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20 DAYS IN THE SUN
width is the umbilical cord which connects the city with
the mainland. On the left, the waters of the bight
lazily lap a smooth beach of bluish clay. On the right,
the waves of the Atlantic Ocean roll on before a row of
lovely dunes, a yellow-green porridge of sand and
water, to break on the shore and thunder against the
gay white coastline.
Between the dunes there is a gypsy cabin, made of
old rags, leaves of aloe and rusty sheet iron. A little
ten-year-old boy in a bare shirt approaches us begging,
scratching great white streaks in the blackish brown of
his loins, which are richly dotted with insect bites
shaped like little angry craters with a red spark in the
center of each. When he is ready to give us up as a
bad job, an old woman, in a curiously shrill voice, eggs
him on to renewed effort from the village below.
All roads lead to Rome, they say, but this one really
does. Its course takes it through Seville, Salamanca
and southern France, and the whole length of it was
built by the Romans themselves. Its masonry, re-
stored in spots, still gives evidence of the Roman skill.
Gradually the tongue of sand widens into a flat,
bare, marshy stretch ribbed with canals that increase in
number and width until they take up more space than
the land. Between the canals the black soil has been
trodden into a single beaten trail by many hoofs and
feet. You may follow it as you might follow the
thread of Ariadne, and it will lead you farther and
farther into the labyrinth of lean islands on which
cattle are grazing and over which an occasional
pyramid towers. This country extends in every direc-
tion, as far as the eye can see, resembling with its
canals, its curious pyramids, an acrid marsh on which
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