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riding. Carmona stands on the top of a precipitous hill, round which
winds the beginning of the road; below, after many zigzags, I saw its
continuation, a straight white line reaching as far as I could see. In
Andalusia, till a few years ago, there were practically no high roads,
and even now they are few and bad. The chief communication from town to
town is usually an uneven track, which none attempts to keep up, with
deep ruts, and palmetto growing on either side, and occasional pools of
water. A day's rain makes it a quagmire, impassable for anything beside
the sure-footed mule.

I went on, meeting now and then a string of asses, their panniers filled
with stones or with wood for Carmona; the drivers sat on the rump of the
hindmost animal, for that is the only comfortable way to ride a donkey.
A peasant trotted briskly by on his mule, his wife behind him with her
arms about his waist. I saw a row of ploughs in a field; to each were
attached two oxen, and they went along heavily, one behind the other in
regular line. By the side of every pair a man walked bearing a long
goad, and one of them sang a _Malaguena_, its monotonous notes rising
and falling slowly. From time to time I passed a white farm, a little
way from the road, invitingly cool in the heat; the sun began to beat
down fiercely. The inevitable storks were perched on a chimney, by their
big nest; and when they flew in front of me, with their broad white
wings and their red legs against the blue sky, they gave a quaint
impression of a Japanese screen.

A farmhouse such as this seems to me always a type of the Spanish
impenetrability. I have been over many of them, and know the manner of
their rooms and the furniture, the round of duties there performed and
how the day is portioned out; but the real life of the inhabitants
escapes me. My knowledge is merely external. I am conscious that it is
the same of the Andalusians generally, and am dismayed because I know
practically nothing more after a good many years than I learnt in the
first months of my acquaintance with them. Below the superficial
similarity with the rest of Europe which of late they have acquired,
there is a difference which makes it impossible to get at the bottom of
their hearts. They have no openness as have the French and the Italians,
with whom a good deal of intimacy is possible even to an Englishman, but
on the contrary an Eastern reserve which continually baffles me. I
cannot realis