284 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Herbert Corey 



THE PORTAI,S OP THE HOTEL DPv VII^E, 

 ANDORRA 



The arms and the Republic's motto, "Domus 

 Concilii, Sedes Justicias," are above the door. 

 The horses of the 24 councilmen are stabled 

 on the ground floor when they meet. The 

 deputies sleep, eat, and cook their own meals 

 on the second floor. 



the most decorative fashion along rocky 

 slopes that seemed hardly fit for sheep 

 pasture. It was as though a mural artist 

 of the Titans had painted garlands on 

 the canyon walls. 



The carrier's cart jolted into Puig- 

 cerda through a country that might he 

 France, except that a political accident 

 made it Spain. Mountains hem in the 

 little valley in which this old town stands. 

 The trees were of that gray green to 

 which one is accustomed across the bor- 

 der. The sound of running water fills 

 the land. Everywhere little rills prattle 

 down from the mountains and are 

 trapped in irrigating ditches and tinkle 

 away over stones and under overhanging 

 tufts of sod in the most friendly and in- 

 timate fashion. 



At first one wonders at the work that 

 has been done upon this country, in com- 

 paring it to some portions of our own 

 barb-wired and clapboarded farming 

 States. The fences are boulder walls and 

 the houses are of heavy stone; the ir- 

 rigating flumes and larger canals are of 

 rockwork that would almost withstand 

 an earthquake and are concreted against 

 the loss of a single drop. Then one re- 

 calls something of history. Men have 

 been at work on these farms for more 

 than thirteen hundred years. There was 

 a bishopric at Urgel, the next stop after 

 Puigcerda on the road to Andorra, in the 

 sixth century, and the same bishopric is 

 still there. Puigcerda was the capital of 

 the land of Cerdagne more than a thou- 

 sand years ago. There is a marble tablet 

 in the old church which tells of the burial 

 of a well-loved lady in 1310, and Puig- 

 cerda and the church were gray in age 

 even then. 



WOMAN AND DONKEY TOIL TOGETHER 



At first one looks with a wholly Amer- 

 ican contempt on plowing done by oxen 

 and marketing in which an old woman 

 collaborates with a panniered donkey; 

 but this gives way to respect. The farm- 

 ers here make their hay with wooden 

 forks cut from a conveniently molded 

 sapling. After the mules have trodden 

 out the grain they toss the wheat into the 

 air from wooden shovels for the wind to 

 winnow it, just as the Moors did before 

 they were driven out of Cerdagne. The 



