There had been a good deal of
joking, both Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found
particularly cheering the richness of a certain machinist's trousers of
bright golden corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the
scene our spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where
the sunset had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop. Against
the horizon a peasant boy leaned on his staff and darkled against the
darkening sky.
Nothing lacked now but the opportune recollection that this was the
region where the natives had been so wicked in times past that an
ingenious statesman, such as have seldom been wanting to Spain, imagined
bringing in a colony of German peasants to mix with them and reform
them. That is what some of the books say, but others say that the region
had remained unpeopled after the first exile of the conquered Moors. All
hold that the notion of mixing the colonists and the natives worked the
wrong way; the natives were not reformed, but the colonists were
depraved and stood in with the local brigands, ultimately, if not
immediately. This is the view suggested, if not taken, by that amusing
emissary, George Borrow, who seems in his _Bible in Spain_ to have been
equally employed in distributing the truths of the New Testament and
collecting material for the most dramatic study of Spanish civilization
known to literature.
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