At the mouth of several of the Spanish rivers are famous irrigated sections, such as Malaga, Almeria, and Valencia. Here the skilful Spanish gardeners grow crop after crop of vegetables in the early spring and during the long summer.
In a thousand other valleys, the careful watchers of water irri gate tiny patches of garde n vegetables.
There are many little patches of irrigated corn, but the total Mediterranean crop is only a third as much as in some of our American states. Yet corn is a very important article of food in these countries, because it is cheaper than wheat and is also very nourishing. In all this region corn can only be grown without irri gation on the Atlantic shores of northern Spain and northern Portugal.
In a few favored spots where irrigation is possible, such as southern Italy, Sicily, and Valencia, in Spain, the orange is largely grown. Sicily produces most of the lemons used in Europe and some of those used in the United States.
In the late spring, while the Dutch, the Germans, and the British are wearing over coats in their damp, raw, foggy weather, the stevedores on the wharves of Malaga, Va lencia, Palermo, and Naples are singing under a sunny sky as they trundle boxes of fruit and vegetables on board ships, bound for the English Channel or beyond.
The Po Valley is by far the greatest agricultural district of the Mediterranean world. Like the valley of California, this wide, level plain was filled in by water-borne soils. On the north the valley is walled in by snow-clad mountains, from whose top streams of snow water pour down in summer. This abundant moisture (Sec. 510) on the rich plain of Lombardy (the Po Valley) helps the busy men and women to produce heavy crops of rice, vegetables, corn, and hay.
554. Crops of the dry there is water enough to irrigate only a tiny frac tion of the dry land, what do the people grow besides wheat and barley, fruit and vege tables? It is plain that they must have crops that can, stand drought. Fortunately, there are many such, among them the grape, the olive, the fig, and the almond. All of these drought resisting crops are very impor tant in the California of the Old World, as well as in the California of the New World. These crops can endure drought
better than some others, because their large, long roots reach deep into the earth for moisture, and store the nourishment of one year to help make a crop the next year. The writers of the Old Testament often speak of the vineyard, the vine, the vine dresser (or tender), the fig tree, oil (olive oil), and wine.
555. Grapes.—Throughout the land from the western coast of Portugal to the hills of Palestine, the vine dresser may be seen at work. Vineyards cover a very large part of the land in all these countries. Grapes, one of the chief exports of Spain, may be shipped as fresh fruit, as raisins, or as wine. Wine has long been a leading export of Italy and Algeria. Little dried grapes, which are called currants when we buy them in boxes at the stores, are the chief export of Greece.
556. The olive.—The human body needs some kind of fat as a part of its food. We can get fat from meat, butter, or peanuts, from the rich kernels of nuts, and from oily seeds such as cottonseed. In lands of sum mer rain like the Mississippi Valley, New England, the north European plain, and England, grass serves to feed the butter-yield ing cow and helps to feed the bacon-yielding hog. In such places most of the people eat the fat of animals. But the Mediter ranean lands are parched and dry in summer and there is little grass, corn, or potatoes, so the herds of cows and swine are few. In stead of eating animal fats, the people eat vegetable fat in the form of olive oil. Every where the gray green of the olive tree may be seen; from Lisbon to Rome, from Athens to Jerusalem, from the edges of the Sahara to the valleys of the Rhone and the Po. In autumn, when the people of Dakota and Manitoba are busy harvesting wheat, and the people of Iowa are busy with their corn, the people of the Mediterranean lands are very busy, too. They are gathering grapes and crushing them for wine; gathering olives and crushing them for oil. Olives are mashed or pounded into pulp and then are squeezed in the olive press.