Nothing lacked now but the opportune recollection that this was the
region where the natives had been so wicked in times past that an
ingenious statesman, such as have seldom been wanting to Spain, imagined
bringing in a colony of German peasants to mix with them and reform
them. That is what some of the books say, but others say that the region
had remained unpeopled after the first exile of the conquered Moors. All
hold that the notion of mixing the colonists and the natives worked the
wrong way; the natives were not reformed, but the colonists were
depraved and stood in with the local brigands, ultimately, if not
immediately. This is the view suggested, if not taken, by that amusing
emissary, George Borrow, who seems in his _Bible in Spain_ to have been
equally employed in distributing the truths of the New Testament and
collecting material for the most dramatic study of Spanish civilization
known to literature. It is a delightful book, and not least delightful
in the moments of misgiving which it imparts to the reader, when he does
not know whether to prize more the author's observation or his
invention, whichever it may be. Borrow reports a conversation with an
innkeeper and his wife of the Colonial German descent, who gave a good
enough account of themselves, and then adds the dark intimation of an
Italian companion that they could not be honestly keeping a hotel in
that unfrequented place. It was not just in that place that our delay
had chosen to occur, but it was in the same colonized region, and I am
glad now that I had not remembered the incident from my first reading of
Borrow. It was sufficiently uncomfortable to have some vague association
with the failure of that excellent statesman's plan, blending creepily
with the feeling of desolation from the gathering dark, and I now recall
the distinct relief given by the unexpected appearance of two such
Guardias Civiles as travel with every Spanish train, in the space before
our lonely station.