1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

The Wines of the Bay of Cadiz.

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and thence by a few miles' cut across the surrounding salt marshes. At the time of oui* visit, late in the autumn, the journey was a pleasant one,for some heavyshowers had sensibly moderated the heat, although the sun was still sufficiently powerful and the sky of as deep a blue as ever. Autumn and spring appear to combine at this particular season in Andalusia, for while flowering chrysanthemums and ripe pomegranates abounded in all the gardens barley was sprouting in the fields and olive groves, purple primroses were blooming by the sandy roadside, and fresh green peas were coming daily to market. On leaving Jerez the railway runs for a short distance past vine yards and isolated olive groves, with the Guadalete winding through the adjacent marshy plain,and thesmall castle,replacing the one where unhappy Dona Blanca was confined by Peter the Cruel, crowning a jutting ridge on our right hand. Nest come the works for supplying Cadiz with fresh water, by means of a reservoir half-way up a lofty hill, at the foot of which are some extensive stone quarries, where in the spring of this year a youth sequestrated fi-om his family at Algar,some thudy miles distant, was secreted until the stipulated ransom was paid to his brigand captors. After crossing the Guadalete at Puerto de Santa Maria the line runs through salt marshes and moorland, past huge white pyramids of salt and dark green pine woods, skirting on the one hand the plain where Roderick,last ruler of the Goths in Spain, risked the decisive battle which lost him his kingdom and his life, and with the white walls and towers of Cadiz rising, as it were, from out the deep blue sea on the other. From San Fernando to Chiclana was httle more tba.n half- an-hour's drive, the four horses of our carretela being incited by coaxings, scoldings, and judicious applications of the whip to gallop all the way. The route hes first across an old fortified stone bridge on the outskirts, then over a bridge of boats,and finally between two long canals communicating with the neigh bouring salt-works which extend for a considerable distance aroimd. A gloomy pine wood,stretching for miles inland,skirts