226 



WILD SPAIN. 



Then follows the threshing of the corn, an operation 

 which is carried on with the primitive simplicity of the 

 patriarchs of old — perhaps on precisely the same lines. 

 The sheaves are brought from the stubble on creaking 

 bullock-carts, and thrown on the era, or threshing-ground, 

 a hardened level space adjoining the farm. Here it is 

 threshed — or rather trodden out under foot by the yeguas — 

 brood-mares, a team of which are kept briskly trotting over 

 the circle of outstrewn sheaves, driven on by a man who 

 stands in the centre. With a long whip and the skill of a 

 circus manager, he drives the mares in circles, round 

 and round — this is the only duty asked of the yeguas 

 all the year, except that of maternity. Amidst clouds of 

 dust and heat the sweating animals are urged on till the 

 corn and brittle straw is trodden into finest chaff. Then 

 the mares are rested, the grain and chaff pushed aside to 

 make room for fresh sheaves, and the operation is repeated 

 till all the produce has been trodden out. 



The next process is to throw the broken corn high in air. 

 with broad wooden shovels. The wind serves to separate 

 the grain from the chaff, the former falling in heaps on the 

 earth, while the lighter material drifts away to leeward. 

 The grain is gathered into sacks, loaded upon donkeys, and 

 away goes the team to the owner's granary in the town : 

 as many as three score, and more, of patient barricos may 

 often at this season be seen plodding along the dusty 

 byeway. Similarly one sees, at the same season, the casks 

 of newly-pressed wine being jolted along on bullock-carts 

 towards the town, along rough roads or tracks that will not 

 be required again till the same traffic occurs after the next 

 year's vintage. 



The broken straw and chaff is stored in large stacks, to 

 form the staple food for horses and cattle during the 

 winter : and is indeed of good quality, affording as much 

 nutriment as the best hay, of which none is grown in this 

 southern land.* 



* Though no hay is made expressly, yet the sun-baked herbage, 

 called pastos, of the fallows and winter grazings is practically equiva- 

 lent to hay found ready-made. 



