WILD SPAIN. 



Northern Africa. But it is the peculiar mental cast and 

 temperament of the Spanish race, as much as the ph^'sical 

 causes alluded to, that have develoj^ed those clean-cut 

 differences that to-day distinguish the various Iherian 

 jDrovinces. It is the self-sufficiency, the " provincialism," 

 and careless unthinking disposition of the individual, as 

 much as mountain-barriers, that have separated adjacent 

 provinces as effectually as broad oceans. 



Though springing from a common root, i.e., the blend of 

 Eoman and Phoenician blood \Yith the aboriginal tribes of 

 Iberia, the vicissitudes of twelve centuries of histor}', with 



A GRAXADIXO. 



its successive foreign invasions and occupations, have 

 materially modified the racial characteristics of the Spanish 

 people. The Latin element still predominates, both in type 

 and tongue : but Semitic, Aryan, and even Turanian 

 strains are all present. The Spanish nation of to-day is 

 composed rather of a congeries of heterogeneous peoples 

 and provinces, once separate kingdoms, and still incapable 

 of coherence or of fusion into a concrete whole, than of 

 sections of a single race. Compare the sturdy and indus- 

 trious, albeit somewhat phlegmatic, Galician, the happy 

 despised bondsman, the hewer of w^ood and drawer of 



