152

DEPARTURE FROM MADRID.

LETTER XIV.

A JOURNEY FROM MADRID TO ALICANTE.

CARTHAGENA, Old Spain, November 28, 1857.

We left Madrid on a chilly, rainy morning, the 18th of November, after having waited several days for settled weather, that we might visit Toledo, to which a friend was to accompany us. The fair day for which we were looking had not arrived, and we reluctantly gave up the idea of an excursion to that ancient city, which has preserved so long the works of her Moorish architects, and tokens of the Moorish dominion among the later works of her Gothic builders, and where they yet forge the famous Toledo blade, not quite equal, perhaps, to the cutlery of Sheffield. How many other old cities of Spain we shall have been obliged to leave behind on our journey! Bilbao, Salamanca, Zaragoza, and a dozen more, all of which we should have visited, had we leisure, and the roads and the weather allowed us. We shall leave Spain, also, without a look at those who range the woods of Estremadura; without seeing any thing of Galicia or the Asturias, and other provinces, which, inhabited by races distinct from each other in character, costume and speech, make up what was once the powerful and dreaded monarchy of Spain. To see Spain well, requires time, and we feel that we are

about to leave it without having had more than a mere glimpse of the country and its people.

The wind, as we passed through the walks of the Prado, was tearing off and strewing over the hard-beaten soil the sallow leaves from the elms and other trees, some of which, however, whose foliage had not yet grown old, were still in full leaf, and attested, by the freshness of their verdure, the mildness of the autumnal climate in this capital. To our surprise, for punctuality in the arrangements for travelling is not a common virtue in Spain, the train set out at precisely the appointed hour. It took us along the banks of the Manzanares, beside a canal begun by Ferdinand the Seventh, to connect Madrid with the sea, and after a considerable waste of money abandoned. To the left of our track appeared a church, seated on a high rocky hill, rising out of the plain. "It is the hermitage of Pintovas," said a fellowpassenger. "These churches which you see in solitary places are called hermitages. Until lately, some person devoted to a recluse life had his cell in them, and subsisted on the alms which he got from the faithful. The government has seized upon them, or most of them, professing to regard them as useless for the purpose of public worship, and the hermits, like the monks, have been driven back into the world they had left."

Some forty miles from Madrid we crossed the Tagus, swollen with rain, and carrying to the ocean the soil of Castile in a torrent of yellow mud. Immediately we found ourselves in Aranjuez, among shady walks and trim gardens, rows and

thickets of elms, acacias and planes, plantations of fruit trees flourishing in a rich soil, and abundant springs breaking out at the foot of the declivities, and keeping up a perpetual verdure. Here the royal family of Spain have a country palace, and hither it is their custom to come in spring, when the flowers and the nightingales make their appearance, which is much earlier in Aranjuez than at Madrid; but they leave the place as soon as the summer sets in, on account of the intermittent fevers which prevail here. The grounds are not laid out with any taste, nor could the place be thought remarkably pretty in our country; yet to our eyes, accustomed so long to the brown fields of Castile, it seemed a paradise. But now the walks were slippery with mud, and we were not tempted to stop. We issued from the valley of Aranjuez, and proceeded to Villasequilla, where we had thought to take the road leading up to the rocks on which Toledo is built; but even this place we were obliged to leave behind, on account of the continued bad weather, and passing by a few solitary cottages, scattered at distant intervals along the railway, and inhabited by persons in the service of the proprietors, at the doors of which we saw the comfortable-looking families of the inmates, the train soon whirled us into the province of La Mancha.

In all its provinces which I have seen, Spain needs a reformer like Dr. Piper in our country-some enthusiastic friend of trees, to show the people the folly of stripping a country of its woods; but in no part of the kingdom is he so much needed as in La Mancha. If the Castiles are deplora

bly naked, La Mancha is so in a greater degree, if that be possible. Until you begin to approach the Murcian frontier, La Mancha has scarcely a bush; it has no running streams, and scarce a blade of grass makes itself seen; the only green it has at this season is the springing wheat, which the rains have just quickened, and fields of which lie scattered among the tracts of fallow ground. It is a time of rejoicing in Spain when the rains fall soon after the wheat is sown, for that is the promise of a plenteous harvest. When the plant is once put in a due course of growth by timely moisture, it defies the drought of the succeeding season. The last harvest was uncommonly large, and the people are now looking confidently for another year of abundance. I may mention here that in almost all the districts of Spain which produce wheat, it is the practice to let the soil recover its fertility by rest. The surface of the ground is stirred with a little light plough of the rudest make; the seed is then scattered and covered; the harvest is reaped in due time, a harvest of full, round, heavy grains, yielding the whitest of flour, and then the ground is left untilled in stubble, till it will bear stirring again. No growth of juicy clover, or of the sweet grasses we cultivate for cattle, succeeds that of wheat.

But to return to the subject of trees; they say at Madrid: "Aranjuez is overshadowed with trees, and the place is unhealthy in summer; trees grow along the Manzanares under the walls of our city, and on the banks of that river you have the tertian ague." The answer to this is, that the unhealthiness of Aranjuez is caused by its stagnant waters, and that

156

DREARY ABSENCE OF TREES.

there is no proof that trees make the air in the valley of the Manzanares un wholesome, any more than the pebbles of its stream. It has never been found that the health of a district, subject to fever and ague, has been improved by stripping it of its trees, and letting in the sun, to bake the soil and evaporate the moisture to its unwholesome dregs. It is objected again, in the grain-producing districts of Spain, that trees form a harbor for the birds, which devour their wheat. For these childish reasons, whole provinces, once independent kingdoms, have denied themselves the refreshment of shade and verdure, have hewn down the forests which covered the springs of their rivers and kept them perennial, and withheld the soil from being washed away by the rains, and have let in the winds to sweep over the country unchecked, and winnow its clods to powder.

Ford, in his "Handbook for Travellers,” says that the rivers of the country are constantly diminishing. I do not know what evidence he has to support this assertion; he certainly produces none; but it may be safely taken for granted, that they have now less depth of water in summer than when their sources were shaded by woods, under which a bed of leaves absorbed the rains, and parted with them gradually to the soil, protecting them from a too rapid exhalation. The beds of many of the rivers of Spain are dry for the greater part of the year, and only form a channel for torrents in the rainy season. To renew the groves, which have been improvidently hewn away, would be a difficult task, on account of the present aridity of the soil and air, which are un