WARNINGS FROM HISTORY 303 



its fruits, and the French forests, particularly near 

 the sea, bear witness how rapidly Providence assists 

 a liberal, how sternly she repays a greedy and 

 grasping, cultivator. 



SPAIN 



BY EMIL ROTHE 



UNDER the reign of the Moorish caliphs the Iberian 

 peninsula resembled a vast garden, yielding grain 

 and fruit, of every known variety, in the most perfect 

 quality, and in endless abundance, and thickly 

 populated by a highly cultivated people. But then 

 the sierras and mountain slopes were covered with a 

 luxuriant growth of timber, which was afterwards 

 wantonly destroyed under the rule of the kings. 

 Large herds of half-wild goats and sheep prevented 

 the spontaneous growth of trees on the neglected 

 lands. Now nearly all the plateau-lands of Spain, 

 being fully one-third of the entire area, are desert- 

 like and unfit for agriculture, because of the scarcity 

 of rain and the want of water. Another one-third 

 of the territory is covered with worthless shrubs and 

 thorn-bushes, and affords a scanty pasture for the 

 merino sheep, the number of which is decreasing 

 from year to year. The once delicious climate has 

 * become changeable and rough, since there are no 

 more forests to break the power of the scorching 

 Salano and the cold Galego wind. The average 



