3-053-691 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in Spain: the Gipsies' Quarter, Granada, 1873. 'Mr. J. B. Stone, author of the last-published book of Peninsular travel, called "A Tour with Cook through Spain", declares that Granada is the most poverty-stricken of all the poor Spanish cities; but that the colony of gitanos, or gipsies, there dwelling, far exceeds in wretchedness the lowest of the Spaniards. The number of this degraded race in Granada is reckoned at 5000, living all the year round in deep caverns, forming chambers and galleries cut out in the rocks, on the side of a steep hill overlooking the city, or in some of the most squalid and ruinous houses. They are a people of nasty and dirty habits, but the women are said to be chaste, though nobody suspects the men of being honest. They are considered to belong to the Roman Catholic religion...but they nevertheless profess the gainful arts of sorcery and soothsaying. Mr. Stone describes a gipsy dance at Granada, like that shown in our Illustration; the fandango, the bolero, and the romalis, or proper gipsy dance, being severally performed to the music of a guitar, for the amusement of Cook's party of tourists. Four such travelling Englishmen seem about to give money, in payment for the exertions of the dancers'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.