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The wide bed of the Manzanares river, ochre-hued, seemed furrowed here and there by a thread of dark water. The ridges of the Guadarrama range rose hazily into the murky air. Roberto passed by the patio. The humming of the praying mendicants continued. An old lady, her head swathed in a red kerchief and her shoulders covered with a black cloak that was fading to green, sat down in the clearing.
Its greatness was thrust upon it by Philip II. Some premonitory symptoms of the dangerous honor that awaited it had been seen in preceding reigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up their pilgrim tabernacle on the declivity that overhangs the Manzanares. Charles V. found the thin, fine air comforting to his gouty articulations. But Philip II. made it his court.
In this part of America, as in Australia* to the west of Sydney, it is not so much the height of the mountain chains, as the form of the rocks, that presents obstacles difficult to surmount. Peron, Voyage aux Terres Australes page 389. The longitudinal valley formed by the lofty mountains of the interior and the southern declivity of the Cerro de San Antonio, is intersected by the Rio Manzanares.
A subscription for one month costs three lire and entitles the holder to one performance a day, the performance at 8 being a repetition of that at 5.30. The play now being performed is The Paladins of France; it was written by Manzanares in Italian prose and is in three volumes.
The waters of the Manzanares are very limpid in quality, and this river has no resemblance to the Manzanares of Madrid, which appears the more magnificent in contrast with the fine bridge by which it is crossed.
There is such a fresh, sweet smell of the country, and the groups throw themselves, or are thrown, into such pretty tableaux after the Rubens and Snyders fashion. The shambles one avoids instinctively, and fish-market there is none, for Madrid is fifty hours' journey from the nearest sea, and the Manzanares has every requisite for a fine trout stream, but water.
New Cadiz having no water, that of the Rio Manzanares was conveyed thither from the neighbouring coast, though for some reason, I know not what, it was thought to be the cause of diseases of the eyes. The writers of that period all speak of the riches of the first planters, and the luxury they displayed.
And then, gradually, the Manzanares repents him of his anger and haste; no more foam is dashing against the piers of the bridges, no more crested waves are hurrying before the wind; he sinks gently and slowly back to his accustomed lounging pace, "taking the sun" with lazy ease once more; and the washerwomen come down and resume their labours under the plane trees; and there is no more thought of rain for many a week, perhaps month, to come; and that strangely deep, impenetrable vault of a blue unknown elsewhere spreads its canopy over a clean, rain-washed city.
The town of Cumana, properly so called, occupies the ground lying between the castle of San Antonio and the small rivers of Manzanares and Santa Catalina. The town has no remarkable edifice, and the frequency of earthquakes forbids such embellishments.
I read in an old chronicle of Madrid, that once when Queen Isabel the Catholic was hunting in the hills that overlook the Manzanares, near what is now the oldest and quaintest quarter of the capital, she killed a bear of great size and ferocity; and doubtless thinking it might not be considered lady-like to have done it unassisted, she gave San Isidro the credit of the lucky blow and built him a nice new chapel for it near the Church of San Andres.
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