Gatherings From Spain Part 8

[Sidenote: SPANISH BREAD.]

The cook should take with him a stewing-pan, and a pot or kettle for boiling water; he need not lumber himself with much batterie de cuisine; it is not much needed in the imperfect gastronomy of the Peninsula, where men eat like the beasts which perish; all sort of artillery is rather rare in Spanish kitchen or fortress; an hidalgo would as soon think of having a voltaic battery in his sitting-room as a copper one in his cuisine; most cla.s.ses are equally satisfied with the Oriental earthenware _ollas_, _pucheros_, or pipkins, which are everywhere to be found, and have some peculiar sympathy with the Spanish cuisine, since a stew--be it even of a cat--never eats so well when made in a metal vessel; the great thing is to bring the raw materials,--first catch your hare. Those who have meat and money will always get a neighbour to lend them a pot. A _venta_ is a place where the rich are sent empty away, and where the poor hungry are not filled; the whole duty of the man-cook, therefore, is to be always thinking of his commissariat; he need not trouble himself about his master's appet.i.te, that will seldom fail,--nay, often be a misfortune; a good appet.i.te is not a good _per se_,[6] for it, even when the best, becomes a bore when there is nothing to eat; his _capucho_ or mule hamper must be his travelling larder, cellar, and store-room; he will victual himself according to the route, and the distances from one great town to another, and always take care to start with a good provision: indeed to attend to the commissariat is, it cannot be too often repeated, the whole duty of a man cook in hungry Spain, where food has ever been _the_ difficulty; a little foresight gives small trouble and ensures great comfort, while perils by sea and perils by land are doubled when the stomach is empty, whereas, as Sancho Panza wisely told his a.s.s, all sorrows are alleviated by eating bread: _todos los duelos, con pan son buenos_, and the shrewd squire, who seldom is wrong, was right both in the matter of bread and the moral: the former is admirable. The central table-lands of Spain are perhaps the finest wheat-growing districts in the world; however rude and imperfect the cultivation--for the peasant does but scratch the earth, and seldom manures--the life-conferring sun comes to his a.s.sistance; the returns are prodigious, and the quality superexcellent; yet the growers, miserable in the midst of plenty, vegetate in cabins composed of baked mud, or in holes burrowed among the friable hillocks, in an utter ignorance of furniture, and absolute necessaries. The want of roads, ca.n.a.ls, and means of transport prevents their exportation of produce, which from its bulk is difficult of carriage in a country where grain is removed for the most part on four-footed beasts of burden, after the oriental and patriarchal fas.h.i.+on of Jacob, when he sent to the granaries of Egypt. Accordingly, although there are neither sliding scales nor corn laws, and subsistence is cheap and abundant, the population decreases in number and increases in wretchedness; what boots it if corn be low-priced, if wages be still lower, as they then everywhere are and must be?

The finest bread in Spain is called _pan de candeal_, which is eaten by men in office and others in easy circ.u.mstances, as it was by the clergy.

The worst bread is the _pan de municion_, and forms the fare of the Spanish soldier, which, being sable as a hat, coa.r.s.e and hard as a brickbat, would just do to sop in the black broth of the Spartan military; indeed, the expression _de municion_ is synonymous in the Peninsula with badness of quality, and the secondary meaning is taken from the perfection of badness which is perceptible in every thing connected with Spanish ammunition, from the knapsack to the citadel.

Such bread and water, and both hardly earned, are the rations of the poor patient Spanish private; nor can he when before the enemy reckon always on even that, unless it be supplied from an ally's commissariat.

[Sidenote: THREs.h.i.+NG AND WINNOWING.]

[Sidenote: BREAD.]

