184 Unexplored Spain 
Farther north, where the Toledan mountains loom blue over 
the western horizon, La Mancha refuses to produce anything. 
The unsympathetic earth, for 100 miles a sterile hungry 
erust, stony and sun-scorched, obtrudes an almost hideous 
nakedness, its dry bones declining to be clad, save in flints or 
fragments of lava and splintered granite. Wherever nature is 
a trifle less austere, a low growth of dwarf broom and helian- 
themum at least serves to vary the dreariness of dry pvrairie- 
grass. There, beneath the foothills of the wild Montes de Toledo, 
stretch whole regions where thorn-scrub and broken belts of 
open wood vividly recall the scenery of equatorial Africa—we 
might be traversing the “Athi Plains” instead of European 
WOODCHAT SHRIKE AND ITS ‘‘SHAMBLES” 
(Sketched in La Mancha) 
lands. Evergreen oak and wild-olive replace mimosa and thorny 
acacia—one almost expects to see the towering heads of giraffes 
projecting above the grey-green bush. In both cases there is 
driven home that living sense of arid sterility, the same sense 
of desolation—nay, here even more so—since there is lacking that 
wondrous wild fauna of the other. No troops of graceful gazelles 
bound aside before one’s approach; no herds of zebra or 
antelope adorn the farther veld; no galloping files of shaggy 
gnus spurn the plain. <A chance covey of redlegs, a hoopoe or 
two, the desert-loving wheatears—birds whose presence ever 
attests sterility—a company of azure-winged magpies chattering 
among the stunted ilex, or a woodchat—that is all one may 
see in a long day’s ride. 
Another feature common to both lands—and one abhorrent 
tv northern eye—is the absence of water, stagnant or current. 
