Of one thing we made memorably sure beyond the gulf of the
Darro, and that was the famous gipsy quarter which the traveler visits
at the risk of his life in order to have his fortune told. At the same
moment we made sure that we should not go nearer it, for though we knew
that it was insurpassably dirty as well as dangerous, we remembered so
distinctly the loathsomeness of the gipsy quarter at Seville that we
felt no desire to put it to the comparison.
We preferred rather the bird's-eye study of the beautiful Generalife
which our outlook enabled us to make, and which we supplemented by a
visit the next day. We preferred, after the Barmecide lunch at our
hotel, taking the tram-car that noisily and more noisily clambers up and
down, and descending into the town by it. The ascent is so steep that at
a certain point the electric current no longer suffices, and the car
bites into the line of cogs with its sort of powerful under-jaw and so
arrives. Yet it is a kindly little vehicle, with a conductor so
affectionately careful in transporting the stranger that I felt after a
single day we should soon become brothers, or at least step-brothers.
Whenever we left or took his car, after the beginning or ending of the
cogway, he was alert to see that we made the right change to or from it,
and that we no more overpaid than underpaid him.
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