THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



285 



Photograph by Jose B. Alemany 

 THE BYZANTINE CHURCH OF SANTA COLOMA, ANDORRA REPUBLIC 



plows never have more than one handle 

 and are sometimes mere crooks of wood 

 shod with iron. But the sheaves piled 

 high in the fields told of an intensive cul- 

 tivation that has only made these fields 

 more fertile in the centuries of use. 



I had already learned there are two 

 sorts of Spaniards. At Barcelona one is 

 asked if one speaks Castilian or Catalan. 

 At Puigcerda my national pride was 

 somewhat abated by the discovery that 

 there are two sorts of Americans. I 

 sought to negotiate with the soft-voiced 

 girl in the shop nearest the hotel for 

 some postcards. A question revealed my 

 status. 



"Mother," she cried. "Mother, here 

 is an American." 



Mother came from the dark rear of 

 the little establishment and smiled in a 

 pleasant and wholly friendly curiosity. 

 At first she was incredulous. Upon lis- 

 tening to the disjointed conversation she 

 made known the reason for this skepti- 

 cism. 



"The stranger," said she, "is a French- 

 man. Does he not speak French?" 



"He is a North American," the daugh- 

 ter explained. 



It was most flattering to have my 

 French accepted at its face value. Here- 

 tofore it has only passed current among 

 the graduates of schools of languages. 

 Perhaps my heavy buying of postcards 

 gave the girl a clue to my habitat, for 

 she asked me if I had ever been in New 

 York. Upon the admission she fairly 

 beamed. 



"I have something here from New 

 York," said she. 



She delved under the counter and pro- 

 duced a pasteboard box in which car- 

 tridges had been shipped by a firm in 

 New York State, and pointed out the 

 name to me in real pride. We turned it 

 over and over in our hands as though it 

 were a curio. She seemed to have kept 

 the box in much the same spirit in which 

 our grandmothers once kept the lac- 

 quered packages in which tea had been 

 shipped from China. 



