SALAMANCA, one of the departments into which the kingdom or province of Leon, in Spain, is divided. It is situated between lat. 40° and 41° 38' north. The river Duero forms its limit to the north and north-west, except where it comes in contact with Portugal. Estremadura is on its southern side, and the province of Segovia to the eastward. It extends over 471 square leagues, and its population amounts to 272,982 souls. It generally consists of an open country
with extensive plains, and for the most part destitute of Salamanca trees. The soil is more fruitful than its appearance would suggest. It yields excellent corn, and in moist summers the harvests are abundant; but it is subject to that want which the greater part of Spain feels from the scarcity of water; for although there are several rivers in the department, the influence of their moisture extends but a small distance from their banks. The principal of these rivers is the Duero, into which the Alba, the Tormes, and the Aguada run, whilst the Alagon, taking a southern course, runs into the Tagus. From the nature of the soil through which these rivers pass, they have worn very deep channels, and therefore cannot be used for the purposes of irrigation, without a portion of labour and expenditure which the inhabitants are neither willing nor able to bestow upon them. Though generally the department is destitute of wood, yet in some parts there are extensive forests of evergreen oak trees, without any brushwood under them; and the oaks themselves are without those spreading branches and lofty tops with which our forests exhibit these trees. They are, however, of considerable benefit to the inhabitants by their copious produce of acorns, on which large droves of pigs are fed. The peasants who attend to these animals precede the drove, and proceeding from tree to tree, beat them with a kind of flail, causing the acorns to fall, which the swine most greedily devour. They thus proceed daily from tree to tree till the food they supply is exhausted. The hams of the pigs fattened in this way are most highly esteemed. In this department large flocks of the merno kind of sheep are fed; and many of the stationary kind are bred here, whose wool is of a very inferior degree of fineness. In the early part of the late war the plains of Salamanca were very favourable to the operations of the French armies, who being superior in cavalry, could act on them with the most powerful effect. The cattle of this province are reckoned to be 9363 horses, 6163 mules, 22,002 asses, 107,800 oxen, 103,401 goats, and 107,200 pigs. Of fruits it yields 9500 fanegas of chestnuts, 502,000 of nuts, and 12,000 of raisins.