Image from page 46 of “The land of the Dons” (1902)
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Identifier: landofdons00willuoft
Title: The land of the Dons
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Williams, Leonard, b. 1871
Subjects: Civilization, Spanish Spain — Social life and customs
Publisher: London, Cassell
Contributing Library: Robarts – University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN
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Pyrenees. I recognise its saddle shape, and thecottages upon its flank. And these, with adulatinghills about their feet, and the eternal snows upontheir crest, wrapped in their velvety robes of blueand purple mist, or flushing carmine with the sun-set, are surely the emperors and the autocrats ofSpanish mountaindom—the Sierra Nevada of theglorious Andalusias. Spains principal rivers are but few: the Ebro,Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, Guadalquivir, Segura,Jucar, and Mino. Of these, the Ebro, which risesat Fuentes de Ebro, in the beautiful valley ofReinosa, disembogues into the Mediterranean, asdo the Jucar and Segura; the remainder into theAtlantic; and Tagus is the longest, picking hislonely path across the deserts of New Castile to where Imperial Toledos tawny streamRolls round his rocky brink. In proportion, says Carrasco, as the greaterpart of the Spanish coast is smiling, cheerful, anddiversified, so are the central regions dreary andmonotonous, even where the soil is most productive;
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INTROSPECTIVE AND GEOGRAPHICAL. 21 and this uniformity of desolation increases as the traveller nears Madrid. After traversing, for instance, the broken yet pleasant lands of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava, he finds himself upon the vast Castilian plateaux, where nothing may be spied beyond a tree bole twisted by the wind. A few forests of oak and pine have escaped the fire or axe, no doubt because they lie remote from any human habitation; but the pernicious custom of destroying them is so general that even single trees are felled or uprooted under the pretext of their harbouring birds. This sombre illustration exhibits the dominant feature of Spanish scenery in general—its treeless- ness. In Spain there are no trees worth mentioning, save in Biscay or Asturias, or where, perhaps, in Catalufia Scepiiis ventis agitatur ingensPiniis— but these are the exceptions which corroborate therule. Though once upon a time the Peninsula wascertainly better wooded than at present (an ancientreco
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