All their environment tends to make them untractable and savage (sylvaticos), shunning contact with their kind, even fleeing at sight and refusing to speak. They have no doctors nor surgeons, relying on certain herbs for medicines; yet they live long lives. They only recognise the passing seasons by the state of vegetation and of the atmosphere. They sow and reap according to the phases of the moon, of which they preserve an accurate observation. Religion and schools alike are unknown. They glory in their freedom from all moral suasion, and rejoice in the most brutal immorality and crime—including parricide and polygamy. There are alquerías wherein no priest has set foot, nor do they possess the faintest sense of Christian duties.
It seems incredible that in the midst of two provinces both wealthy and well reputed there should exist a plague-spot such as we have painted, unknown as the remotest kraals of Central Africa.
Thus Pascual Madoz in 1845, and but little external change has become apparent in sixty-five subsequent years.[40] Churches, it is true, have been erected, priests and schoolmasters appointed. Amelioration, however, by such means can only come very slowly—if at all. The physical and domestic status of these poor savages must first be raised before they are mentally capable of assimilating the mysteries of religion. Spain, however, owes them something. They are heavily taxed—beyond their power to pay in cash. Thus they are cast into the power of usurers. In each alquería, we were told, is usually found one man more astute than the rest, and he, in combination with some sordid scoundrel outside, exploits the misery of his fellows. A species of semi-slavery is thus established—in some ways analogous to the baneful system of Caciquismo outside.
The Hurdanos are also subject to the conscription and furnish forty to fifty recruits yearly to the Spanish army. Curiously, time-expired men all elect to return to their wretched lot in the mountains. On our asking one of these (he had served at Melilla), “Why?” his reply was, “for liberty.”[41]
There is a villainous custom in vogue that hurls these poor wretches yet farther down the bottomless pit. This abomination rages to-day as it did a hundred years ago: we therefore again leave old Pascual Madoz to tell the tale in his own words:—
Many women make a miserable livelihood—it is indeed their only industry—by rearing foundling infants from the hospitals of Ciudad Rodrigo and Placencia. So keen are they of the money thus obtained that one woman, aided by a goat, will undertake to rear three or four babes—all necessarily so ill-tended and ill-fed as rather to resemble living spectres than human beings. Cast down on beds of filthy ferns and lacking all maternal care, the majority perish from hunger, cold, and neglect. The few that reach childhood are weaklings for life, feeble and infirm.
This repulsive “industry” continues to-day, a sum of three dollars a month being paid by the authorities of the cities named to rid themselves of each undesired infant. The effect—direct and incidental—upon morals and sexual relationship in the alquerías of the Hurdes may (in degree) be deduced—it cannot be set down in words. Thus the single point of contact with civilisation serves but to accentuate the degradation.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE GREAT BUSTARD
OVER the vast expanse of those silent solitudes, the corn-growing steppes of Spain—all but abandoned by human denizens—this grandest and most majestic of European game-birds forms the chief ornament. When the sprouting grain grows green in spring, stretching from horizon to horizon, you may form his acquaintance to best advantage. And among the things of sport are few more attractive scenes than a band of great bustards at rest. Bring your field-glass to bear on the gathering which you see yonder, basking in the sunshine in full enjoyment of their mid-day siesta. There are five-and-twenty of them, and immense they look against the green background of corn that covers the landscape—well may a stranger mistake the birds for deer or goats. Many sit turkey-fashion, with heads half sunk among back-feathers; others stand in drowsy yet ever-suspicious attitudes, their broad backs resplendent with those mottled hues of true game-colour, their lavender necks and well-poised heads contrasting with the snowy whiteness of the lower plumage.[42] The bustard are dotted in groups over an acre or two of gently sloping ground, the highest part of which is occupied by a single big Barbudo—a bearded veteran, the sentinel of the pack. From that elevated position he estimates what degree of danger each living thing that moves on the open region around may threaten to his company and to himself. Mounted men cause him less concern than those on foot. A horseman slowly directing a circuitous course may even approach to within a couple of hundred yards ere he takes alarm. It was the head and neck of this sentry that first appeared to our distant view and disclosed the whereabouts of the game. He, too, has seen us, and is even now considering whether there be sufficient cause for setting his convoy in motion. If we disappear below the level of his range, he will settle the point negatively, setting us down as merely some of those agricultural nuisances which so often cause him alarm but which his experience has shown to be generally harmless—for attempts on his life are few and far between.
