UNEXPLORED SPAIN

ABEL CHAPMAN’S WORKS

BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. First Edition, 1889;
—— ——, Second Edition, 1907.
WILD SPAIN. (With W. J. B.) 1893.
WILD NORWAY. 1897.
ART OF WILDFOWLING. 1896.
ON SAFARI (In British East Africa). 1908.
UNEXPLORED SPAIN. (With W. J. B.) 1910.

UNEXPLORED
SPAIN

BY
ABEL CHAPMAN
AUTHOR OF ‘WILD SPAIN,’ ‘WILD NORWAY,’ ‘ON SAFARI,’ ETC.
AND
WALTER J. BUCK
BRITISH VICE-CONSUL AT JEREZ
AUTHOR OF ‘WILD SPAIN’
WITH 209 ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JOSEPH CRAWHALL, E. CALDWELL, AND ABEL CHAPMAN
AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD
1910

INSCRIBED
BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION
TO THEIR MAJESTIES
KING ALFONSO XIII.
HIMSELF AN ACCOMPLISHED SPORTSMAN
AND
QUEEN VICTORIA EUGENIA OF SPAIN
WITH DEEP RESPECT
BY THEIR MAJESTIES’ GRATEFUL AND DEVOTED SERVANTS
THE AUTHORS

Preface

THE undertaking of a sequel to Wild Spain, we are warned, is dangerous. The implication gratifies, but the forecast alarms not. Admittedly, in the first instance, we occupied a virgin field, and naturally the almost boyish enthusiasm that characterised the earlier book—and probably assured its success—has in some degree abated. But it’s not all gone yet; and any such lack is compensated by longer experience (an aggregate, between us, of eighty years) of a land we love, and the sounder appreciation that arises therefrom. Our own resources, moreover, have been supplemented and reinforced by friends in Spain who represent the fountain-heads of special knowledge in that country.

No foreigners could have enjoyed greater opportunity, and we have done our best to exploit the advantage—so far, at least, as steady plodding work will avail; for we have spent more than two years in analysing, checking and sorting, selecting and eliminating from voluminous notes accumulated during forty years. The concentrated result represents, we are convinced, an accurate—though not, of course, a complete—exposition of the wild-life of one of the wildest of European countries.

No, for this book and its thoroughness neither doubt nor fear intrudes; but we admit to being, in two respects, out of touch with modern treatment of natural-history subjects. Possibly we are wrong in both; but it has not yet been demonstrated, by Euclid or other, that a minority even of two is necessarily so? Nature it is nowadays customary to portray in somewhat lurid and sensational colours—presumably to humour a “popular taste.” Reflection might suggest that nothing in Nature is, in fact, sensational, loud, or extravagant; but the lay public possess no such technical training as would enable them to discern the line where Nature stops and where fraud and “faking” begin. At any rate we frequently read purring approval of what appears to us meretricious imposture, and see writers lauded as constellations whom we should condemn as charlatans. Beyond the Atlantic President Roosevelt (as he then was) went bald-headed for the “Nature-fakers,” and in America the reader has been put upon his guard. If he still likes “sensations”—well, that’s what he likes. But he buys such fiction forewarned.

In the illustration of wild-life our views are also, in some degree, divergent from current ideas. Animal-photography has developed with such giant strides and has taught us such valuable lessons (for which none are more grateful than the Authors), that there is danger of coming to regard it, not as a means to an end but as the actual end itself. While photography promises uses the value of which it would be difficult to exaggerate, yet it has defects and limitations which should not be ignored. First as regards animals in motion; the camera sees too quick—so infinitely quicker than the human eye that attitudes and effects are portrayed which we do not, and cannot see. Witness a photograph of the finish for the Derby. Galloping horses do not figure so on the human retina—with all four legs jammed beneath the body like a dead beetle. No doubt the camera exhibits an unseen phase in the actual action and so reveals its process; but that phase is not what mortals see. Similarly with birds in flight, the human eye only catches the form during the instantaneous arrest of the wing at the end of each stroke—in many cases not even so much as that. But the camera snaps the whirling pinion at mid-stroke or at any intermediate point. The result is altogether admirable as an exposition of the mechanical processes of flight; but it fails as an illustration, inasmuch as it illustrates a pose which Nature has expressly concealed from our view.

