354 Notes and Gleanings, 



people. Perhaps, had I by mule-path or foot-path penetrated more into the 

 interior of the country, it might have been different : but as I passed over many 

 of the great routes of intercommunication, stopping in the cities, and saw the 

 people occupied in the fields and workshops, or engaged in the traffic of the 

 streets, 1 failed to observe any of those peculiarities that I had been led to 

 expect, and such as mark a low state of civilization ; and this not among the 

 •well-to-do classes only (for such in all nations are very much the same), but 

 among the peasantry and laborers, truer types of national character. It may be 

 and probably is true, that Spain has not made the same progress as some 

 other European States. The same evidence of an advanced state of the arts 

 and sciences, of commercial enterprise and activity, of scientific agriculture, of 

 skill in mechanical and other industrial pursuits, that meets one everywhere in 

 France as soon as the frontier is passed, would be sought in vain in Spain. 

 But it is hardly fair to compare the reported most backward with the ac- 

 knowledged most advanced of European nations ; and all that I intend to say 

 is, that to the passing traveller there is nothing to prove any essential differ- 

 ence between Spaniards and the people of some other parts of Southern 

 Europe. So, too, with respect to the country: I found that my previous' 

 conceptions of it were as much at fault as were those with regard to its 

 people. I had formed the idea that Spain consisted mainly of chains of 

 mountains, of high wind-swept table-lands, and broad arid plains destitute 

 of verdure, and unfit for cultivation. And this idea was riot wholly incor- 

 rect ; for besides the chain of the Pyrenees that separates it from France, and 

 the hills that on the south follow the shores of the Mediterranean, various 

 ranges of mountains intersect its territory in different directions. Aragon 

 seems one great table-land ; and, in old Castile, the wide corn-producing plains 

 extend for more than a hundred miles in length. But the mistake was in sup- 

 posing that much of it was but barrenness and desolation. Instead of this, I 

 found, as it seemed to me, if not a land flowing with milk and honey, one that 

 at least presented more than the usual average amount of fertile soil, although 

 the advantages afforded by this natural fertility had failed to be improved. Of 

 the mountain-chains, some are barren rocks destitute of vegetation ; while others 

 are capable of cultivation on their lower slopes, if not to their very summits ; 

 and still others are covered with forests : among them, too, are scattered fertile 

 valleys, that not unfrequently swell out into broad plains. A large proportion 

 of the high table-lands seems fit for cultivation, and the broad plains appear to be 

 well adapted to the production of the cereals and other crops. Indeed, it appeared 

 to me that good tilth and a judicious system were alone wanting to again make 

 Spain as productive as it is said to have been under the Romans. One of the 

 greatest if not the only real obstacle to successful agriculture, is, I should think, 

 the want of water. The climate is hot and dry. In winter, there is some wet 

 weather ; but, after March, but little rain falls, except occasionally in a shower. 

 This renders irrigation or some artificial means of supplying water in some 

 parts of the country necessary. Irrigation was largely practised by the Moors 

 when they possessed the country; and, in some instances, the present possessors 

 of the soil make use of the means they provided to secure a supply of the needed 



