Excerpt from Spanish Pictures: Drawn With Pen and Pencil
And Spain resembles Africa or the East in those very points in which she differs from the rest of Europe. The soil has that dry and sterile look with which African travellers are familiar. One may travel for hours over tracts of country in which there is scarcely a living thing to disturb the solitude leagues upon leagues of bare rock without a particle of soil clinging to their sides vast undulating plains, treeless and waterless; districts, each as large as an English county, covered with blocks of granite or limestone, like the desert of Sinai. Geologically, as well as in appearance, Spain is but a northern extension of the Sahara. Those who visit Spain, expecting to find exuberant fertility, will be disappointed. There are indeed fizzerfas, which produce their three or four crops a year, and repay the slightest amount of labour by harvests of incredible richness. But these seem like oases in an arid waste. Probably less than one half of the soil is under cultivation. Certainly the general aspect of the country is that of utter sterility and barrenness.
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