Spain. Wentworth Webster
of its fruits and products were introduced by the Arab from the East, and some of these are now the very staple of Spanish produce. It is they who brought into Spain the cotton plant, rice, and the sugar-cane; mulberries, both for fruit and for silk culture; sesame, the caper, the locust bean, the castor-oil plant, alfalfa (lucerne), the pomegranate, almond, the walnut and filbert, the chestnut and the ever-green oak, the wild olive, the jujube, the pistacchio nut, the palm, several kinds of roses, the wall-flower, with many another garden herb or flower. It was they who improved the Andalusian steed into one of the most excellent in Europe for riding, and the strain may still be traced even in the ponies of the north. But the cultivated vegetation of the south which meets the stranger's eye is perhaps still more indebted to the Americas.1 It needs an effort now to picture what Spanish agriculture and what Spanish life was before the time of Columbus, when maize, and the potato, and sweet potato, were unknown; when not a cigar was smoked or cigarette made, or leaf of tobacco grown in Spain; when only garlic was known, and those indispensable condiments of every dish, the tomato, and the pimentos had not yet entered a Spanish kitchen, and chocolate had not yet been sipped by Spanish ladies; when the hedges were bare of aloes, and the prickly pear gave the beggar no fruit. And besides these common gifts, there are the more luxurious ones of pine apples, grenadines (the fruit of the passion-flower), abocado pears, chirimoyas, guavas, earth-nuts, bananas, and many others, while the gardens are enriched with magnolias and passion-flowers, and a wealth of creepers of all kinds. The Australian eucalypti, also, are highly valued in Spain, both as a febrifuge and for their prophylactic qualities in prevention of malaria in marshy ground; and a decoction from their leaves has quite passed into the popular pharmacopeia.
The most common plant on the sun-dried hills of Valencia and Murcia, the esparto-grass (Stipe tenacissima), after having been long used in various native manufactures, has since 1856 become an article of exportation, and an important addition to the wealth of Spain; but the cultivation of the barilla plant for soda has much decreased. It is from Valencia that the oranges come which are such favourites in Paris. The tree is so valuable, both for fruit and flowers, that an acre will sometimes give 600l. worth of produce. The dried raisins and almonds so familiar in England, so eagerly looked for at Christmas time, and the green preserved grapes, come from the districts of which we are now speaking, the coast-lands from Valencia to Almeira and Malaga. The wines are equally celebrated, from the strong red wines of Benicarlo, near the frontiers of Catalonia, to the sweet wines of Alicante and of Malaga, which are preferred by Continental taste to the drier and more fiery sherries, wines of the Guadalquiver valley, which please the English palate. Near the coast on the lower grounds, wherever there is sufficient water, rice is grown; but, on account of the unhealthy character of the cultivation, its culture is forbidden in the neighbourhood of towns. Sugar-cane is extending on the southern coast. In Andalusia alone more than 7000 acres are devoted to this culture, and the total yield of the sugar-cane in Spain is estimated at nearly 20,000 tons. Palms are grown as an ornament and garden-tree from Barcelona to Malaga, but in Murcia, and especially at Elche, they are planted for production. Though the number seems declining, there are still some 40,000 palms together in the neighbourhood of Elche; in the last century they are said to have numbered from 50,000 to 70,000. It is not for the fruit alone, the date, but for the leaves (the so-called palm-branches) that the trees are grown. In the winter these are tied into a close bundle to exclude the rays of the sun, in order that they may become white, and they are then exported to Rome and Italy, for use in the Easter ceremonies of Palm Sunday. Oils and essences, extracted from many plants and flowers, are also products of this region. The liquorice-root, and many another flower, or fruit, or root of medicinal value grows wild on the hills. The slopes of the eastern mountains are covered with aromatic herbs, thyme, myrtle, box, rosemary, southern-wood, mint, lavender, marjoram, nearly all the sweet-scented herbs which were once carefully cultivated in the gardens of our ancestors, are natives of these hills; and the flocks of goats returning from their pastures bring the sweet odours into the tainted towns and villages, and the first draught of milk from them is highly flavoured thereby. On these treeless hills, and the warmer parts of the higher plateaux, these aromatic herbs are often the only fuel which the peasant can employ. The wealth of this portion of the Spanish soil, the variety and beauty of its products, can be best seen in a visit to a fruit or flower market in any of the towns of the south and east. The richness of colour, the size and beauty of form, are amazing to the stranger; but the quantity and the cheapness, the way in which these fruits and exotic vegetables enter into the diet of the poor, is that which most astonishes those from less generous climes. We have not space to enumerate in detail a tithe of these productions; this must be sought in more special treatises.