Perhaps the best bread in Spain is made at Alcala de Guadaira, near Seville, of which it is the oven, and hence the town is called the Alcala of bakers. There bread may truly be said to be the soul of its existence, and samples abound everywhere: _roscas_, or circular-formed _rusks_, are hung up like garlands, and _hogazas_, loaves, placed on tables outside the houses. It is, indeed, as Spaniards say, _Pan de Dios_--the "angels' bread of Esdras." All cla.s.ses here gain their bread by making it, and the water-mills and mule-mills are never still; women and children are busy picking out earthy particles from the grain, which get mixed from the common mode of thres.h.i.+ng on a floor in the open air, which is at once Biblical and Homeric. At the outside of the villages, in corn-growing districts, a smooth open "thres.h.i.+ng-floor" is prepared, with a hard surface, like a fives court: it is called the _era_, and is the precise Roman _area_. The sheaves of corn are spread out on it, and four horses yoked most cla.s.sically to a low crate or harrow, composed of planks armed with flints, &c., which is called a _trillo_: on this the driver is seated, who urges the beasts round and round over the crushed heap. Thus the grain is shaken out of the ears and the straw triturated; the latter becomes food for horses, as the former does for men. When the heap is sufficiently bruised, it is removed and winnowed by being thrown up into the air; the light winds carry off the chaff, while the heavy corn falls to the ground. The whole operation is truly picturesque and singular. The scene is a crowded one, as many cultivators contribute to the ma.s.s and share in the labour; their wives and children cl.u.s.ter around, clad in strange dresses of varied colours. They are sometimes sheltered from the G.o.d of fire under boughs, reeds, and awnings, run up as if for the painter, and falling of themselves into pictures, as the lower cla.s.ses of Spaniards and Italians always do. They are either eating and drinking, singing or dancing, for a guitar is never wanting.

Meanwhile the fierce horses dash over the prostrate sheaves, and realise the splendid simile of Homer, who likens to them the fiery steeds of Achilles when driven over Trojan bodies. These out-of-door thres.h.i.+ngs take place of course when the weather is dry, and generally under a most terrific heat. The work is often continued at nightfall by torch-light.

During the day the half-clad dusky reapers defy the sun and his rage, rejoicing rather in the heat like salamanders; it is true that their devotions to the porous water-jar are unremitting, nor is a swill at a good pa.s.senger's _bota_ ever rejected; all is life and action; busy hands and feet, flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and eager screams; the light yellow chaff, which in the sun's rays glitters like gold dust, envelopes them in a halo, which by night, when partially revealed by the fires and mingled with the torch glare, is almost supernatural, as the phantom figures, now dark in shadows, now crimsoned by the fire flash, flit to and fro in the vaporous mist. The scene never fails to rivet and enchant the stranger, who, coming from the pale north and the commonplace in-door flail, seizes at once all the novelty of such doings. Eye and ear, open and awake, become inlets of new sensations of attention and admiration, and convey to heart and mind the poetry, local colour, movement, grouping, action, and att.i.tude. But while the cold-blooded native of leaden skies is full of fire and enthusiasm, his Spanish companion, bred and born under unshorn beams, is chilly as an icicle, indifferent as an Arab: he pa.s.ses on the other side, not only not admiring, but positively ashamed; he only sees the barbarity, antiquity, and imperfect process; he is sighing for some patent machine made in Birmingham, to be put up in a closed barn after the models approved of by the Royal Agricultural Society in Cavendish Square; his bowels yearn for the appliances of civilization by which "bread stuffs" are more scientifically manipulated and manufactured, minus the poetry.

To return, however, to dry bread, after this new digression, and all those who have ever been in Spain, or have ever written on Spanish things, must feel how difficult it is to keep regularly on the road without turning aside at every moment, now to cull a wild flower, now to pick up a sparkling spar. This corn, so beaten, is very carefully ground, and in La Mancha in those charming windmills, which, perched on eminences to catch the air, look to this day, with their outstretched arms, like Quixotic giants; the flour is pa.s.sed through several hoppers, in order to secure its fineness. The dough is most carefully kneaded, worked, and re-worked, as is done by our biscuit-makers; hence the close-grained, caky, somewhat heavy consistency of the crumb, whereas, according to Pliny, the Romans esteemed Spanish bread on account of its lightness.

[Sidenote: LUNCHEON.]

