1884.] THE ARIDITY OF SI'AIX. 119 



few dwellings which we saw, we would rather not speak, for our 

 hearts grow sick when we think of them. 'Wliat, then, is Old 

 Castile ? It is a boundless expanse of white earth, stretching out 

 on all sides to the horizon, utterly arid and waste, without hedges or 

 dykes, or landmarks of any kind — a most miserable and desolate 

 region, where the very weeds of the earth, the insects of the ground, 

 and the fowls of the air have all perished and passed away. 



" During the heats of summer, this region is a wide oven. The 

 sun looks down upon it with fierce burning ray ; the naked earth, 

 without tree or flower, or spring of living water, increases the heat 

 by reflection, till it becomes weU-nigli intolerable. When the heats 

 subside, then come chUling blasts ; and so we found, for when we 

 traversed it, a cold biting wind was blowing across it. The guide- 

 books say that patches of this plain are cultivated, and a little corn 

 grown upon them ; and no doubt ' it is so. But nevertheless the 

 desolation is great, and to feel how gi-eat it is one must see it. And 

 yet in former times there were no finer corn-lands in Spain, which is 

 in effect to say there were no finer corn-lauds in the world than the 

 plains of Castile. Even yet the old fertility lingers in their soil, and 

 the rich harvests of other days would return but for the unskilfulness, 

 improvidence, and barbarism of its people. Open history, and what do 

 we find ? We find the Castries, Old and New, a powerful kingdom, 

 the marrow and pith of Spain ; their hardy sons fighting her battles, 

 and their wheat filling her garners. But ever since they passed 

 under the government of Charles V., and especially of his bigoted 

 son Pliilip II., they have gone backward. And now here is the 

 result: — Where once there was a multitude of men and cities, with 

 the heavens giving their dews and the earth her harvests, there is 

 now a treeless, cornless, almost houseless waste — in short, a wilder- 

 ness." Such is the account given by Dr. Wylie of what was seen by 

 him in traveUiug from Vittoria towards the capital ; but he would 

 err who would rashly assert, "And such is Spain ! " 



I have before me not a few such pictures of Spanish landscape ; 

 but I have also before me descriptions of other landscapes in Spain 

 which suggest the idea of a Little paradise — a garden of delight — a 

 little sunny spot let down from heaven, and engrafted on this dreary 

 desert, or embedded in the wild wilderness of uncultivated land. All 

 of these sketches may be truthful, but not so truthful as a more 

 comprehensive statement I have met with, to the effect that the 

 general appearance of Spain is in many places delightful, presenting 

 an alternation of mountains, ridges, and immense horizon-bounded 

 plains, almost everywhere watered by considerable rivers with their 

 numerous affluents, and covered with a luxuriant vegetation, espe- 

 cially in the south, which in some places seems a garden in perpetual 



