nd that cruelty is
a characteristic of the Catalan race is also only too well known. No
other people would tolerate such cruelty; and that it is a disgrace to
the nineteenth century every intelligent person outside of Spain will
admit.

It is a very interesting fact, but seldom realized, that Spain in the
time of Julius Caesar contained nearly eighty millions of inhabitants,
but to-day it has less than eighteen millions. In glancing at the map it
will be perceived that Spain is a very large country, comprising nearly
the whole of the southern peninsula of Europe (Portugal being confined
to a small space), and extending north and south over six hundred miles.
It is about double the size of Great Britain, and is rich in every known
mineral, though she is poor enough in the necessary energy and
enterprise requisite to improve her extraordinary possibilities. In many
sections of the country great natural fertility is apparent, but nature
has to perform the lion's share of the work. We were told by intelligent
residents that many parts of Andalusia, for instance, could not be
exceeded for rural beauty and fertility in any part of Europe, though we
saw no satisfactory evidence of this; indeed, what we did see led to a
contrary conclusion. In the environs of Malaga and the southern province
generally, there are orange, lemon, and olive groves miles in extent;
and the Moors had a poetical saying that this favored region was dropped
from paradise, but there is more of poetry than truth in the legend.
What is required is good cultivation and skilled agricultural
enterprise. These would develop a different condition of affairs, and
give to legitimate enterprise a rich reward. The sugar-cane, the
grape-vine, the fig-tree, and the productive olive, mingling with the
myrtle and the laurel, gratify the eye in and about the immediate
district of Malaga; but as one advances inland, the products become
natural or wild, cultivation primitive and only partial; grain fields
are sparse, and one is often led to draw disparaging contrasts between
this country and those of more ambitious and industrious agricultural
nations.

While the more practical traveler is filled with a sense of
disappointment at the paucity of thrift and vegetation, the poet and the
artist will still find enough to delight the eye and fire the
imagination in Spain. The ever transparent atmosphere, and the lovely
cloud effects that prevail, are accompaniments which will