What adds to this silence and
loneliness, is the absence of singing birds, a natural consequence
of the want of groves 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 watchtower; a strong-hold, 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 is noble in its severity, and in unison with 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.
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