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THE GYPSIES 245
But whenever the gypsies extend their rules of life
and attempt to apply them in the larger domain, they
run their heads against a stone wall and the criminal
statistics of Spain show how frequently this is the case.
About thirty per cent of the prisoners in the jails of
Granada are said to be gypsies, but they appear to be
able to make the prison air quite compatible with their
proverbial love of liberty. They often escape from
jail and usually with greater success than the other
prisoners; but their returns to prison are also more fre-
quent. In spite of all this, great progress has been
made in Andalusia—perhaps without the knowledge
or desire of those concerned—toward the solution of
the difficult problem of acclimatizing the gypsy. Na-
ture itself appears here ready to perform what has
been given up by a number of governments (including
even the Norwegian government) as a hopeless task:
the task of attaching the gypsies to a specific locality
and thus accustoming them to a more regular life.
Many of the gypsies, even some of the old ones, were
born in this place and have spent all their lives in and
around the caves. The caves have been the point to
which they have returned after all their wanderings.
This feeling of local attachment is even stronger in
their children, and their uprooted tradition continues
in them only as a sort of general unreliability in the
continuous performance of labor. Many are themselves
the owners of the steep slope that holds their cave;
they plant chumbo (the Indian fig) and keep goats,
whose milk they sell, down in the town. Some of them
even hire out as field-workers and a number go so far
as to move to town and become artisans. I am per-
sonally acquainted with a blacksmith who has a num-
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