THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



281 



SKETCH MAP OF SPAIN, SHOWING LOCATION OF ANDORRAN REPUBLIC ON THE 



FRENCH BORDER 



whip-popping and the shouts which ac- 

 companied failed to stir the leaders into 

 action, it was the old man's habit to lay 

 aside his reins entirely and whack the 

 mule until the noise startled into action 

 the team ahead. One agreed with the 

 mule that this seemed hardly fair. 



From time to time the items of the 

 human cargo changed. The home-com- 

 ing boy, who had worked in a restaurant 

 in Seville, was distressingly inquisitive. 

 He had a few words of French, and kept 

 at me until he had extracted every bit of 

 information that our joint vocabularies 

 could convey. Then he told the others. 



His round, china-blue eyes stared un- 

 winkingly during the eight hours of our 

 cart companionship, but what he missed 

 in courtesy was more than atoned for by 

 the other passengers. Not one gave me 

 more than a glance on entering, though 

 they listened to the boy's story with 

 grave attention. A girl insisted on shar- 

 ing a basket of fruit, and a bent old 

 peasant woman on her way to work in 



the high fields, a leather bottle across her 

 knees and her wardrobe in a pathetic 

 little basket, helped to find lunch in a 

 wayside inn. The pretty daughter of a 

 hidalgo of the countryside pointed out 

 the views that were revealed at each turn 

 as we climbed the pass. 



A MOUNTAIN COUNTRY RESEMBLING 

 COLORADO 



For the better part of sixty kilometers 

 to Puigcerda, we drove through a moun- 

 tain country familiar in every gray hill 

 and green valley to one who knows our 

 own Colorado. Sheep dotted the land- 

 scape, and the narrow meadows were 

 farmed to the last inch. Now and then 

 a golden ribbon wound about the dark 

 shoulder of a hill where grain was being 

 harvested. A terrace had been built 

 there and fertile earth carried in baskets 

 and the water from some overdaring 

 spring coaxed to vivify it. Some of these 

 little hillside fields seemed no wider than 

 a cradle blade is long, and wandered in 



