If people in Maine had that Spanish road as
far as Tarifa they would think it the superb Massachusetts state road
gone astray, and it would be thought a good road anywhere, with the
promise of being better when the young eucalyptus trees planted every
few yards along it grew big enough to shade it. But we were glad of as
much sun as we could get on the brisk November morning when we drove out
of the hotel garden and began the long climb, with little intervals of
level and even of lapse. We started at ten o'clock, and it was not too
late in that land of anomalous hours to meet peasants on their mules and
donkeys bringing loads of stuff to market in Algeciras. Men were plowing
with many yoke of oxen in the wheat-fields; elsewhere there were green
pastures with herds of horses grazing in them, an abundance of brown
pigs, and flocks of sheep with small lambs plaintively bleating. The
pretty white farmhouses, named each after a favorite saint, and
gathering at times into villages, had grapes and figs and pomegranates
in their gardens; and when we left them and climbed higher, we began
passing through long stretches of cork woods.
The trees grew wild, sometimes sturdily like our oaks, and sometimes
gnarled and twisted like our seaside cedars, and in every state of
excoriation.
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