24 Unexplored Spain 



thus under canvas — whether on the sierras and marismas of 

 Spain, on hi<;h fjeld or dark forest in Scandinavia, or on Afric's 

 blazinij veld. 



Should some remarks (here or elsewhere in this book) appear 

 self-contradictory the reason will be found rather in our inadequate 

 expression than in any confusion of idea. We love Spain 

 primarily because she is wild and waste ; but, loving her, are 

 naturally desirous that she should advance to that position among 

 nations that is her due. Such material development, nevertheless, 

 need not — and will not — imply the total destruction of her wild 

 beauties. Development on those lines would not consist with 

 the peculiar genius of the Spanish race, and, while we trust the 

 development will come, we fear no such collateral results. Take, 

 for instance, the corn-lands. There the great bustard is alike the 

 index and the price of vast, unwieldy farms unfenced and but 

 half tilled, remote from rail, road, or market. That condition we 

 neither expect nor hope to see exchanged for smug fields with a 

 network of railways. For "three acres and a cow " is not the 

 line of Spanish regeneration ; it is rather a claptrap catch-word 

 of politicians — a murrain on the lot of them I 



True, the plan seems to answer in Denmark, and if the Danes 

 are satisfied, well and good — that is no business of ours. But no 

 such mathematical and Procrustean restriction of vital energies 

 and ambitions will subserve our British race, nor the Spanish. 

 In Spanish sierra may the howl of the wolf at dawn never be 

 replaced by blast from factory siren, nor the curling blue smoke 

 of the charcoal-burner in primeval forest be abolished in favour 

 of black clouds belching from bristling chimneys that pierce a 

 murky sky. Either in such circumstance would be misplaced. 



Similarly, w^hen the engineer shall have been turned loose in 

 the Spanish marismas, he can, beyond all doubt, destroy them 

 for ever. His straight lines and intersecting canals, hideous in 

 utilitarian rectitude, would right soon demolish that glory of 

 lonely desolation — those leagues of marshland, samphire, and 

 glittering lucio. And all for nothing ! Since the desecration 

 will not " pay " financially — the reason we give in detail elsewhere 

 — and you sacrifice for a shadow some of the grandest bits of wild 

 nature that yet survive — the finest length and breadth of utter 

 abandonment that still enrich a humdrum Europe. Should 

 " progress " only advance on these lines no scrap of that continent 



