( 48) 
in the three districts of Biscaya, Guiposcoa, and 
Alava. “In running over these, every thing one 
finds is animated by the presence of liberty and in- 
dustry; nothing can be more charming than the 
coasts, nothing more attractive than the culture of 
the valleys. Throughout the thirty leagues that 
separate Bedassos from Vittoria, every quarter of an 
hour we discover some well-built village, or comfort- 
able cottage.’(1) , 
How different is the aspect of the other provinces ! 
In these,.not more than two third 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.(2) Ten of the fourteen leagues that tra- 
verse the dutchy of Medina Sidonia, consist altoge- 
ther of pasturage. There is no where a vestige of 
man; not an orchard, not a garden, not a ditch, not 
a cottage to be seen! The great proprietor appears 
to reign, like the lion in the desert, repulsing by his 
roaring all who would approachhim. But, instead of 
human colonies, we encounter troops of horned cat- 
tle and of mares, wandering, self-directed, over 
plains to which the eye can discover no boundary or 
barrier, and which brings to one’s recollection the 
days when the beasts shared with man the empire of 
the earth,”’(3) 
« (1) Burgoing’s modern Spain, vol. i. 
(2) Borde’s Iteneraire de Espagne, vol. iv. p. 30. 
(3) Burgoing. Spain has been long renowned for its horses. The Romans in set- 
tling their pedigree and illustrating their swiftness, called them ‘the children of the 
winds,’ 