The Spanish loaf has not that mysterious sympathy with b.u.t.ter and cheese as it has in our verdurous Old England, probably because in these torrid regions pasture is rare, b.u.t.ter bad, and cheese worse, albeit they suited the iron digestion of Sancho, who knew of nothing better: none, however, who have ever tasted Stilton or Parmesan will join in his eulogies of Castilian _queso_, the poorness of which will be estimated by the distinguished consideration in which a round cannon-ball Dutch cheese is held throughout the Peninsula. The traveller, nevertheless, should take one of them, for bad is here the best, in many other things besides these: he will always carry some good loaves with it, for in the damper mountain districts the daily bread of the natives is made of rye, Indian corn, and the inferior cerealia. Bread is the staff of the Spanish traveller's life, who, having added raw garlic, not salt, to it, then journeys on with security, _con pan y ajo crudo se anda seguro_.

Again, a loaf never weighs one down, nor is ever in the way; as aesop, the prototype of Sancho, well knew. _La hogaza no embaraza._

[Sidenote: THE OLLA.]

Having secured his bread, the cook in preparing supper should make enough for the next day's lunch, _las once_, the eleven o'clock meal, as the Spaniards translate _meridie_, twelve or mid-day, whence the correct word for luncheon is derived, _merienda merendar_. Wherever good dishes are cut up there are good leavings, "_donde buenas ollas quebran, buenos cascos quedan_;" and nothing can be more Cervantic than the occasional al fresco halt, when no better place of accommodation is to be met with.

As the sun gets high, and man and beast hungry and weary, wherever a tempting shady spot with running water occurs, the party draws aside from the high road, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; a retired and concealed place is chosen, the luggage is removed from the animals, the hampers which lard the lean soil are unpacked, the table-cloth is spread on the gra.s.s, the _botas_ are laid in the water to cool their contents; then out with the provision, cold partridge or turkey, sliced ham or _chorizo_--simple cates, but which are eaten with an appet.i.te and relish for which aldermen would pay hundreds. They are followed, should grapes be wanting, with a soothing cigar, and a sweet slumber on earth's freshest, softest lap. In such wild banquets Spain surpa.s.ses the Boulevards. Alas! that such hours should be bright and winged as sunbeams! Such is Peninsular country fare. The _olla_, on which the rider may restore exhausted nature, is only to be studied in larger towns; and dining, of which this is the foundation in Spain, is such a great resource to travellers, and Spanish cookery, again, is so Oriental, cla.s.sical, and singular, let alone its vital importance, that the subject will properly demand a chapter to itself.

[Sidenote: A SPANISH COOK.]

CHAPTER XI.

A Spanish Cook--Philosophy of Spanish Cuisine--Sauce--Difficulty of Commissariat--The Provend--Spanish Hares and Rabbits--The Olla--Garbanzo--Spanish Pigs--Bacon and Hams--Omelette--Salad and Gazpacho.

It would exhaust a couple of Colonial numbers at least to discuss properly the merits and digest Spanish cookery. All that can be now done is to skim the subject, which is indeed fat and unctuous. Those meats and drinks will be briefly noticed which are daily occurrence, and those dishes described which we have often helped to make, and oftener helped to eat, in the most larderless _ventas_ and hungriest districts of the Peninsula, and which provident wayfarers may make and eat again, and, as we pray, with no worse appet.i.te.

[Sidenote: THE NATIONAL COOKERY.]

To be a good cook, which few Spaniards are, a man must not only understand his master's taste, but be able to make something out of nothing; just as a clever French _artiste_ converts an old shoe into an epigramme d'agneau, or a Parisian milliner dresses up two deal boards into a fine live _Madame_, whose only fault is the appearance of too much embonpoint. Genuine and legitimate Spanish dishes are excellent in their way, for no man nor man-cook ever is ridiculous when he does not attempt to be what he is not. The _au naturel_ may occasionally be somewhat plain, but seldom makes one sick; at all events it would be as hopeless to make a Spaniard understand real French cookery as to endeavour to explain to a depute the meaning of our const.i.tution or parliament. The ruin of Spanish cooks is their futile attempts to imitate foreign ones: just as their silly grandees murder the glorious Castilian tongue, by subst.i.tuting what they fancy is pure Parisian, which they speak _comme des vaches Espagnoles_. _Dis moi ce que tu manges et je te dirai ce que tu es_ is "un mot profond" of the great equity judge, Brillat Savarin, who also discovered that "_Les destinees des nations dependent de la maniere dont elles se nourrissent_;" since which General Foy has attributed all the _accidental_ victories of the British to rum and beef. And this great fact much enhances our serious respect for punch, and our true love for the _ros-bif_ of old England, of which, by the way, very little will be got in the Peninsula, where bulls are bred for baiting, and oxen for the plough, not the spit.

