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WITH COTTAGERS IN MOUNTAINS 165
insist we must certainly take some refreshment before
we get to the village; and one of them must run on
ahead and get it for us. We exchange a few words
concerning the beautiful appearance of a blossoming
almond tree that makes a fine contrast with the blue
sky, and Alfonso climbs up and brings down a branch
for us.
The village of X. is half way up the southern slope
of the mountain. Its huts appear to be glued to the
slope. It has twenty-five thousand inhabitants, five
priests, and no school-teachers. Like most of the larger
villages in Andalusia it has electric street lights, the
power being generated by the water in the streams.
This progressive fact is really the outcome of an ex-
cessive conservatism, for one liter of petroleum costs,
because of the immense taxes on all articles of con-
sumption, four times as much as in Denmark. Elec-
tricity has not penetrated the houses. Inside they sit
about or grope in the light of an oil-wick which has
been ignited with great toil with the aid of flint and
tinder, because the state insists on collecting a million
dollars annually in taxes on matches alone. It is a
strange sight to watch a fellow work for a quarter of
an hour banging steel against flint in order to light a
cigarette, when he is standing right under an in-
candescent electric light bulb.
There is no middle class in this village, and yet its
population is as large as that of a fair-sized provincial
city. The whole population lives on the soil, most are
day laborers. But there is a class here not found else-
where in Andalusia, landowning cottagers. We have
already made the acquaintance of three of them and
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