Las Hurdes 241 
mountains. On our asking one of these (he had served at Melilla), 
“Why ?” his reply was, “ for liberty.” ? 
There is a villainous custom in vogue that hurls these poor 
wretches yet farther down the bottomless pit. This abomination 
rages to-day as it did a hundred years ago: we therefore again 
leave old Pascual Madoz to tell the tale in his own words :— 
Many women make a miserable livelinood—it is indeed their only 
industry—by rearing foundling infants from the hospitals of Ciudad 
Rodrigo and Placencia. So keen are they of the money thus obtained 
that one woman, aided by a goat, will undertake to rear three or four 
babes—all necessarily so ill-tended and ill-fed as rather to resemble 
living spectres than human beings. Cast down on beds of filthy ferns 
and lacking all maternal care, the majority perish from hunger, cold, and 
neglect. The few that reach childhood are weaklings for life, feeble and 
infirm. 
This repulsive “industry” continues to-day, a sum of three 
dollars a month being paid by the authorities of the cities named 
to rid themselves of each undesired infant. The effect—direct 
and incidental—upon morals and sexual relationship in the 
alquerias of the Hurdes may (in degree) be deduced—it cannot 
be set down in words. Thus the single point of contact with 
civilisation serves but to accentuate the degradation. 
1 The Hurdanos, we were told, make bad soldiers. Being despised by their comrades, 
they are only employed on the menial work of the barracks. Many, from long desuetude, 
are unable to wear boots. 