[Sidenote: SCARCITY OF PROVISIONS.]

The national cookery of Spain is for the most part Oriental; and the ruling principle of its preparation is _stewing_; for, from a scarcity of fuel, roasting is almost unknown; their notion of which is putting meat into a pan, setting it in hot ashes, and then covering the lid with burning embers. The pot, or _olla_, has accordingly become a synonyme for the dinner of Spaniards, just as beefsteaks or frogs are vulgarly supposed to const.i.tute the whole bill of fare of two other mighty nations. Wherever meats are bad and thin, the sauce is very important; it is based in Spain on oil, garlic, saffron, and red peppers. In hot countries, where beasts are lean, oil supplies the place of fat, as garlic does the want of flavour, while a stimulating condiment excites or curries up the coats of a languid stomach. It has been said of our heretical countrymen that we have but one form of sauce--melted b.u.t.ter--and a hundred different forms of religion, whereas in orthodox Spain there is but one of each, and, as with religion, so to change this sauce would be little short of heresy. As to colour, it carries that rich burnt umber, raw sienna tint, which Murillo imitated so well; and no wonder, since he made his particular brown from baked olla bones, whence it was extracted, as is done to this day by those Spanish painters who indulge in meat. This brown _negro de hueso_ colour is the livery of tawny Spain, where all is brown from the _Sierra Morena_ to duskier man. Of such hue is his cloak, his terra-cotta house, his wife, his ox, his a.s.s, and everything that is his. This sauce has not only the same colour, but the same flavour everywhere; hence the difficulty of making out the material of which any dish is composed. Not Mrs. Gla.s.s herself could tell, by taste at least, whether the ingredients of the cauldron be hare or cat, cow or calf, the aforesaid ox or a.s.s. It puzzles even the ac.u.men of a Frenchman; for it is still the great boast of the town of Olvera that they served up some donkeys as rations to a Buonapartist detachment. All this is very Oriental. Isaac could not distinguish tame kid from wild venison, so perplexing was the disguise of the savoury sauce; and yet his senses of smell and touch were keen, and his suspicions of unfair cooking were awakened. A prudent diner, therefore, except when forced to become his own cook, will never look too closely into the things of the kitchen if he wishes to live a quiet life; for _quien las cosas mucho apura, no vive vida segura_.

All who ride or run through the Peninsula, will read thirst in the arid plains, and hunger in the soil-denuded hills, where those who ask for bread will receive stones. The knife and fork question has troubled every warrior in Spain, from Henri IV. down to Wellington; "subsistence is the great difficulty always found" is the text of a third of the Duke's wonderful despatches. This scarcity of food is implied in the very name of Spain, Spa??a, which means poverty and dest.i.tution, as well as in the term _Bisonos_, wanters, which long has been a synonyme for Spanish soldiers, who are always, as the Duke described them, "hors de combat," "always _wanting_ in every thing at the critical moment." Hunger and thirst have ever been, and are, the best defenders of the Peninsula against the invader. On sierra and steppe these gaunt sentinels keep watch and ward, and, on the scarecrow principle, protect this paradise, as they do the infernal regions of Virgil--

"Malesuada fames et turpis egestas Horribiles visu."

