12 Unexplored Spain 
employing modern agricultural machinery, chemical manures, and 
such-like. Irrigation in a land whose head-waters can be tapped 
at 2000 feet and upwards could be carried out on a larger scale 
and at cheaper rates than in any other European country—yet it 
is practically neclected ; no considerable extension has been made 
to the two million acres of irrigated lands that existed when we 
last wrote, twenty years ago, although the ruined aqueducts of 
Roman, Goth, and Moor are ever present to suggest the silent 
lesson of former foresight and prosperity. 
One incidental circumstance of rural Spain, the fatal effects of 
which are all-penetrating (though it will never ‘be altered), is 
WOODEN PLOUGH-SHARE 
(As still commonly used. ) 
absenteeism on the part of landowners. Not even a tenant- 
farmer will live on his holding. No, he must have his town- 
house, and employ an administrator or agent to superintend the 
farm, only visiting it himself at rare intervals. Oh! that 
hideous nightmare, the hireling, how his dead-weight of apathy 
and dishonesty at secondhand crushes out every spark of interest 
and enterprise, and breeds in their stead a rampant crop of all 
the petty vices and frauds that prey on industry. But that evil 
can hardly be eradicated. 
What we British understand by the expression “ country life ” 
totally fails to commend itself to the more gregarious peoples of 
the south. Rich and poor alike, from grandee to day-labourer, 
the Spanish ignore and disdain the joys of the country. They 
call it the campo and the campo they detest. Each nightfall 
