A southern oasis

The sec­ond day at Al­i­cante was spent in an ex­cur­sion to Elche, thir­teen miles away, and fa­mous for three spe­cial rea­sons; it was the orig­i­nal home of that won­der­ful bust now in the Lou­vre called “The Lady of Elche”, which ex­perts date from about 440 B.C. This has been the ad­mi­ra­tion of all con­nois­seurs, and has been il­lus­trated and writ­ten about many times.

The sec­ond rea­son why Elche is fa­mous is for its re­mark­able palms; they lie all round the town, some one hun­dred and fif­teen thou­sand fine trees with “their feet in the water, their heads in the fire of heaven”, as the Moor­ish say­ing has it. The town stands on a hill in the cen­tre of this won­der­ful grove—squat, flat-roofed white houses hud­dled to­gether round the blue-domed church at the top. From the roofs—in­deed, from the streets of this hill town one has a strange view, groves upon groves of palms planted in av­enues ra­di­at­ing out from the town, los­ing them­selves in forests on the out­skirts and fi­nally fad­ing away into what looks like a white desert, a dry arid plain stretch­ing far into the dis­tance. It is at once re­marked that Elche is as truly an oasis as though it lay in the great Sa­hara. Be­tween all the groves run stream­lets of water, care­fully con­trolled by an elab­o­rate sys­tem of dykes and water-gates. Were it not for these, the desert would pre­sum­ably eat up the oasis, but this is one of the few places where the ir­ri­ga­tion of the Moors has been care­fully pre­served. Under these trees one finds the most lux­u­ri­ant veg­e­ta­tion—lau­rel, ar­bu­tus, ole­an­der and gera­ni­ums grow to great heights; camel­lias, heavy-scented tuberose and stephan­otis flour­ish out of doors. The or­ange trees are among the finest in Spain, and here grows that de­li­cious sugar cane or­ange which has such quan­ti­ties of sweet scented juice. Wan­der­ing about these palm groves one can eas­ily lose one­self, and it is a very strange and at­trac­tive place, ut­terly un­like any­thing else in Eu­rope. The song of the women wash­ing clothes in the river at the foot of the town drifts about the palm groves as a kind of echo and is re-echoed again by a still more typ­i­cal east­ern melody that at first I could not place at all. It seemed to come from the tops of the trees, which, in­deed, it ac­tu­ally did. It turned out to be the old Moor­ish date-pick­ers' song, and we saw many of them up in the tops of the palm trees, sit­ting across the great leaves and gath­er­ing the ripe fruit, while mules with huge pan­niers waited below. I have been since told that this is same melody is still sung by the date-pick­ers in the oases of the Sa­hara.

The palms are looked after by spe­cial gar­den­ers, and re­quire very care­ful at­ten­tion. The male palms flower in May, and the pollen is sprin­kled by the gar­den­ers over the fe­male trees, which bear fruit only every other year, each tree yield­ing about eighty pounds of dates. This fruit, though sweet and de­li­cious, is much smaller than the Sa­hara date. The palms at Elche are far more fa­mous for their leaves than for their fruit. It is from them that those huge palm leaves come which are blessed by the bish­ops and are bought by every pious fam­ily in Spain to tie on to their bal­conies or on to the iron grat­ings of their win­dows. These blessed palms are sup­posed to pro­tect the house from light­ning, and one sel­dom sees a good house in Spain with­out one of these palms at­tached to some part of it. The leaves are bleached on the trees by being care­fully bound up and all light ex­cluded; each large tree is sub­jected to this treat­ment once in every four years.

The third at­trac­tion of Elche is a strange lit­tle Pas­sion Play—the only one in Spain—which takes place every year on the Eve and Feast of the As­sump­tion and is played in the church on the hill. It is a strange and prim­i­tive lit­tle play, in which the Holy Fam­ily, an­gels, apos­tles and in­nu­mer­able saints take part. The robes and dec­o­ra­tions are crude and vivid, and by a strange arrange­ment of me­chan­i­cal ropes and chains these fig­ures as­cend and de­scend in the most as­tound­ing man­ner. We could make noth­ing of ei­ther the story or the music, but were told that it had been mirac­u­lously sent to Elche in a chest from the sea, which also con­tained the very old image of the Vir­gin now en­shrined in one of the chapels. Leg­end has it that as long as the play is per­formed Elche's palm groves will flour­ish. If the play is given up Elche ceases to be an oasis and will be claimed by the desert again.