We were
not able to do anything definite with the new villas built or building
around Algeciras, though they looked very livable, and seemed proof of a
prosperity in the place for which I can give no reason except the great
natural beauty of the nearer neighborhood, and the magnificence of the
farther, mountain-walled and skyed over with a September blue in
November. I think it would be a good place to spend the winter if one
liked each day to be exactly like every other. I do not know whether it
is inhabited by English people from Gibraltar, where there are of course
those resources of sport and society which an English colony always
carries with it.
The popular amusements of Algeciras in the off season for bull-feasts
did not readily lend themselves to observance. Chiefly we noted two
young men with a graphophone on wheels which, being pushed about,
wheezed out the latest songs to the acceptance of large crowds. We
ourselves amused a large crowd when one of us attempted to sketch the
yellow facade of a church so small that it seemed all facade; and
another day when that one of us who held the coppers, commonly kept
sacred to blind beggars, delighted an innumerable multitude of
mendicants having their eyesight perfect.
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