An Abandoned Province 227 
bristles with battlements, towers, and spires—that is Trujillo, an 
old-world fortress of the Caesars, crowning a granite koppie in 
yon everlasting plain. The ten leagues that yet intervene recall, 
in colour and contour, a mid-Northumbrian moor, wild and bleak 
—here the home of bustards, stone-curlew, sand-erouse, . . . and 
of locusts. 
From the topmost turrets of Trujillo let us take one more 
survey of this Estremenian wilderness ere yet we pronounce a 
final judgement. 
Ascend the belfry of Santa Maria la Mayor and you command 
TRUJILLO 
an unrivalled view. Spread out beneath your gaze stretch away 
tawny expanses of waste and veld to a radius averaging forty 
miles, and everywhere girt-in by encircling mountains. To the 
north Grédos’ snowy peaks pierce the clouds, 100 kilometres away, 
with the Sierra de Gata on their left, Bejar on the right. To the 
eastward the Sierra de Guadalupe,’ far-famed for its shrine to 
Our Lady of that ilk, closes that horizon; while to westward 
the ranges of Sta. Cruz and Montanches shut in the frontier of 
Portugal. What a panorama—a circle eighty miles across ! 
Yet in all that expanse you can detect no more evidence of 
1 This range is, in fact, a northern outspur of the Montes de Toledo, which occupy the 
whole space betwixt Tagus and Guadiana. Its highest peak, La Cabeza del Moro, reaches 
5110 feet. 
