dred and twenty-five thousand, made up
of a community of more than average respectability, though beggars are
found to be very annoying in the public streets. The old Moorish castle
crowning the seaward heights has been converted into a modern fortress,
affording a charming view from its battlements. In the squares and
streets, as well as in the market-place, women sit each morning weaving
fresh-cut flowers of rose-buds, mignonette, pansies, violets, and
geraniums into pretty little clusters, of which they sell many as
button-hole bouquets. One may be sure there is always a refined element
in the locality, whether otherwise visible or not, where such an
appreciation is manifested. The bull-fight may thrive, the populace may
be riotous, education at a very low ebb, and art almost entirely
neglected; but when a love of nature is evinced in the appreciation of
beautiful flowers, there is still extant on the popular heart the
half-effaced image of its Maker.

It is an interesting fact that Spain, in the time of Julius Caesar,
contained nearly eighty million inhabitants, but to-day it has less than
eighteen million. By glancing at the map it will be perceived that
Spain is a large country, comprising nearly the whole of the southern
peninsula of Europe, Portugal being confined to a very small space. It
is about double the size of Great Britain, and is rich in every known
mineral, though poor enough in the necessary energy and enterprise
requisite to improve such possibilities. In many sections of the country
great natural fertility is apparent, but nature has to perform the
lion's share of the work in producing crops. In the environs of Malaga,
and the southern provinces generally, there are orange, lemon, and olive
groves miles in extent. 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 really required is good cultivation
and skilled agricultural enterprise. These would develop a very
different condition of affairs and give to legitimate effort 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 district of Malaga; but as one advances inland, the products
become natural or wild, cultivation primitive and only partial,
grain-fields being scarce and universal neglect the prominent feature.

[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF T