Las Hurdes 236 
and equally certainly they are none of Spanish race. The 
Spanish leave them severely alone—none dwell in Las Hurdes. 
Being neither ethnologists nor antiquaries, nor even sensational 
writers, the authors confine themselves to their personal experience, 
stiffened by a study of what the few Spanish authorities have 
collated on the subject. 
Whatever their origin may have been, the Hurdanos of to-day 
are a depraved and degenerate race, to all intents and purposes 
savages, lost to all sense of self-respect or shame, of honesty or 
manliness. Too listless to take thought of the most elementary 
necessities of life, they are content to lead a semi-bestial existence, 
dependent for subsistence on their undersized goats and swine, 
on an exiguous and precarious cultivation, eked out by roots 
and wild fruits such as acorns, chestnuts, ete., and on begging 
outside their own region. 
First, as to their country. Picture a maze of mountains all 
utterly monotonous in uniform configuration—long straight slopes, 
each skyline practically parallel with that beyond, bare of 
trees, but clad in shoulder-high scrub. On approaching from 
the south, the hills are lower and display delightful variety of 
heaths (including common heather); but as one penetrates 
northwards, the bush is reduced to the everlasting gum-cistus, 
and elevations become loftier and more precipitous till they 
culminate in the sheer rock-walls of the Sierra de Gata. Here, 
in remote glens, one chances on groves of ilex and cork-oak, 
whose gnarled boles attest the absence of woodcutters, while huge 
trunks lie prostrate, decaying from sheer old age. Here and there 
one sees an ilex enveloped to its summit in parasitic growths of 
creepers and wild-vine, whose broad, pale-green leaves contrast 
pleasingly with the dusky foliage and small leaf of its host. 
In the deep gorges or canyons of these mountains are situate 
‘the settlements, called Alquertas, of the wild tribes, most of 
them inaccessible on horseback. That of Romano de Arriba, for 
example, is plunged in such an abyss that from November to 
March no ray of sunshine ever reaches it. A similar case is 
that of Casa Hurdes, which, as seen from the bridle-track leading 
over the Sierra de Portéros into Castile, appears buried in the 
bottom of a crevasse. Others, in the reverse, are perched on high, 
amidst crags that can only be surmounted by a severe scramble 
up broken rock-stairways. 
