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sight of Moorish eyes, we anchored not in the lagoon, but in the narrow inlet of Galapagos cove, sheltered by Melilla's soaring walls and towers. The town's imposing appearance was just that — mere appearance — as I was able to see for myself when I set off to wander through the close-packed, treeless streets and along the city walls. While the galley-captain haggled over a price for the slaves, I saw how neglected it all was. Eight centuries of struggle against Islam had died on that wretched frontier and not a single maravedi from the gold and silver brought from the Indies ever reached these shores. What did not end up in the hands of Genoan bankers was stolen by the Dutch and English — Devil take 'em — in the western seas. Flanders and the Indies were the apples of our royal eyes, and our old African enterprise, once so dear to the Catholic kings and to the great Emperor Charles V, was scorned by Philip IV and his favourite, the Count-Duke of Olivares. Indeed, many satirical verses were written on the subject:
It surely matters not a toss If far Melilla's deemed a loss, And do not let yourself be vexed Should it turn out that Ceuta's next Bring on the flags of Barbary! No more for us the rosary, Once the Gospel city of Oran Bends the knee to the Koran What does it matter— not a jot — If those brave Arabs take the lot?
It was a miracle that these North African fortress towns survived at all. In truth, they did so more by virtue of their reputation than anything else, for although they deprived the corsairs of a few ports and important bases, the latter still had Algiers, Tunis, Saleh, Tripoli and Bizerta. Our soldiers were housed in cramped quarters within fortifications whose casemates and bulwarks were crumbling for lack of money; many of the soldiers were old and infirm, with no one to relieve them, and they lived there with their families, ill- clothed and ill-fed, without so much as a scrap of land to cultivate, and with barely enough money, and sometimes none at all, to resist the surrounding enemy. Any aid from the Peninsula was at least a day's journey away, and such aid was far from certain, for it depended on what the conditions at sea were like and on how quickly help could be organised in Spain. And so Melilla, like our other African possessions — including Tangiers and Ceuta, which, being Portuguese, were also therefore Spanish — found itself relying on the courage of the garrison and on diplomacy with the neighbouring Moors, from whom the inhabitants obtained, voluntarily or by force, the necessary supplies.
As I said, I gleaned much of this simply from visiting the city and its massive water cisterns, on which life there was totally dependent. I visited the hospital, the church, the Santa Ana tunnel and the square, intra muros, where the Moors from the surrounding area came to sell meat, fish and vegetables. During the day this was a lively place, but at nightfall, before the city gates were closed, all the Arabs left — apart, that is, from a trusted few who were allowed to stay as long as they agreed to be locked up in the House of the Moors, outside which a constable stood guard. This, however, I did not see, because that same night, in order to escape the notice of the Arabs along the coast, the Mulata weighed anchor and left Melilla secretly, powered only by her oars. Then, taking advantage of the wind blowing from the shoreward, we set sail in an easterly direction, and dawn found us off the Chafarinas Islands, halfway to Oran, where, on the following afternoon, we spotted the Needle Rock and anchored without incident or mishap.
Oran was quite different from Melilla, but it was still far from being a paradise. The town found itself in the same state of abandonment as Spain's other fortress towns in Africa, with poor lines of supply and even poorer communications, and its defences were neglected and inadequate. In the case of Oran, though, it wasn't just an arid fortified promontory, but