Las Hurdes 235 



and equally certainly they are none of Spanish race. The 

 Spanish leave them severely alone — none dwell in Las Hurdes. 

 Being neither ethnologists nor antiquaries, nor even sensational 

 writers, the authors confine themselves to their personal experience, 

 stiffened by a study of what the few Spanish authorities have 

 collated on the subject. 



Whatever their origin may have been, the Hurdanos of to-day 

 are a depraved and degenerate race, to all intents and purposes 

 savages, lost to all sense of self-respect or shame, of honesty or 

 manliness. Too listless to take thought of the most elementary 

 necessities of life, they are content to lead a semi-bestial existence, 

 dependent for subsistence on their undersized goats and swine, 

 on an exiguous and precarious cultivation, eked out by roots 

 and wild fruits such as acorns, chestnuts, etc., and on begging 

 outside their own reoion. 



First, as to their country. Picture a maze of mountains all 

 utterly monotonous in uniform configuration — long straight slopes, 

 each skyline practically parallel with that beyond, bare of 

 trees, but clad in shoulder-high scrub. On approaching from 

 the south, the hills are lower and display delightful variety of 

 heaths (including common heather) ; but as one penetrates 

 northwards, the bush is reduced to the everlasting gum-cistus, 

 and elevations become loftier and more precipitous till they 

 culminate in the sheer rock-walls of the Sierra de Gata. Here, 

 in remote glens, one chances on groves of ilex and cork-oak, 

 whose gnarled boles attest the absence of woodcutters, while huge 

 trunks lie prostrate, decaying from sheer old age. Here and there 

 one sees an ilex enveloped to its summit in parasitic growths of 

 creepers and wild-vine, whose broad, pale-green leaves contrast 

 pleasingly with the dusky foliage and small leaf of its host. 



In the deep gorges or canyons of these mountains are situate 

 the settlements, called Alquerias, of the wild tribes, most of 

 them inaccessible on horseback. That of Romano de Arriba, for 

 example, is plunged in such an abyss that from November to 

 March no ray of sunshine ever reaches it. A similar case is 

 that of Casa Hurdes, which, as seen from the bridle-track leading 

 over the Sierra de Porteros into Castile, appears buried in the 

 bottom of a crevasse. Others, in the reverse, are perched on high, 

 amidst crags that can only l)e surmounted by a severe scramble 

 up broken rock-stairways. 



