ere should be smiling homesteads and
blooming gardens everywhere, trees and grateful shade where now the
ground, between the rainy seasons, becomes all of one dusty, half-burnt
colour, reminding one more of the "back of a mangy camel," as it has
been described, than of a country that has once been fruitful and
productive.

The late General Concha, Marques del Duero, was the originator of
sugar-cane cultivation. He spent a large portion of his private fortune
in establishing what bids fair to be one of the most productive
industries of his country. But, like most pioneers of progress, he
reaped no benefit himself. His fine estates near Malaga, with their
productive cane-farms, passed into other hands before he had reaped the
reward of his patriotic endeavours. For a long time the cheap,
bounty-fed beet sugars of Germany, which never approach beyond being an
imitation of real sugar--as every housewife can testify who has tried to
make jam with them--were able to undersell the produce of the cane; but
the latest statistics show that this industry is now making steady
progress, the production of 1899 being thirty-one thousand tons, or
exactly three times that of 1899. _A propos_ of the difference between
cane and beet sugars for all domestic purposes, and the superior
cheapness of the more costly article, it is satisfactory to note that in
England the working classes, through their own co-operative societies,
insist on being supplied with the former, knowing by experimental proof
its immense superiority; and one may hope that their wisdom may spread
into households where the servants pull the wires, and care nothing
about economy.

Looking at the ordinary map of Spain, it appears to be ridiculous to say
that the greater part of the country is in want of water. Although it is
intersected by three large ranges of mountains beyond the Pyrenees, and
innumerable others of smaller dimensions, thus making a great proportion
of the country impossible for agriculture, it is rich in magnificent
rivers and in smaller ones, all of which are allowed to run to waste in
many parts of the country, while even a small portion of their waters,
artificially dammed and utilised for irrigation, if only of the lands
lying on each side of them, would mean wealth and prosperity and an
abounding population where now the "everlasting sun" pours its rays over
barren wastes. Moreover, by the growth of the wood, which once covered
the plains and has b