The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-05


 erra Morena. To add to the prevailing russet hue. the one occupation of the lpeople is the herding of thin brown pigs
 on the bare brown plains. It is said that these hideous swine derive their
 color from feeding exclusively on the big brown beetles which abound in the
 soil. Fancy eating pork fattened on bugs, You count droves of pigs by
 scores, each drove in charge of two re-
 cumbent, but always smoking, swine herds.
 Farther up the foothills the whole scanty population is given over to the
 raising of sheep. But the flocks do not
 dot the landscape with peaceful white,
 as in England and America; they only
 intensity the prevailing reddish-b brown
 with restless shadings of deeper hue. | The ugly brown sheep are tended by
 shepherd boys, or rather by shepherd
 bogs, which do the actual work while
 their lazy masters loaf and invite their
 souls," with the aid of the siesta, the
 guitar, the cigarette and the garlic
 pudding. Farther up great flocks of
 goats browse among the cliffs and along the brinks of ravines, where it looks im- possible for the tiny hoOfS to find a
 foothold. They are closely followed by
 short-skirted shepherdesses, as fearless
 and sure-footed as they; but the girls 1 are Shod with hempen soles, which are
 not slippery like boot-leather, and cling better than bare toes. A frequent sight | is that of some rascally peasant, whom one longs to beat, helping himself along
 the weary upward trail by holding fast +o 1,i To; beast, always loaded to the limit of en- durance, scrambles zig gag steeps. At
 intervals little booths are met, built in
 recesses of the cliffs that border the
 mountain pass, like cupboards heWn out of solid rock. On a narrow ledge bottles of wine and goats milk are set for sale, and overhead, in nets, hang oranges. grapes and garlic. Another
 sight, more frequent and less agreeable, is that of wooden crosses, each sur
 rounded by cairn of stones and mark ing the scene of some poor travellers
 murder by banditti.
 The scene grows wilder and grander
 as you approach the summit The Sier-
 ra Morena divides the valley of the
 Guadalquvir from that of the Guadia-
 ma. The railway is a fine specimen of
 engineering (English, I believe) often
 climbing along a shelf of rock over-
 hanging dizzy precipices winding in and out among fantastic cliffs and cav erns-an ideal lurking-place for knights of the road. At one point the train runs through a wild and savage gorge, named Despenaperros-"P the dogs over.' Doubtless the singular title was bestowed in memory of some desperate but now forgotten struggle between Moors and Christians, in days when these mountains formed partial bar rier between the two races.
 Descending the other side of the Sier "a, we come at last to the desolate plains of La Mancha. familiar to the reading world as the region where Don Quixote rode his raw -boned steed. While confined in the prison of one of it's secluded villages, Miguel de Ger vantes-S s-Saavedra-the greatest literary genius that Spain ever produced-wrote his immortal satire on the foibles of a decaying age of chivalry Better than a guide-book to this part of Spain is a copy of Don Quixote, which you may bpy in any Spanish shop. Cervantes sketched from nature, with art intense ly realistic Except in the character of the Don himself, which no doubt fitted those times to perfection, every detail of the story, written in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, can be dis tinctly traced and verified at the pres ent day Such an accurate pen-artist of local scenes was he, and so little has the country changed in four hundred years, that you may easily follow the foot prints of "the knight of the sorrowful countenance." Here is Tobasio, the home of the "never-t to- -be-enough-ad- mired Dulinea." Wonder is the Venta de Quesada, where the mad knight re- ceived the accolade. The lakes of Ruy dera and the cave of Montesnos are still the same; and so are the muleteers and the wine-skins, the Aocks of sheep tend ed by shepherds, and the wind-mills swinging their mighty arms as they grind the corn-just as in CerVantes day In changing oars at Manzanares you have a couple of hours to wait, in the immediate vicinity of Quixote's most famous exploits. Here is the inn where he was knighted,a nd before it's door swineheard, who may be lineal descendant of the warden of the story still winds his horn. Its old old we'll continues to afford water to vagrant muleteers successors to the unfortunate whose head was broken for disturbing the madman's vivil Upon the edge of the well is deep indentation, believed to have been made by the armOr of Don Quixote. The stone must have been softer than it is now, or his armor won derfully hard to have been thrown down with such tremendous violence as to make so plain mark! Skeptics may incline to the belief that the stone has been worn away in the course of centu- res by the constant procession of ani- mals led up to drink. But it would | never do to hint such heresy here! All l Spaniards regard Cervantes romance as Holy Writ, to swear by," and the more ignorant classes believe it's every detail | to be strictly true,
 We find La Mancha almost as wild | and uncutivated to-day as in Quixote's | time. The railway to Merida lies along | I plateau, two thousand feet above the l sea- where towns are few and people | fewrr. The native Manchegan wears he same sheepskin suit which has served his ancestors for two | )r three generations. His home is a mud hovel which a respectable Ameri- | ,an mule would refuse to enter, and vision is greeted by the same dull mo-