An Abandoned Province 227 



bristles with battlements, towers, and spires — that is Trujillo, an 

 old-world fortress of the Caesars, crowning a granite koppie in 

 yon everlasting plain. The ten leagues that yet intervene recall, 

 in colour and contour, a mid-Northumbrian moor, wild and bleak 

 — here the home of bustards, stone-curlew, sand-grouse, . . . and 

 of locusts. 



From the topmost turrets of Trujillo let us take one more 

 survey of this Estremenian wilderness ere yet we pronounce a 

 final judgment. 



Ascend the belfry of Santa Maria la Mayor and you command 



TRUJILLO 



an unrivalled view. Spread out beneath your gaze stretch away 

 tawny expanses of waste and veld to a radius averaging forty 

 miles, and everywhere girt-in by encircling mountains. To the 

 north Gredos' snowy peaks pierce the clouds, 100 kilometres away, 

 with the Sierra de Gata on their left, Bejar on the right. To the 

 eastward the Sierra de Guadalupe,^ far-famed for its shrine to 

 Our Lady of that ilk, closes that horizon ; while to westward 

 the ranores of Sta. Cruz and Montanches shut in the frontier of 

 Portugal. What a panorama — a circle eighty miles across ! 



Yet in all that expanse you can detect no more evidence of 



' This range is, in fact, a northern ontspiir of the Moutes de Toledo, which occupy the 

 whole s})ace betwixt Tagus and Guadiana. Its highest peak, La Cabeza del More, reaches 

 5110 feet. 



