228 



WILD SPAIN. 



tnano negro,, and this year in that anarchical furor which, 

 on both occasions, was expiated on the scaffold. 



Agriculture in Spam is thus deprived of that gratia 

 which in other lands distinguishes it from other commer- 

 cial pursuits. It is devoid of that loving, homely interest 

 that in England attaches to it, making the cultivation of 

 the soil — at least when conducted (willingly) by the land- 

 owner — something of a recreation or " labour of love." 

 Here, nothing beyond elementary and imperative opera- 

 tions are carried on — those which a rule-of-thumb ex- 

 perience has shown to give fairly good results with a 

 minimum of trouble. Experiments are things unknown. 

 There is a settled conviction among the agricultural class 

 that improvement is impossible, that their patriarchal 

 system represents perfection. Eeward is looked for rather 

 in a twenty or thirty-fold return once in every four 

 or five years by luck of favouring climatic conditions, than 

 sought to be assured by skill and the adoption of modern 

 modes of tillage. 



Corn-growing nevertheless does pay in Spain, owing to 

 the import-duty on foreign grain, which ensures a profit 

 to the home-producer. But fortunes realized on the 

 cortijo are always ascribed rather to a run of good luck 

 than to any other specific cause. 



He would be a bold man who departed from the 

 traditional systems in vogue since time began, in this land 

 where " whatever is is best." And a strange fatality does 

 await experimental changes. The very soil seems to 

 repel innovation. A firm of practical English agricul- 

 turists failed signally some thirty years ago, and one still 

 hears it satirically told how the deep-searching iron 

 ploughshares from Inglaterra left offended fields which 

 for years afterwards refused to yield a crop. 



The minor accessories of farming, such as the dairy, 

 poultry and the stock-yard, which, we are told, 

 stand between many an English farmer and ruin, are 

 here ignored. For this, however, there is some excuse 

 in the vexatious and mistaken system of the octroi (con- 

 sumos), under which farm-produce and consumables of 