Secondly, in relation to still life. Here the camera is not only too quick, but too faithful. A tiny ruffled plume, a feather caught up by the breeze with the momentary shadow it casts, even an intrusive bough or blade of grass—all are reproduced with such rigid faithfulness and conspicuous effect that what are in fact merest minute details assume a wholly false proportion, mislead the eye, and disguise the whole picture. True, these things are actually there; but the human eye enjoys a faculty (which the camera does not) of selecting its objective and ignoring, or reducing to its correct relative value each extrinsic detail; of looking, as it were, through obstacles and concentrating its power upon the one main subject of study.

The portrayal of wildfowl presents a peculiar difficulty. This group differs in two essential characters from the rest of the bird-world. Though clad in feathers, yet those feathers are not “feathery.” Rather may they be described as a steely water-tight encasement, as distinct from the covering, say of game-birds as mackintosh differs from satin. Each plume possesses a compactness of web and firmness of texture that combine to produce a rigidity, and this, it so happens, both in form and colour. For in this group the colours, too, or patterns of colour, are clean-cut, the contrasts strong and sharply defined. The plumage of wild-fowl, in short, is characterised by lack of subdued tints and half-tones. That is its beauty and its glory; but the fact presents a stumbling-block to treatment, especially in colour.

The difficulty follows consequentially. Subjects of such character and crude coloration defy accustomed methods. That is not the fault of the artist; rather it reveals the limitations of Art. Just as in landscape distance ever demands an “atmosphere” more or less obliterative of distinctive detail afar (though such detail may be visible to non-artistic eyesight miles away), so in birds of sharply contrasted colouring the needed effect can only (it would appear) be attained by processes of softening which are not, in fact, correct, and which ruin the real picture as designed by Nature.

No wild bird (and wildfowl least of all) can be portrayed from captive specimens—still less from bedraggled corpses selected in Leadenhall market. In the latter every essential feature has disappeared. The ruffled remains resemble the beauty of their originals only as a dish-clout may recall some previous existence as a damask serviette. Living captives at least give form; but that is all. The loss of freedom, with all its contingent perils, involves the loss of character, the pride of life, and of independence. Once remove the first essential element—the sense of instant danger, with all that the stress and exigencies of wild-life import—and with these there vanish vigilance, carriage, sprightliness, dignity, sometimes even self-respect.

Not a man who has watched and studied wild beasts and wild birds in their native haunts, glorified and ennobled by self-conscious aptitude to prevail in the ceaseless “struggle for existence,” but instantly recognises with a pang the different demeanour of the same creatures in captivity, albeit carefully tended in the best zoological gardens of the world.

To Mr. Joseph Crawhall (cousin of one author) we and our readers are indebted for a series of drawings that speak for themselves.

Further, we desire most heartily to thank H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans for notes and photographs illustrative both of Baetican scenery and of the wild camels of the marisma; also the many Spanish and Anglo-Spanish friends whose assistance is specifically acknowledged, passim, in the text.

Should some slight slip or repetition have escaped the final revision, may we crave indulgence of critics? ‘Tis not care that lacks, but sheer mnemonics. In a work of (we are told) 150,000 words the mass of manuscript appals, and to detect every single error may well prove beyond our power. We have lost, moreover, that guiding eye and pilot-like touch on the helm that helped to steer our earlier venture through the shoals and seething whirlpools that ever beset voyages into the unknown.

A. C.
W. J. B.

British Vice-Consulate, Jerez,
December 1910.

Contents

CHAPTER I
UNEXPLORED SPAIN
INTRODUCTORY

THE Spain that we love and of which we write is not the Spain of tourist or globe-trotter. These hold main routes, the highways from city to city; few so much as venture upon the bye-ways. Our Spain begins where bye-ways end. We write of her pathless solitudes, of desolate steppe and prairie, of marsh and mountain-land—of her majestic sierras, some well-nigh inaccessible, and, in many an instance, untrodden by British foot save our own. Lonely scenes these, yet glorified by primeval beauty and wealth of wild-life. As naturalists—that is, merely as born lovers of all that is wild, and big, and pristine—we thank the guiding destiny that early directed our steps towards a land that is probably the wildest and certainly the least known of all in Europe—a land worthy of better cicerones than ourselves.

Do not let us appear to disparage the other Spain. The tourist enjoys another land overflowing with historic and artistic interest—with memorials of mediæval romance, and of stirring times when wave after wave of successive conquest swept the Peninsula. Such subjects, however, fall wholly outside the province of this book: nor do they lack historians a thousand-fold better qualified to tell their tale.