A riding tour through Spain has already been likened to serving a campaign; and it was a saying of the Grand Conde, "If you want to know what want is, carry on a war in Spain." Yet, notwithstanding the thousands of miles which we have ridden, never have we yet felt that dire necessity, which has been kept at a respectable distance by a constant unremitting attention to the proverb, A man forewarned is forearmed. _Hombre prevenido nunca fu vencido_, there is nothing like precaution and _provision_. "If you mean to dine," writes the all-providing Duke to Lord Hill from Moraleja, "_you had better bring your things_, as I shall have nothing with me;"--the ancient Bursal fas.h.i.+on holds good on Spanish roads:--

"Regula Bursalis est omni tempere talis, Prandia fer tec.u.m, si vis comedere mec.u.m."

[Sidenote: EATING ON THE ROAD.]

A man who is prepared, is never beaten or starved; therefore, as the valorous Dalgetty has it, a prudent man will always victual himself in Spain with vivers for three days at least, and his cook, like Sancho Panza, should have nothing else in his head, but thoughts how to convey the most eatables into his ambulant larder.

He must set forth from every tolerable-sized town with an ample supply of tea, sugar, coffee, brandy, good oil, wine, salt, to say nothing of solids. The having something ready gives him leisure to forage and make ulterior preparations. Those who have a _corps de reserve_ to fall back upon--say a cold turkey and a ham--can always convert any spot in the desert into an oasis; at the same time the connection between body and soul may be kept up by trusting to _venta_ luck, of which more anon; it offers, however, but a miserable existence to persons of judgment. And even when this precaution of provision be not required, there are never wanting in Spain the poor and hungry, to whom the taste of meat is almost unknown, and to whom these crumbs that fall from the rich man's table are indeed a feast; the relish and grat.i.tude with which these fragments are devoured do as much good to the heart of the donor as to the stomach of the donees, for the best medicines of the poor are to be found in the cellars, kitchens, and hampers of the rich. All servants should be careful of their traps and stores, which are liable to be pilfered and plundered in _ventas_, where the elite of society is not always a.s.sembled: the luggage should be well corded, for the devil is always a gleaning, _ata al saco, ya espiga el diablo_.

Formerly all travellers of rank carried a silver olla with a key, the _guardacena_, the _save_ supper. This ingenious contrivance has furnished matter for many a pleasantry in picaresque tales and farces.

Madame Daunoy gives us the history of what befel the good Archbishop of Burgos and his orthodox olla.

[Sidenote: HARES AND RABBITS.]

There is nothing in life like making a good start; thus the party arrives safely at the first resting-place. The cook must never appear to have anything when he arrives at an inn; he must get from others all he can, and much is to be had for asking and crying, as even a Spanish Infante knows--the child that does not cry is not suckled, _quien no llora, no mama_; the artiste must never fall back on his own reservoirs except in cases of absolute need; during the day he must open his eyes and ears and must pick up everything eatable, and where he can and when he can. By keeping a sharp look-out and going quietly to work the cook may catch the hen and her chickens too. All is fish that comes into the net, and, like Buonaparte and his marshals, nothing should be too great for his ambition, nothing too small for his rapacity. Of course he will pay for his collections, which the aforesaid gentry did not: thus fruit, onions, salads, which, as they must be bought somewhere, had better be secured whenever they turn up. The peasants, who are sad poachers, will constantly hail travellers from the fields with offers of partridges, rabbits, melons, hares, which always jump up in this pays de l'imprevu when you least expect it: _Salta la liebre cuando menos uno piensa_.

Notwithstanding Don Quixote thought that it augured bad luck to meet with a hare on entering a village, let not a bold traveller be scared, but forthwith stew the omen; a hare, as in the time of Martial, is considered by Spaniards to be the glory of edible quadrupeds, and to this day no old stager ever takes a rabbit when he can get a hare, _a perro viejo echale liebre y no conejo_. In default however of catching one, rabbits may always be bagged. Spain abounds with them to such a degree, that ancient naturalists thought the animal indigenous, and went so far as to derive the name Spain from _Sephan_, the rabbit, which the Phnicians found here for the first time. Be that as it may, the long-eared timid creature appears on the early Iberian coins, as it will long do on her wide wastes and tables. By the bye, a ready-stewed rabbit or hare is to be eschewed as suspicious in a _venta_: at the same time, if the consumer does not find out that it is a cat, there is no great harm done--ignorance is bliss; let him not know it, he is not robbed at all. It is a pity to dispel his gastronomic delusion, as it is the knowledge of the cheat that kills, and not the cat. Pol! me occidistis, amici. The cook therefore should ascertain beforehand what are the bona fide ingredients of every dish that he sets before his lord.

