The minor accessories of farming, such as the dairy, poultry and the stock-yard, which, we are told, stand between many an English farmer and ruin, are here ignored. For this, however, there is some excuse in the vexatious and mistaken system of the octroi (consumos), under which farm-produce and consumables of every kind are taxed on entering the town. The rural farmer, it is true, escapes the town taxes, but as a counterpoise, to tax his produce on its way to market, is clearly saddling the wrong horse.[48] The incidence of such a burden clearly falls upon the already over-taxed consumer in the towns, increasing the cost of the necessaries of life. The whole system is, moreover, arbitrary and irritating. How would one like at home to be stopped every time he came in from a day's shooting, in order that a "duty" may be assessed on his bag of partridge, rabbits, or quail? Or, worse still, on a few bottles of wine which may remain unconsumed at luncheon, but which the official of the octroi knows perfectly well were taken out into the campo that same morning?
The principal crops raised (Andalucia) are wheat, barley, beans, and chick-pea (garbanzo), together with rye, alfalfa, vetches, and canary-seed. Very few oats are sown, barley forming the chief grain-food for horses.[49] No roots are cultivated, no manure applied, nor any scientific rotation of crops attempted.
Neither maize nor rice are cultivated in the south, though both form important items in other parts of the Peninsula. Rice, especially, is grown on the Mediterranean coast (Valencia, &c.), and in Portugal. Possibly the Andalucian marismas might form "paddy-fields" that would make San Lucar a rival of Rangoon, as similarly Cadiz might compete with Odessa. But may these "improvements" await another age! May some few outlandish nooks and corners of Europe be left as God made them, where primæval conditions may yet survive, and wild nature reign in uncontaminated glory—at least during our time.
Much could easily be done to bring Spanish farming nearer to European standards. Improvements will come, one day or another: already the dawn of a more active industrial life is beginning to glimmer. But as yet the flutter extends only to manufactures, not to agriculture. Capitalists are beginning to furnish their factories with the appliances of modern machinery, and Spanish workmen are found capable of adapting themselves, by their intelligence and attention, to the new conditions, and to bear a fair comparison with the workmen of other countries.
The wave of progress is at present confined to the foundry, the mine, and the workshop, but will some day, perhaps, extend to the campo—substitute the steam-plough and reaper for the sluggish ox-team and sickle, the steam-thrasher for the trotting brood-mares, and metamorphose into an active industry the present drowsy, old-world routine of Spanish agriculture.
Progress in Spain moves with halting step, and it were folly to cherish sanguine expectations. Such a change can only come with altered conditions in the people. Why, for example, try to improve dairy arrangements when there is no demand for fresh butter? Why trouble with the cattle when the fighting bull is the prize animal of the pasture? What encouragement is there to improve the grazing of stock when an enthusiast who had stall-fed his beasts is told by the butcher, "if you wish me to sell any more of your animals, you must send them without fat"? Hitherto this gentleman's efforts to reform the national taste have resulted in utter collapse. Fattened joints are, in Spain, in advance of the age, amongst a people wedded to the flesh-pots of the puchero, wherein the beef is required to be, above all things, lean. The fat of the pig only is appreciated in Spanish cuisine.
CHAPTER XIX.
ON SPANISH AGRICULTURE—(Continued).
The Olive.
Interspersed amidst the monotony of corn-land and vineyard is seen the peculiar foliage of the olive. Its regular rows of sober green cover many of the higher lands and hillsides, and its produce, next to corn and wine, occupies the third place of importance. Outside the ancient huertas, where since Moorish days the orange, lemon, and citron have been carefully tended and watered, the olive is the only cultivated tree; and well does it repay the minimum of care which it requires. The olive enters largely into the economy of every-day existence, forming an important element both in the food and light of the Spanish people. Olive-oil is the universal illuminant—in a little saucer with rudely-fixed cotton wick (the mariposa), it lights the herdsman's choza, the cottage, and cortijo: this oil is also a leading article of consumption with all classes. To the poor it is an absolute necessary, taking the place occupied by meat among northern nations, giving flavour and zest to the hard bread and to the tough dry stock-fish imported from Newfoundland or Norwegian fjord—besides being an essential ingredient in the universal gazpacho. The fruit itself, in various forms, gives a national flavour to nearly every dish. Every one eats olives, from the wayfarer on the dusty highroad, whose hunch of dry bread is sweetened by a handful of the piquant fruit, to the Madrilenian epicure who at Lhardy's restaurant demands the "Reinas" from Seville. These olives are of large size,—almost like walnuts—and are only rivalled in flavour by the "manzanillas," a smaller variety more resembling the French olive, but, to our thinking, of superior taste.