Flocks of black sheep and goats, through the optical
illusion frequent in the Spanish air, looked large as cattle in the
offing. Only in one place had we seen the tumbled boulders of Old
Castile, and there had been really no greater objection to La Mancha
than that it was flat, stale, and unprofitable and wholly unimaginable
as the scene of even Don Quixote's first adventures.
But now that we had mounted to the station among the summits of the
Sierra Morena, my fancy began to feel at home, and rested in a scene
which did all the work for it. There was ample time for the fancy to
rest in that more than co-operative landscape. Just beyond the first
station the engine of a freight-train had opportunely left the track in
front of us, and we waited there four hours till it could be got back.
It would be inhuman to make the reader suffer through this delay with us
after it ceased to be pleasure and began to be pain. Of course,
everybody of foreign extraction got out of the train and many even, went
forward to look at the engine and see what they could do about it;
others went partly forward and asked the bolder spirits on their way
back what was the matter.
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