The French soldiers, looking at the trifling Manzanares and its mighty bridges, may have exclaimed, “So even the Spanish rivers ran away.” But those who, at sight of tiny threads of water in immense river-beds, are inclined to ask, with Don Pedro in _Much Ado about Nothing_, “What need the bridge much broader than the flood?” find their answer after a few days of heavy rain. Marks six feet and more high on houses many hundreds of yards from the banks of the Ebro record the rising of the waters. Thus, in many districts, crops which have survived the summer drought are swept away by the autumn deluge, and those who have cried for rain are mocked with ruin when the waters “prevail exceedingly upon the earth.” Spain’s agriculture perishes for lack of water, yet water abounds, whether subterranean, as in parts of Castille, or in the copious snows of the high-lying regions, where the snow is sometimes preserved in snow-pits, _pozos de nieve_, or in these periodical floods; and it would seem that the philologist had Spain in his mind who connected the Basque adjective _idorra_, meaning “dry,” with ὓδωρ, the Greek for water. To utilize, extend, and regulate the water supply is a problem of vital importance to Spain--a problem which has long occupied the thoughts of Spanish statesmen. Alfonso the Learned, in his “Crónica General,” says, “This Spain, then, of which we speak is as the paradise of God.... For the most part, it is watered with streams and fountains, and wells are never lacking in all places that have need of them;” but Strabo, more impartial, had remarked of Spain that, “For the most part, it yields but a poor sustenance. For large districts are composed of mountains and woodland and plains, with thin and, moreover, not uniformly well-watered soil--οὐδἐ ταὐτην ὁμαλῶς εὔυδρον.” And since Strabo’s time many have been the alterations for the worse. Turdetania, for instance, the country between Seville and Huelva, is no longer marvellously prosperous--θαυμα-στῶς εὐτυχεῖ; in fact South Estremadura, of old one of Rome’s granaries, is now one of the most desolate regions in Spain. But the worst decay is that of the forests. The woods have fallen and fallen, and still the axe rings avidly in those woods that remain. The very words for a wood, _bosque_ or _selva_, have become rare and poetical. Thus the soil is further parched and impoverished, while towns and villages stand unsheltered from wind and sun. The Escorial, which grew up among woods, may now be seen from afar in its almost sinister magnificence across grey hills and plains without a tree; and Madrid, though a tree figures prominently in the city arms, looks out upon plains from which all traces of former oak and chestnut forests have long since vanished. The absence of trees in Spain increases both the dryness and the floods, and afforestation is therefore quite as important as irrigation. The canalization of rivers may diminish the floods, but while there is no soil on the hill-sides--or soil so light that it is swept away by heavy rainfalls--the rain must continue to be a blessing strangely disguised. It is calculated that in six or eight years the trees would knit the soil together, and give it sufficient staying power to resist and absorb the rains, though, of course, there would as yet be no actual profit of timber. Outlay of toil and money for so distant a remuneration is not congenial to the Spanish temperament. The great land-owners do nothing. The State spends a few thousand pesetas every year; but at the present rate afforestation will need hundreds of years, bearing a resemblance to that long-desired map of Spain, which is to be issued in some eleven hundred sections, and of which from two to three sections appear annually.[86] The advantages of irrigation have been amply proved in Spain, justifying the juxtaposition of water and gold in Pindar’s ode; but only about a fiftieth of Spain’s total area--and especially the plain of Granada and the strip of coast of Málaga and Valencia--can at present show the immense productiveness due to irrigation, combined with the swift-maturing sun of Spain. There are, of course, immense difficulties, and not the least are the ignorance and the poverty of the peasants. Water added to a poor soil will be of little value if the peasants are not taught artificial means of enriching the soil, and modern methods of cultivating it. The extreme poverty of the peasants would, however, prevent them at present from employing any but the simplest methods; in many districts they mortgage their land in order to be able to sow their crops, and Spanish farmers are often in the hands of the usurers.