one of the anomalies of this desert country that it was apparently
prosperous, if one might guess from the comfortable-looking farmsteads
scattered over it, inclosing house and stables in the courtyard framed
by their white walls. The houses stood at no great distances from one
another, but were nowhere grouped in villages. There were commonly no
towns near the stations, which were not always uncheerful; sometimes
there were flower-beds, unless my memory deceives me. Perhaps there
would be a passenger or two, and certainly a loafer or two, and always
of the sex which in town life does the loafing; in the background or
through the windows the other sex could be seen in its domestic
activities. Only once did we see three girls of such as stay for the
coming and going of trains the world over; they waited arm in arm, and
we were obliged to own they were plain, poor things.

Their whitewash saves the distant towns from the effect of sinking into
the earth, or irregularly rising from it, as in Old Castile, and the
landscape cheered up more and more as we ran farther south. We passed
through the country of the Valdepenas wine, which it is said would so
willingly be better than it is; there was even a station of that name,
which looked much more of a station than most, and had, I think I
remember, buildings necessary to the wine industry about it. Murray,
indeed, emboldens me in this halting conjecture with the declaration
that the neighboring town of Valdepenas is "completely undermined by
wine-cellars of very ancient date" where the wine is "kept in caves in
huge earthen jars," and when removed is put into goat or pig skins in
the right Don Quixote fashion.

The whole region begins to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from
the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the
inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among