CHAPTER XVI 
PERNALES 
A country better adapted by nature for the success of the 
enterprising bandit cannot be conceived. The vast despoblados 
=uninhabited wastes, with scant villages far isolated and lonely 
mountain-tracts where a single desperado commands the way and 
can hold-up a score of passers-by, all lend themselves admirably 
to this peculiar form of industry. And up to quite recent years 
these natural advantages were exploited to the full. Riding 
through the sierras, one notes rude crosses and epitaphs inscribed 
on rocks recording the death of this or that wayfarer. Now 
travellers, as a rule, do not die natural deaths by the wayside ; 
and an inspection of these silent memorials indicates that each 
occupies a site eminently adapted for a quiet murder. Fortu- 
nately, during the last year or two, the extension of the telegraph 
and linking-up of remote hamlets has aided authority practically 
to extinguish brigandage on the grander scale. Spain to-day 
can no longer claim a single artist of the Jack Sheppard or 
Dick Turpin type; not one heroic murderer such as José Maria 
(whose safe-conduct was more effective than that of his king), 
Vizco el Borje, Agua-Dulce, and other ladrones en grande whose 
life-histories will be found outlined in Wild Spain. 
The two first-named represent a type of manhood one cannot 
but admire—admire despite oneself and despite its inconvenience to 
civilisation. These were men ignorant of fear, who, though them- 
selves gentle, were yet able, by sheer force of iron will, to command 
and control cut-throat gangs which set authority at defiance, and 
who subjected whole districts to their anarchical aims and orders. 
The outlaw-overlords ever acted on similar lines. Respecting 
human life as, in itself, valueless, they commandeered real 
value by an adroit combination of liberally subsidising the 
peasantry while yet terrorising all by the certainty of swift and 
174 
