Farther north, where the Toledan mountains loom blue over the western horizon, La Mancha refuses to produce anything. The unsympathetic earth, for 100 miles a sterile hungry crust, stony and sun-scorched, obtrudes an almost hideous nakedness, its dry bones declining to be clad, save in flints or fragments of lava and splintered granite. Wherever nature is a trifle less austere, a low growth of dwarf broom and helianthemum at least serves to vary the dreariness of dry prairie-grass. There, beneath the foothills of the wild Montes de Toledo, stretch whole regions where thorn-scrub and broken belts of open wood vividly recall the scenery of equatorial Africa--we might be traversing the "Athi Plains" instead of European lands. Evergreen oak and wild-olive replace mimosa and thorny acacia--one almost expects to see the towering heads of giraffes projecting above the grey-green bush. In both cases there is driven home that living sense of arid sterility, the same sense of desolation--nay, here even more so--since there is lacking that wondrous wild fauna of the other. No troops of graceful gazelles bound aside before one's approach; no herds of zebra or antelope adorn the farther veld; no galloping files of shaggy gnus spurn the plain. A chance covey of redlegs, a hoopoe or two, the desert-loving wheatears--birds whose presence ever attests sterility--a company of azure-winged magpies chattering among the stunted ilex, or a woodchat--that is all one may see in a long day's ride. [Illustration: WOODCHAT SHRIKE AND ITS "SHAMBLES" (Sketched in La Mancha)] Another feature common to both lands--and one abhorrent to northern eye--is the absence of water, stagnant or current. Never the glint of lake or lagoon, far less the joyous murmur of rippling burn, rejoice eye or ear in La Mancha. Alas, that to us is denied the synthetic sense! In vain we scan Manchegan thicket for compensating beauties, for the Naiads and Dryads with which Cervantes' creative spirit peopled the wilderness; no vision of lovely Dorotheas laving ivory limbs of exquisite mould in sylvan fountain rewards our searching (but too prosaic) gaze--that may perhaps be explained by the contemporary absence of any such fountains. Nor have other lost or love-lorn maidens, Lucindas or Altisidoras from enchanted castle, aided us to add one element of romance to purely faunal studies. Castles, it is true, adorn the heights or crown a distant skyline; nor are Dulcineas of Toboso extinct or even in the _posada_ at Daimiel, while excellent specimens graced the twilight _paséo_ of Ciudad Real or reclined beneath the orange-groves of its _alameda_. [Illustration: DESERT-LOVING WHEATEARS] We have animadverted upon the absence of water in La Mancha. Yet there is no rule but has its exception, and it is, in fact, to the existence of a series of most singular Manchegan lagoons, abounding in bird-life, that this venturesome literary excursion owes its genesis.