Almost equal in agricultural and garden wealth to that of the coast-line, and superior to it as regards the culture of the vine, is the valley of the Guadalquiver. The oranges of Seville (the civil oranges of our forefathers, the main ingredient of marmalade), sack, and sherry, are known in every English home of the middle and upper classes. It is in the valley of the Guadalquiver, from San Lucar de Barameda to above Cordova, that the finest sherries are produced. From San Lucar comes the pleasant Manzanilla, the lightest and most wholesome of all the sherries, but with a peculiar bitter taste and bouquet, like that of the wild camomile-flower. In the neighbourhood of Jerez de la Frontera the best sherries are produced, both brown and golden; the Amontillado, the nutty-flavoured wine so much sought after, comes from Montilla, to the south of Cordova. Several other kinds are manufactured, and have a great local reputation. Comparatively very little of these strong and fiery wines is consumed in Spain. Spaniards take them only as a liqueur, not as the usual accompaniment of a meal or desert. Sherry, though grown in Spain, is the foreigner's, and especially the Englishman's wine. The red Valdepeñas, from the northern slope of the Sierra Morena, replaces it at the Spaniard's table. For the modes of preparation of the various sherries, we must refer our readers to special treatises; of its statistics as an article of commerce we shall speak in another chapter. The first palm-tree introduced into Spain is said to have been planted near Cordova. The olives of this district are considered the finest in Spain. Comparatively little of the oil is exported, but the home consumption is enormous. The cork forests, too, are abundant; their bark forms an important article of commerce.
We have now only to speak of the great central plateau, the Continental climate of Spain, and its productions. This is peculiarly the corn-growing district of Spain, the land of wheat and maize, especially in the Castiles. Estremadura and Léon are rather pastoral districts. It is in these provinces that the laws of the Mesta, for the protection of the celebrated merino sheep, ruled supreme, and which, though modified at the close of the last century, and some of their worst abuses done away with, were finally repealed only in 1835. By these laws the sheep and cattle which fed in the winter in the plains of Estremadura, and in the summer on the mountains of Léon, were privileged to enter almost any property on their line of march, to feed or to pass the night there. A space of ninety yards wide was reserved on each side of the highways for their accommodation; no land, especially no corn-field, was allowed to be enclosed; and right of forcible entrance was given to all orchards and vineyards where pasturage might be found. Wherever the flocks had once fed, the land could not be sold or alienated to any other purpose. The shepherds who tended these flocks became almost as savage and ignorant as the beasts they looked after; their privileges produced in them a contempt and hatred of all kinds of fixed property, and they were ever trying to extend their oppressive right at the expense of the more settled and agricultural portion of the community. Under the influence of these laws Estremadura, which, in the time of the Romans and Moors had been one of the richest provinces of Spain, became under their Christian conquerors not only one of the poorest and most thinly peopled districts, but also a curse and source of destruction to the rest. Not only were all the evils of the old Roman "latifundia" reproduced in this mediæval system, but the locust, which never breeds in cultivated lands, or where the plough passes, was enabled to make its home in the wilds and pastures of Estremadura, whence it periodically sallied out to devastate the fairest and richest portions of the land. In the years 1754 to 1757 it desolated the whole of the provinces between Estremadura and the Mediterranean. In 1686 and the following year it reached the principality of Barcelona, and, in spite of exorcisms, ravaged the country till there was nothing more to destroy. The provinces nearer to Estremadura are much more frequent sufferers, and in recent years (in 1876 the crops in Ciudad Real were utterly destroyed) a division of the
For the converse of this, the plants and fruits introduced by the Spaniards into America, see Markham's "Peru," in this series, p. 120.