[Sidenote: THE OLLA PODRIDA.]

In going into the kitchens of the Peninsula, precedence must on every account be given to the _olla_: this word means at once a species of prepared food, and the earthenware utensil in which it is dressed, just as our term _dish_ is applicable to the platter and to what is served on it. Into this _olla_ it may be affirmed that the whole culinary genius of Spain is condensed, as the mighty Jinn was into a gallipot, according to the Arabian Night tales. The lively and gastronomic French, who are decidedly the leaders of European civilization in the kitchen, deride the barbarous practices of the Gotho-Iberians, as being darker than Erebus and more ascetic than aesthetic; to credit their authors, a Peninsular breakfast consists of a teaspoonful of chocolate, a dinner, of a k.n.o.b of garlic soaked in water, and a supper, of a paper cigarette; and according to their _parfait cuisinier_, the _olla_ is made of two cigars boiled in three gallons of water--but this is a calumny, a mere invention devised by the enemy.

The _olla_ is only well made in Andalucia, and there alone in careful, well-appointed houses; it is called a _puchero_ in the rest of Spain, where it is but a poor affair, made of dry beef, or rather cow, boiled with _garbanzos_ or chick peas, and a few sausages. These _garbanzos_ are the vegetable, the potato of the land; and their use argues a low state of horticultural knowledge. The taste for them was introduced by the Carthaginians--the _puls punica_, which (like the _fides punica_, an especial ingredient in all Spanish governments and finance) afforded such merriment to Plautus, that he introduced the chick-pea eating Pnus, pultiphagonides, speaking Punic, just as Shakspere did the toasted-cheese eating Welshman talking Welsh. These garbanzos require much soaking, being otherwise hard as bullets; indeed, a lively Frenchman, after what he calls an apology for a dinner, compared them, in his empty stomach, as he was jumbled away in the dilly, to peas rattling in a child's drum.

The veritable _olla_--the ancient time-honoured _olla podrida_, or pot pourri--the epithet is now obsolete--is difficult to be made: a tolerable one is never to be eaten out of Spain, since it requires many Spanish things to concoct it, and much care; the cook must throw his whole soul into the pan, or rather pot; it may be made in one, but two are better. They must be of earthenware; for, like the French _pot au feu_, the dish is good for nothing when made in an iron or copper vessel; take therefore two, and put them on their separate stoves with water.

[Sidenote: THE OLLA PODRIDA.]

Place into No. 1, _Garbanzos_, which have been placed to soak over-night. Add a good piece of beef, a chicken, a large piece of bacon; let it boil once and quickly; then let it simmer: it requires four or five hours to be well done. Meanwhile place into No. 2, with water, whatever vegetables are to be had: lettuces, cabbage, a slice of gourd, of beef, carrots, beans, celery, endive, onions and garlic, long peppers. These must be previously well washed and cut, as if they were destined to make a salad; then add red sausages, or "_chorizos_;" half a salted pig's face, which should have been soaked over-night. When all is sufficiently boiled, strain off the water, and throw it away. Remember constantly to skim the sc.u.m of both saucepans. When all this is sufficiently dressed, take a large dish, lay in the bottom the vegetables, the beef in the centre, flanked by the bacon, chicken, and pig's face. The sausages should be arranged around, en couronne; pour over some of the soup of No. 1, and serve hot, as Horace did: "Uncta satis--ponuntur oluscula lardo." No violets come up to the perfume which a coming olla casts before it; the mouth-watering bystanders sigh, as they see and smell the rich freight steaming away from them.

[Sidenote: BACON.]

