16 THE MESTA
tions with the crown and with landowners, both private and
public. The first of these headings, the internal affairs of the
Mesta, will require an examination of the practices connected
with the sheep migrations, the use of sheep highways, the organi-
zation of the flocks, the marketing methods employed in dispos-
ing of the wool, and the constitution of the Mesta itself, its officials
and their duties. The second, the external relations of the organ-
ization, will involve a group of three problems — judicial, fiscal,
and agrarian—which reflect the position of the Mesta in Spanish
history and throw light upon the real significance of its long annals
as an illustration of the ancient and universal conflict between
herdsman and husbandman.
CHAPTER II
MIGRATIONS
Sheep highways in Mediterranean countries. The Castilian canadas. Traffic routes
of the Teamsters’ Gild of Castile. Organization and size of the Mesta flocks. On
the march. Wool clipping.
The first feature to be noted with reference to the general organ-
ization of the migratory pastoral industry in Castile is the system
of special highways for the use of the flocks. These sheep walks
occur in all of the countries where the industry is found. South-
ern Italy was traversed by the early Roman calles and their
successors, the tratluri.γ In Provence, Algeria, and the Balkans
there were similar routes—some of them probably pre-Roman—
reserved for the wandering flocks.2 In the Spanish kingdoms
these highways were known by different names: the cabaneras of
Aragon, the carreradas of Catalonia, the azadores reales of Valen-
cia, and, most important of all from the present point of view, the
canadas of Castile.3
The antiquity of the sheep walks in Castile is a question which
has caused much discussion. It has been contended that the
curious framontanos (pre-Roman stone images of pigs, rams, and
bulls) found in many parts of central Spain marked the routes
of certain Iberian sheep highways, which were later followed by
' See below, p. 69.
2 Densusianu, Pastoritul la Popoarele Romanice (Bucharest, 1913); E. de Mar-
tonne, “ La vie pastorale et la transhumance dans les Karpates méridionales,” in
Zu Friedrich Ratzels Geddchtnis (Leipsic, 1904), pp. 225-245; Foumier, “Les
chemins de transhumance en Provence et in Dauphiné,” in Bull, de géog. hist, et
descrip., 1900, pp. 237-262; Cabannes, “ Les chemins de transhumance dans Ie
Couserans,” ibid., 1899, pp. 185-200; Bernard and Lacroix, L’Évolution du noma-
disme en Algérie (Paris, 1906), p. 69.
3 ɪn some parts of Castile these routes were called galianas, cordones, cuerdas,
and cabaniles. The canadas were sometimes merely local sheep walks, running but
a short distance into the suburbs, but this use of the name was unusual. Ordenanzas
de Lorca (Granada, 1713), p. 29 (in Berlin Kgl. Bibl., no. 5725); Acad. Hist.,
Sempere Ms. B. 125, no. 17.
ɪ?