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.
The bark is taken from them each seventh year, and it
begins to be taken long before the first seventh. The tender saplings
and the superannuated shell wasting to its fall yield alike their bark,
which is stripped from the roots to the highest boughs. Where they have
been flayed recently they look literally as if they were left bleeding,
for the sap turns a red color; but with time this changes to brown, and
the bark begins to renew itself and grows again till the next seventh
year. Upon the whole the cork-wood forest is not cheerful, and I would
rather frequent it in the pages of _Don Quixote_ than out; though if the
trees do not mind being barked it is mere sentimentality in me to pity
them.
The country grew lonelier and drearier as we mounted, and the wind blew
colder over the fields blotched with that sort of ground-palm, which
lays waste so much land in southern Spain. When we descended the winding
road from the summit we came in sight of the sea with Africa clearly
visible beyond, and we did not lose sight of it again.
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