ANDALUCIA. 



Andalucia is a land of vine-clad slopes and olivares ; of 

 boundless prairies and corn lands where rude old-world 

 tillage leaves undisturbed the giant of European game- 

 birds, the Great Bustard, pushed back by modern cultiva- 

 tion from northern fields ; a land of vast trackless heaths 

 aromatic of myrtle and mimosa, lentisk and palmetto, 

 alternating with park-like self-sown woods of cork-oak and 

 chestnut, ilex and wild olive, carpeted between in spring- 

 time with wondrous wealth of flowers — lonely scenes, 

 rarely traversed save by the muleteer. For Spain is a 

 land where the mule and donkey still represent the chief 

 means of transport — not yet, nor for many a year, to be 

 displaced by steam and rail. Through every mountain- 

 pass, along every glen of her sierras, across each scrub- 

 clad plain and torrid clehesa, still file long teams of laden 

 pack animals urged townwards by sullen muleteer : or, 

 when returning to his pueblo among the hills, himself and 

 beasts in happier mood, and sitting sideways on the hind- 

 most, he sings his songs of love and wrong, no tune or 

 words of modern ring, but those in which the history of 

 his race is told ; now sinking to a dirge-like cadence, anon 

 in high-pitched protests of defiance — songs that ever have 

 been sung since the Arab held his sway over a proud but 

 conquered people. Truly the arriero is a type of rural 

 Spain : his monotonous chant, and the gaudy trappings of 

 his mule-team appearing and disappearing with every 

 winding of the mountain-track, bespeak the spirit of the 

 sierra. In all these and in a host of cognate scenes and 

 sounds, in the grandeur of untamed nature, and in the 

 freedom and inborn grace of a rarely favoured people, 

 there springs a perennial charm to the traveller, a restful 

 refreshing draught of laissez /aire, and a glimpse into a 

 long-past epoch that can hardly be enjoyed elsewhere 

 in Europe. Here of old fierce fights were fought for 

 this rich prize in soil and climate ; its fabled fertility 

 attracting hither in turn the legions of Eome, the Goths, 

 and, last, the Moorish hordes, to conquer and to hold for 

 seven hundred years. 



The Province of Andalucia with its corn-plains and vine- 



