road, ?anything but the dreadful streets of Cordova; for the suffering was suggestive of the tortures of the Inquisition, and it was a great relief to stop for a time in the Plaza Major, and then in memory and imagination go back to the good old days of the past and picture the horrible scenes that the vast majority once witnessed here with delight, as they do a bloody bull-fight to-day, when the autos da fe was so popul..