BEAUTIFUL SEVILLE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 285, 27 July 1932, Page 8

BEAUTIFUL SEVILLE

HNCHANTED CITY OCEAN YESSELS BERTH AMONG TREES AND NIGHTINGALES. TOO GLORIOUS TO BE REAL. Most gxeat cities in Europe dominate the rivers on which they stand, so that their influence can be seen and felt even where the river joins the sea, be that fifty miles or more away, writes Professor C. H. *Reilly. Lightships, pilot boats, and the river traffic itself all foretell the great town higher up the stream. Seville is the exception. She sits quietly beside her placid winding river and ships of five thousand tons approach her wtihout disturbing the nightingales singing in her orange groves. Indeed, the great dark shapas steal up the silent stream one by one as if ash'amed to penetra'te its quifSt and lovely solitudes. Between Green Fields. For a. whole day one may steam between bright green prairies with herds of eattle — some the wild bulls for the arena — and not pass another boat nor see a town except an occasional white one lying compact in a fold of the distant hills. At its mouth is the little straggling town of Sanlucar, half summer villas, half fishermen's cottages, with one 01* two great square blocks of buildings which' look like tobacco factories, but which on inquiry turn out to be con;vents. After Sanlucar, however, till gafiose to Seville itself, one passes onvly an occasional whitewashed farm "or group of cottages with thatched walls as well as roofs, yet the land on either bank is obviously some of the richest in Spain, the laziest folk getting the best land. The upper reaclies of the river near Seville are lined with' willows, and but for the red sandy water would recall similar reaches of many an English river. There was something sad, though, in this redness which stopped all reflections. Towers in Sunset. Suddenly in the sunset sky, after a day of quiet winding and gliding through an emerald plain, app'ears the silhouette of the Giralda tower. Then other towers, then white buildings set in orange trees, when bridges and lights, and one's boat is at rest in the heart of a great city. It was not a real city as we know cities, either that night or the next morning, for it was a city of bright white buildings, of deep blue sky, of ffowers and emerald green trees. In its heart appeared great gardens full of palm trees, and in every house one got through an open door a glimpse of a courtyard brilliant with greenery against whitewashed walls. The great cath'edral interior too, forex-unner though it be of the Liverpool one, was too big in its scale, too dramatic in its light and shade, to be quite real. Mystery and Beauty. One walked about it as if one were walking in a pieture of some building too good to be true. One had the same feeling in the town itself. The narrow ways between the houses, bright and white save for the greenery hanging from th'e romantically grilled windows and composing themselves like so many stage sets, the absence of all wheeled trajc save in the central avenu-es, the glhnpses through arches everywhere of gay yet mysterious courtyards, the women with bright eyes under black veils and tall combs, all these things were not real. The city was some enchantment, some emanation from the strange winding river which' at the next bend would disappear. While i't lasted, however, it was one of the loveliest things on earth.