Total 28,748,808 __________ Grand Total 50,451,688
These figures demonstrate precisely the extent of the authors' condominium in Spain--well over one-half the country! With the area under cultivation (say 43 per cent), we have but one concern--the Great Bustard. The remaining 57 per cent pertain absolutely to our province--Wilder Spain. The term scrub or brushwood (in Spanish _monte_), though by a sort of courtesy it may be ranked as "pasture"--and parts of it do support herds of sheep and goats--implies as a rule the wildest of rough covert and jungle, rougher far than a Scottish deer-forest; and this _monte_ clothes well-nigh one-half of Spain.
Such figures may appear to infer considerable apathy and lack of effort as regards agriculture. 'Twere, nevertheless, a false assumption to conclude that Spanish mountaineers are an idle race--quite the reverse, as is repeatedly demonstrated in this book. In the hills every acre of available soil is utilised, often at what appears excessive labour--maybe it is a patch so tiny as hardly to seem worth the tilling, or so terribly steep that none save a _serrano_ could keep a foothold, much less plough, sow, and reap.
The main explanation of the immense percentage of waste lies in the fact first set forth--the high general elevation of Spain; and, secondly, in her mountainous character.
Whether these or any other extenuating circumstances apply to the corn-lands, we are not sufficiently expert in such subjects as to express a confident opinion. But we think not. So antiquated, wasteful, and utterly inefficient have been Spanish methods of agriculture, that a land which might be one of the granaries of Europe is actually to some extent dependent on foreign grain, and that despite an import-duty! A distinct movement is, nevertheless, perceptible in the direction of employing modern agricultural machinery, chemical manures, and such-like. Irrigation in a land whose head-waters can be tapped at 2000 feet and upwards could be carried out on a larger scale and at cheaper rates than in any other European country--yet it is practically neglected; no considerable extension has been made to the two million acres of irrigated lands that existed when we last wrote, twenty years ago, although the ruined aqueducts of Roman, Goth, and Moor are ever present to suggest the silent lesson of former foresight and prosperity.