and hedges. The vulture and the eagle are seen wheeling about the
mountain-cliffs, and soaring over the plains, and groups of shy bustards
stalk about the heaths; but the myriads of smaller birds, which animate
the whole face of other countries are met with in but few provinces in
Spain, and in those chiefly among the orchards and gardens which
surround the habitations of man.

"In the interior provinces the traveller occasionally traverses great
tracts cultivated with grain as far as the eye can reach, waving at
times with verdure, at other times naked and sunburnt, but he looks
round in vain for the hand that has tilled the soil. At length, he
perceives some village on a steep hill, or rugged crag, with mouldering
battlements and ruined watch tower; a stronghold, in old times, against
civil war, or Moorish inroad; for the custom among the peasantry of
congregating together for mutual protection, is still kept up in most
parts of Spain, in consequence of the maraudings of roving freebooters.

"But though a great part of Spain is deficient in the garniture of
groves and forests, and the softer charms of ornamental cultivation, yet
its scenery has something of a high and lofty character to compensate
the want. It partakes something of the attributes of its people; and I
think that I better understand the proud, hardy, frugal, and abstemious
Spaniard, his manly defiance of hardships, and contempt of effeminate
indulgences, since I have seen the country he inhabits.

"There is something, too, in the sternly simple features of the Spanish
landscape, that impresses on the soul a feeling of sublimity. The
immense plains of the Castiles and of La Mancha, extending as far as the
eye can reach, derive an interest from their very nakedness and
immensity, and have something of the solemn grandeur of the ocean. In
ranging over these boundless wastes, the eye catches sight here and
there of a straggling herd of cattle attended by a lonely herdsman,
motionless as a statue, with his long, slender pike tapering up like a
lance into the air; or, beholds a long train of mules slowly moving
along the waste like a train of camels in the desert; or, a single
herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the
plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have
something of the Arabian character. The general insecurity of the
country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. The herdsman in the
field,