[Illustration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
A beautiful spring-migrant to the highest sierras. Colours of male: opal, orange, and black, with a white "mirror" in centre of back. Female, yellow-brown barred with black.]
Incidentally it may be added that a visit to one of these out-of-the-world cities--asleep most of them for the last few centuries--is a pleasing and restful change amidst the racket of exploration. One breathes a mediæval atmosphere and marvels at the revelation, enjoying prehistoric peeps in lost cities replete for the antiquary with historic memorial and long-forgotten lore. No one cares.
Yet in those bygone days of Spain's world-power these somnolent spots produced the right stuff,--a minority, no doubt, belonged to the type satirised by Cervantes,--but many more strong in mind as in muscle, who went forth, knights-errant, Paladins and Crusaders, to conquer and to shape the course of history. Is the old spirit extinct? Our own impression is that the material is there all right ready to spring to life like the stones of Deucalion, so soon as Spain shall have shaken off her incubus of lethargy and the tyranny that clogs the wheels of progress. Nor need the interval be long.
That sound human material continues to exist in rural Spain we have had recent evidence during the calling-out of levies of young troops ordered abroad to serve their country in Morocco. None could witness the entrainment at some remote station of a detachment of these fine lads without being struck by their bearing, their set purpose, and above all their patriotism. With such material, with a well cared-for, contented, and loyal army and a broadening of view, wisely graduated but equally resolute, Spain moves forward. Alfonso XIII. is a soldier first--No! Above that he is a king by nature, but his care for his army and its well-being has already borne fruits that are making and will make for the honour, safety, and advancement of his country.
To resume our interrupted note on travel: whether you are riding across bush-clad hills, over far-spread prairie, or through the defiles of the sierra, as shadows lengthen the problem of a night's lodging obtrudes. There is a variety of solutions. At a pinch--as when belated or benighted--one may, in desperate resort, seek shelter in a _choza_. Now a _choza_ is the reed-thatched hut which forms the rural peasant's lonely home. Assuredly you will be made welcome, and that with a grace and a courtesy--aye, a courtliness--that characterises even the humblest in Spain. The best there is will be at your disposal; yet--if permissible to say so in face of such splendid hospitality (and in the hope that these good leather-clad friends of ours may not read this book)--the open air is preferable. There exists in a _choza_ absolutely no accommodation--not a separate room; a low settee running round the interior, or a withy frame, forms the bed; those kindly folk live all together, along with their domestic animals--and pigs are reckoned such in Spain. Let us gratefully pay this due tribute to our peasant friends--but let us sleep outside.