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The beneficent rivers, whose waters are drunk by the huertas, or gardens, near their banks, are the Segura, Vinalapo, Júcar, Guadalaviar (known as Turia in its lower course), Mijaros, and several others. They all resemble each other as regards the ruggedness of their upper valleys and the savageness of the gorges through which they pass. The Segura forces itself a passage through several mountain defiles before it reaches the plain of Murcia. The Júcar and Guadalaviar (Wad-el-Abiad, or “white river”) have fewer obstacles to overcome, but some of the gorges through which they pass are nevertheless of surpassing beauty.
The volume of these rivers is comparatively small, and the husbandmen dwelling along their banks economize the water as far as possible. Reservoirs, or pantanos, have been constructed at the outlet of each valley, whence the water is distributed over the fields by means of innumerable canals of irrigation. The irrigated huertas contrast most favourably with the cultivated campos in their neighbourhood. Irrigation has probably been practised at Valencia since the time of the Romans, but the Moors appear to have been the first to construct a regular system of canals. Eight of these, ramifying into innumerable acequias, have converted the environs of Valencia into an Eden. Carefully manured as they are, these fields are never allowed to lie fallow. Stalks of maize fifteen and even twenty-five feet in height may be seen in the gardens, the mulberry-tree yields three or four harvests annually, four or five crops are obtained from the same field, whilst the grass is mown as many as nine or ten times. This luxuriant vegetation, however, is said to be watery, and hence the proverb, “In Valencia meat is grass, grass is water, men are women, and women nought.”
The huertas of the Júcar, though less famous than those of Valencia, are even more productive. Orange-trees predominate, and around Alcira and Carcagente alone 20,000,000 oranges are picked annually, and exported to Marseilles.
The oases in the great steppe which extends from Alcoy to Almería are less fertile than those on the Júcar and Guadalaviar. That of Alicante is fertilised by the Castalla, the waters of which are collected in the reservoir of Tibi. The huerta of Elche, on the Vinalapo, is chiefly occupied by a forest of palm-trees, the principal wealth of the inhabitants, who export the dates to France, and the leaves to Italy and the interior of Spain.
The huerta around Orihuela, on the Lower Segura, cannot boast of a palm forest like that of Elche, but is more productive. The inhabitants of Murcia, higher up on the same river, though they enjoy similar advantages, have failed to profit by them to the same extent. Their huerta, which contains a third of the total population of the province, is fertile, but cannot compare with that of their neighbours. Nor do the fields of Lorca equal them. They have not yet recovered from the bursting of a reservoir, the freed waters of which carried destruction as far as Murcia and Orihuela.
The moral and physical character of the inhabitants of a country exhibiting such great contrasts could hardly fail to present corresponding differences, and, indeed, we find that the inhabitants of the fertile gardens and those of the barren steppes and mountains differ essentially, in spite of their common origin. {418}
Fig. 159.—THE PALM GROVE OF ELCHE.