an is popularly said
to insist upon even at the cost of a dinner. And when they go out the
grey shawls they wrap about their heads add to their unattractiveness.

IV

[Sidenote: The Swineherd]

But if Ronda itself is a somewhat dull and unsympathetic place with
nothing more for the edification of the visitor than a melodramatic
chasm, the surrounding country is worthy the most extravagant epithets.
The mountains have the gloomy barrenness, the slate-grey colour of
volcanic ranges; they encircle the town in a gigantic amphitheatre,
rugged and overbearing like Titans turned to stone. They seem, indeed,
to wear a sombre insolence of demeanour as though the aspect of human
kind moved them to lofty contempt. And in their magnificent desolation
they offer a fit environment for the exploits of Byronic heroes. The
handsome villain of romance, seductive by the complexity of his
emotions, by the persistence of his mysterious grief, would find himself
in that theatrical scene most thoroughly at home; nor did Prosper
Merimee fail to seize the opportunity, for the mountains of Ronda were
the very hunting-ground of Don Jose, who lost his soul for Carmen. But
as a matter of history they were likewise the haunts of brigands in
flesh and blood--malefactors in the past had that sense of the
picturesque which now is vested in the amateur photographer--and this
particular district was as dangerous to the travelling merchant as any
in Spain.

The environs of Ronda are barren and unfertile, the olive groves bear
little fruit. I wandered through the lonely country, towards the
mountains; the day was overcast and the clouds hung sluggishly overhead.
As I walked, suddenly I heard a melancholy voice singing a peasant song,
a _malaguena_. I paused to listen, but the sadness was almost
unendurable; and it went on interminably, wailing through the air with
the insistent monotony of its Moorish origin. I struck into the olives
to find the singer and met a swineherd, guarding a dozen brown pigs, a
youth thin of face, with dark eyes, clothed in undressed sheep-skins;
and the brown wool gave him a singular appearance of community with the
earth about him. He stood among the trees like a wild creature, more
beast than man, and the lank, busy pigs burrowed around him, running to
and fro, with little squeals. He ceased his song when I approached and
looked up timidly. I spoke to him but he made no answer, I offered a
cigarette but he shook hi