This is the olla _en grande_, such as Don Quixote says was eaten only by canons and presidents of colleges; like turtle-soup, it is so rich and satisfactory that it is a dinner of itself. A worthy dignitary of Seville, in the good old times, before reform and appropriation had put out the churches' kitchen fire, and whose daily pot-luck was transcendental, told us, as a wrinkle, that he on feast-days used turkeys instead of chickens, and added two sharp Ronda apples, and three sweet potatoes of Malaga. His advice is worth attention: he was a good Roman Catholic canon, who believed everything, absolved everything, drank everything, ate everything, and digested everything. In fact, as a general rule, anything that is good in itself is good for an _olla_, provided, as old Spanish books always conclude, that it contains nothing contrary to the holy mother church, to orthodoxy, and to good manners--"_que no contiene cosa que se oponga a nuestra madre Iglesia, y santa fe catolica, y buenas costumbres_." Such an olla as this is not to be got on the road, but may be made to restore exhausted nature when halting in the cities. Of course, every olla, must everywhere be made according to what can be got. In private families the contents of No.

1, the soup, is served up with bread, in a tureen, and the frugal table decked with the separate contents of the olla in separate platters; the remains coldly serve, or are warmed up, for supper.

The vegetables and bacon are absolute necessaries; without the former an olla has neither grace nor sustenance; _la olla sin verdura, ni tiene gracia ni hartura_, while the latter is as essential in this stew as a text from Saint Augustine is in a sermon:

_No hay olla sin tocino,_ _Ni sermon sin Agustino._

Bacon throughout the length and breadth of the Peninsula is more honoured than this, or than any one or all the fathers of the church of Rome; the hunger after the flesh of the pig is equalled only by the thirst for the contents of what is put afterwards into his skin; and with reason, for the pork of Spain has always been, and is, unequalled in flavour; the bacon is fat and flavoured, the sausages delicious, and the hams transcendantly superlative, to use the very expression of Diodorus Siculus, a man of great taste, learning, and judgment. Of all the things of Spain, no one need feeling ashamed to plead guilty to a predilection and preference to the pig. A few particulars may be therefore pardoned.

[Sidenote: PIGS OF ESTREMADURA.]

In Spain pigs are more numerous even than a.s.ses, since they pervade the provinces. As those of Estremadura, the _Ham_ps.h.i.+re of the Peninsula, are the most esteemed, they alone will be now noticed. That province, although so little visited by Spaniards or strangers, is full of interest to the antiquarian and naturalist; and many are the rides at different periods which we have made through its tangled ilex groves, and over its depopulated and aromatic wastes. A granary under Roman and Moor, its very existence seems to be all but forgotten by the Madrid government, who have abandoned it _ferae naturae_, to wandering sheep, locusts, and swine. The entomology of Estremadura is endless, and perfectly uninvestigated--de minimis non curat Hispa.n.u.s; but the heavens and earth teem with the minute creation; there nature is most busy and prolific, where man is most idle and unproductive; and in these lonely wastes, where no human voice disturbs the silence, the balmy air resounds with the buzzing hum of mult.i.tudinous insects, which career about on their business of love or food without settlements or kitchens, rejoicing in the fine weather which is the joy of their tiny souls, and short-lived pleasant existence. Sheep, pigs, locusts, and doves are the only living things which the traveller will see for hours and hours. Now and then a man occurs, just to prove how rare his species is here.

Vast districts of this unreclaimed province are covered with woods of oak, beech, and chesnut; but these park-like scenes have no charms for native eyes; blind to the picturesque, they only are thinking of the number of pigs which can be fattened on the mast and acorns, which are sweeter and larger than those of our oaks. The acorns are still called _bellota_, the Arabic _bollot_--_belot_ being the Scriptural term for the tree and the gland, which, with water, formed the original diet of the aboriginal Iberian, as well as of his pig; when dry, the acorns were ground, say the cla.s.sical authors, into bread, and, when fresh, they were served up as the second course. And in our time ladies of high rank at Madrid constantly ate them at the opera and elsewhere; they were the presents sent by Sancho Panza's wife to the d.u.c.h.ess, and formed the text on which Don Quixote preached so eloquently to the goatherds, on the joys and innocence of the golden age and pastoral happiness, in which they const.i.tuted the foundation of the kitchen.