Whatever their origin may have been, the Hurdanos of to-day are a depraved and degenerate race, to all intents and purposes savages, lost to all sense of self-respect or shame, of honesty or manliness. Too listless to take thought of the most elementary necessities of life, they are content to lead a semi-bestial existence, dependent for subsistence on their undersized goats and swine, on an exiguous and precarious cultivation, eked out by roots and wild fruits such as acorns, chestnuts, etc., and on begging outside their own region. First, as to their country. Picture a maze of mountains all utterly monotonous in uniform configuration--long straight slopes, each skyline practically parallel with that beyond, bare of trees, but clad in shoulder-high scrub. On approaching from the south, the hills are lower and display delightful variety of heaths (including common heather); but as one penetrates northwards, the bush is reduced to the everlasting gum-cistus, and elevations become loftier and more precipitous till they culminate in the sheer rock-walls of the Sierra de Gata. Here, in remote glens, one chances on groves of ilex and cork-oak, whose gnarled boles attest the absence of woodcutters, while huge trunks lie prostrate, decaying from sheer old age. Here and there one sees an ilex enveloped to its summit in parasitic growths of creepers and wild-vine, whose broad, pale-green leaves contrast pleasingly with the dusky foliage and small leaf of its host. In the deep gorges or canyons of these mountains are situate the settlements, called _Alquerías_, of the wild tribes, most of them inaccessible on horseback. That of Romano de Arriba, for example, is plunged in such an abyss that from November to March no ray of sunshine ever reaches it. A similar case is that of Casa Hurdes, which, as seen from the bridle-track leading over the Sierra de Portéros into Castile, appears buried in the bottom of a crevasse. Others, in the reverse, are perched on high, amidst crags that can only be surmounted by a severe scramble up broken rock-stairways. These _alquerías_--warrens we may translate the word--consist of den-like hovels straggling without order or huddled together according as the rock-formation may dictate--some half-piled one on another, others separate. Many are mere holes in the earth--lairs, shapeless as nature left their walls, but roofed over with branches and grass held in place by schistose slabs that serve for slates. Hardly, in some cases, can one distinguish human dwellings from surrounding bush, earth, or rock. As our companion, a civil guard, remarked of one set of eyries that adhered to a cliff-face, they rather resembled "the nests of crag-martins" (_nidos de vencéjos_) than abodes of mankind.