“Poor Spain” is the expression which comes to the lips of everybody who contemplates the economic conditions of this once so powerful nation, almost the ruler of the world. Once, under the beneficent dominion of the Saracens, a paradise where, as a Roman author puts it, “Nil otiosum, nihil sterile in Hispania,” it has become almost a desert through neglect, indolence, ignorance, false pride, lack of communal spirit, despotism of church, and misrule by a corrupt bureaucracy. With the exception of a narrow belt along the seashore, the whole of the Iberian peninsula is a vast high mesa, plateau or tableland, 1,500 to 3,000 feet above sea level, traversed by lofty mountain chains, or sierras, five or six in number, running parallel to each other, mainly in a westerly and southwesterly direction. These divide the plateau into as many plains, treeless, and for the most part, arid, exposed to cold blasts in winter, and burning up in summer. They are frequently subjected to severe droughts, which sometimes have lasted for months, bringing desolation to country and people. The rivers, as they usually do in such countries similar to our arid plains, form cañons and arroyos, and, being uncertain in their water stages, none of them are navigable although hundreds of miles long, but useful for irrigation, on which agriculture relies. The great mineral wealth had made Spain the California of the Carthaginians and Romans, and it is still its most valuable resource. Spain awakened to civilization through the visits of Phoenicians and Carthaginians followed by the Romans. During the first centuries of the Christian era there occurred one of the several periods of extreme prosperity, when a supposed population of 40 million exploited the country. After the dark days of the Gothic domination, a second period of prosperity was attained for the portion which came under the sway of the industrious and intelligent Moors or Saracens (711 to 1,000 A.D.) who made the desert bloom, and whose irrigation works are still the mainstay of agriculture at present. Centuries of warfare and carnage to re-establish Christian kingdoms still left the country rich, when, in 1479, the several kingdoms were united into one under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Moors were finally driven out altogether (1492). This kingdom persisted in the same form to the present time with only a short period as a republic (1873). Spain was among the first countries to have a constitution.