20 AGRICULTURE. 



How different is the aspect of the other provinces ! 

 In these not more than two thirds of the earth are 

 cultivated; and " it is not uncommon to travel eight 

 and ten leagues together without finding a trace of 

 human industry. In the district of Badejoz alone 

 is a desert twenty-six leagues in length and twelve 

 in breadth.* Ten of the fourteen leagues that trav- 

 erse the duchy of Medina Sidonia consist alto- 

 gether of pasturage. There is nowhere a vestige 

 of man ; not an orchard, not a garden, not a ditch, 

 not a cottage to be seen ! The great proprietor ap- 

 pears to reign, like the lion in the desert, repulsing 

 by his roaring all who would approach him. But, 

 instead of human colonies, we encounter troops of 

 horned cattle and of mares, wandering, self-directed, 

 over plains to which the eye can discover no bound- 

 ary or barrier, and which brings to one's recollec- 

 tion the days when the beasts shared with man the 

 empire of the earth."f 



" Even when the plough is used, it is little more 

 than a great knife fastened to a stick, that just 

 scratches the surface. The grain is threshed by 

 horses or mules driven over it, or by means of a 

 plank studded with nails or flint stones, and drawn 

 across it.J With even this miserable culture, the 

 land in Andalusia yields considerable crops ; yet are 

 the inhabitants too lazy or too few to gather them 

 together.J This is done by Galiegos, who are the 



* Borde's Itineraire de 1'Espagne, vol. iv., p. 30. 



t Burgoing. Spain has been long renowned for its horses. 

 The Romans, in settling their pedigree and illustrating their 

 swiftness, called them " the children of the winds." 



t Swinburne's Travels, vol. i. A Spanish peasant, who has 

 earned or begged enough for the wants of the day, will refuse to 



earn more, even by running an errand. Striking as this fact is, 

 it does not so well illustrate Spanish indolence as the following 

 anecdote from the same pen : In the great sedition in Madrid, 

 which ended in the defeat of the king and the disgrace of his 

 minister (the Marquis des Suillas), and in its most fervid mo- 

 ments, both parties retired about dinner-time to take their nap 



