184 



Unexplored Spain 



Farther north, where the Toledan mountains loom hlue over 

 the western horizon, La Mancha refuses to produce anything. 



The unsympathetic earth, for 100 miles a sterile hungry 

 crust, stony and sun-scorched, ol)trudes an almost hideous 

 nakedness, its dry bones declining to he clad, save in flints or 

 fragments of lava and splintered granite. Wherever nature is 

 a trifle less austere, a low growth of dwarf broom and helian- 

 themum at least serves to vary the dreariness of dry prairie- 

 o-rass. There, beneath the foothills of the wild Montes de Toledo, 

 stretch whole regions where thorn-scrub and broken belts of 

 open wood vividly recall the scenery of equatorial Africa — we 

 might be traversing the " Athi Plains " instead of European 





WOODCHAT SHRIKE AND ITS "SHAMBLES" 



(Sketched in La Mancha) 



lands. Evergreen oak and wild-olive replace mimosa and thorny 

 acacia — one almost expects to see the towering heads of girafl"es 

 projecting above the grey-green bush. In both cases there is 

 driven home that living sense of arid sterility, the same sense 

 of desolation — nay, here even more so — since there is lacking that 

 wondrous wild fauna of the other. No troops of graceful gazelles 

 bound aside before one's approach ; no herds of zebra or 

 antelope adorn the farther veld ; no galloping files of shaggy 

 gnus spurn the plain. A chance covey of redlegs, a hoopoe or 

 two, the desert-loving wheatears — birds whose presence ever 

 attests sterility — a company of azure-winged magpies chattering 

 among the stunted ilex, or a woodchat — that is all one may 

 see in a long day's ride. 



Another feature common to both lands — and one abhorrent 

 to northern eye — is the absence of water, stagnant or current. 



