He took no manner of notice of them.  He stalked majestically towards his own particular hovel, and at each corner of a lane or group of cottages the pigs said “Good night” to each other by a kick-up of their heels and a whisk of their curly little tails, and scampered off home by themselves, until, at the end of the village, only one solitary pig was following his leader—­probably they shared one home between them.  It seemed a peaceful, if not an absolutely happy, life!

One would expect a country with such a climate, or rather with so many climates, as Spain, to make a great feature of agriculture.  It can at once produce wheat of the very finest quality, wine, oil, rice, sugar, and every kind of fruit and vegetable that is known; and it ought to be able to support a large agricultural population in comfort, and export largely.  Taking into account, also, the rich mineral wealth, which should make her independent of imports of this nature, it is sad to see that in past years, even so late as 1882, wheat and flour, coal and coke, iron and tools figure amongst her imports—­the first two in very large proportions.  Although the vast plains of Estremadura and Castile produce the finest wheat known to commerce, the quantity, owing to the want of water, is so small in relation to the acreage under cultivation, that it does not suffice for home consumption, except in very favourable years; while the utilisation of the magnificent rivers, which now roll their waters uselessly to the sea, would make the land what it once was when the thrifty Moor held it—­a thickly populated and flourishing grain-producing district.  In place of the wandering flocks of sheep and pigs gaining a precarious existence on the herbage left alive by the blistering sun on an arid soil, there should be smiling homesteads and blooming gardens everywhere, trees and grateful shade where now the ground, between the rainy seasons, becomes all of one dusty, half-burnt colour, reminding one more of the “back of a mangy camel,” as it has been described, than of a country that has once been fruitful and productive.

The late General Concha, Marques del Duero, was the originator of sugar-cane cultivation.  He spent a large portion of his private fortune in establishing what bids fair to be one of the most productive industries of his country.  But, like most pioneers of progress, he reaped no benefit himself.  His fine estates near Malaga, with their productive cane-farms, passed into other hands before he had reaped the reward of his patriotic endeavours.  For a long time the cheap, bounty-fed beet sugars of Germany, which never approach beyond being an imitation of real sugar—­as every housewife can testify who has tried to make jam with them—­were able to undersell the produce of the cane; but the latest statistics show that this industry is now making steady progress, the production of 1899 being thirty-one thousand tons, or exactly three times that of 1899. A propos