SPANISH PANORAMA.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 424, 15 November 1930, Page 2

SPANISH PANORAMA.

It is a vast panorama of town and plain that you get from the summit of the great hill lowering above Burgoes. . . . Below you lies the town, dominated by the spires of its cathedral, a checkerboard of zigzag streets and red-tiled roofs, and, winding through its heart like a gigantic serpent, the bed of the Arlanzon with its tree-decked promenades. In the distance, north, east, south and west, stretches the undulating, almost treeless plain of northern Castile. Roads wind sinuously across the sun-baked plain, as white as marble against their yellow and brown background. Fringed by parallel rows of poplars and sycamores, these sharply defined highways can be followed by the eye for miles until they are lost in the dipping of the receding prairie. To the north, the distant mountains rise dimly through the haze of desert heat. Lesser hills, in lints of warm brown, are seen to the east. The horizon, stretching out .. . over the undulating plain, is like the rim of a gigantic saucer. In the near distance, farmers and their families arc at work in the sun-parched fields, winnowing the grain on threshing floors, the mules and oxen treading their ceaseless rounds with tireless regularity.. 1 heir cries to the animals carry audibly across the expanse of clear upland air, reaching you like an echo. Everywhere you look are brilliant yellows and warm browns, except for the long straight rows of trees fringing the ribboned highways. But the late afternoon sun, viewing his handiwork in parched fields and dried watercourses, catches the cloud-flecked western sky, and with an alchemist's cunning, transforms it into blues, purples and molten gold, gorgeous in their brilliant Colouring. Then, not content with painting this celestial canvas, as he sinks below the neighbouring hill in the late afternoon he lights up the towers, belfries and spires of his terrestrial empire with a rich yellow light, as full of substance and colour as the ochre on a painter’s palette.—Robert Medill Mcßride, in Spanish Towns and People."