ANDALTJCIA. 



9 



Morena form the entire northern boundary, continued by the 

 Sierra de Aroche to the frontier of Portugal, and thence, by 

 a lesser chain, to the Atlantic once more. The short coast- 

 line between Trafalgar and Huelva thus forms, as it were, 

 the only opening to this favoured land, secure in a moun- 

 tain-setting — the gem for which contending races fought for 

 centuries, and from whose southernmost rock the British 

 flag floats over the bristling battlements of Gibraltar. 



To see Andalucia, the traveller must ride. In a wide 

 and wild land, where distances are great and the heat 

 greater, where roads, rail, and bridges exist not, the saddle 

 is the only means of locomotion. In Spain nothing can 

 be done on foot : in a land of caballeros even the poorest 

 bestrides his borrico. The traveller becomes an integral 

 part of his beast, and his resting-place, the village posada, 

 is half-inn, half-stable, where he must provide for the 

 needs of his four-footed friend before he thinks of his own. 

 A ride through the wilder regions, and especially among 

 the sierras, involves, however, an amount of forethought 

 and provision that, to those unacquainted with the cosas de 

 Espaiia, would be well nigh incredible. In the open 

 country no one lives, and nothing can be obtained, or, at 

 least, it is unsafe to rely on it for anything.. Thus one is 

 obliged to carry from the town all the necessaries of life — 

 an elastic, indefinite expression, it is true. What serves 

 amply for one man may imply discomfort and misery to 

 another : still, there remains for all an irreducible mini- 

 mum, and only those who have tested their requirements 

 in the field know how numerous and bulky remains this 

 absolutely indispensable " balance." First there is provend 

 for the beasts ; heavy sacks of grain, straw, &c, necessitating 

 mules to carry them, and this, in turn, nearly doubling the 

 quantity. Thus an expedition of a fortnight or so signi- 

 fies nothing less than the transport of huge mule-loads of 

 impedimenta, the most bulky of which are for the use of 

 the beasts themselves : though the indispensables for their 

 riders are considerable — bread, meat, eggs and oranges, 

 skins of wine, and, in most cases, tents with all the para- 

 phernalia of camp-outfit, cooking apparatus, and the rest. 



