312 



WILD SPAIN. 



descries a man working on some jutting point or tiny 

 patch of tillage so steep that a stone would hardly 

 lie. All these folk, towards nightfall, betake themselves 

 to the quaint but unsavoury hamlets that hang on some 

 ridge of the sierra — and not the human folk only, but 

 the pigs, the goats, and the donkeys forbye— each beast 

 making straight for its own abode. Along each rock- 

 paved street at dusk they come at a run, looking neither 

 to right nor left till each beast bolts, without ceremony, 

 into its own abode. Some five-and-twentv of the larger 





'^%S • 



-at. 



OUR QUARTERS AT QUENTAR DEL RIO. 



" domestic " animals (I take no count of dogs, hens, or 

 the Hke) shared with me and sundry natives our scanty 

 lodgment, whence at earliest dawn the braying of asses, 

 cock-crowing, and porcine squalls, drove us betimes of a 



morning. 



In one hill-village, there being no posada, we put up in 

 the outhouse of a mill : but, amidst sacks of grain and 

 malodorous mules, we passed a lively evening, for one by one 

 the serranos dropped in to chat with the " Ipf-^Joes " ] the 