The first cause that differentiates Spain from other European countries of equal area is her high general elevation. This fact must jump to the eye of every observant traveller who books his seat by the Sûd-express to the Mediterranean. Better still, for our purpose, let him commence his journey, say at the Tweed. From Berwick southwards through the heart of England to London: from London to Paris, and right across France—all the way he traverses low-lying levels; fat pastures, fertile and tilled to the last acre. His aneroid tells him he has seldom risen above sea-level by more than a few hundred feet; and never once has his train passed through mountains—hardly even through hills; he can scarce be said to have had a real mountain within the range of his vision in all these 1200 miles.

Now he crosses the Bidassoa ... the whole world changes! At once his train plunges into interminable Pyrenees, and ere it clears these, he has ascended to a permanent highland level—a tawny treeless steppe that averages 2000-feet altitude, and sometimes approaches 3000, traversed by range after range of rugged mountains that arise all around him to four, five, or six thousand feet. Railways, moreover, avoid mountains (so far as they can). Our traveller, therefore, must bear in mind that what he actually sees is but the mildest and tamest version of Spanish sierras. There are bits here and there that he may have thought anything but tame—only tame by comparison with those grander scenes to which we propose guiding him.

For the next 500 miles he never quits that austere highland altitude nor ever quite loses sight of jagged peaks that pierce the skies—peaks of that hoary cinder-grey that shows up almost white against an azure background. Never does he descend till, after leaving behind him three kingdoms—Arragon, Navarre, and Castile—his train plunges through the Sierra Moréna, down the gorges of Despeñaperros, and at length on the third day enters upon the smiling lowlands of Andalucia. Here the aneroid rises once more to rational readings, and fertile vegas spread away to the horizon. But our traveller is not even now quite clear of mountains. Whether he be booked to Malaga or to Algeciras, he will presently find himself enveloped once more amidst some fairly stupendous rocks—the Gaëtánes or Serranía de Ronda respectively.

Spain is, in fact, largely an elevated table-land, 400 miles square, and traversed by four main mountain-ranges, all (like her great rivers) running east and west. The only considerable areas of lowland are found in Andalucia and Valencia.

Naturally such physical features result in marked variations of climate and scene, which in turn react upon their productions and denizens, whether human or of savage breed. We take three examples.

The central table-lands, subject all summer to solar rays that burn, in winter shelterless from biting blasts off snow-clad sierras, present precisely that landscape of desperate desolation that always results from a maximum of sunshine combined with a minimum of rainfall. A desiccated downland, khaki-colour or calcareous by turn, but bare (save for a few weeks in spring) of green thing, naked of bush or shrub, innocent even of grass. Not a tree grows so far as eye can reach, not a watercourse but is stone-dry and leaves the impress that it has been so since time began. Oh, it is an unlovely landscape, that central plateau. ‘Twere ungrateful, nevertheless (and unjust too), to forget that here we are journeying in a glory of atmosphere, brilliant in aggressive radiance that annihilates distance and revels in space. Though patches of vine-growth be lost in the monotony of tawny expanse, mud-built hamlet and village church indistinguishable amidst a universal khaki, yet this is, in truth, a kingdom of the sun. The great bustard maintains a foothold on these arid uplands, but the fauna is best exemplified by the desert-loving sand-grouse (Pterocles arenarius).

Precisely the reverse of all this is Cantabria—the Basque provinces of the north, with Galicia and the Asturias. There, bordering on the Biscayan Sea, you find a region absolutely Scandinavian in type—pinnacled peaks, precipitous beyond all rivals even in Spain, with deep-rifted valleys between, rushing salmon-rivers and mountain-torrents abounding in trout. Here the fauna is alpine, if not subarctic, and includes the brown bear and chamois, the ptarmigan, hazel-grouse, and capercaillie.

Cantabria is a region of rock, snow, and mist-wraith; of birch and pine-forest—the very antithesis of the third region, that next concerns us, the smiling plains of Andalucia and Valencia nestling on Mediterranean shore. Here for eight months out of the twelve one lives in a paradise; but the summer is African in its burden of heat and discomfort. Every green thing outside the vineyard and irrigated garden is burnt up by a fiery sun, a sun that changes not, but, day following day, grips the land in a blistering embrace. Climatic conditions such as these reacting on a race already infused with Arab blood naturally conduce to Oriental modes of life. Yet even here we have examples of the curious contradictions that characterise this pays de l’imprévu. Thus within sight of one another, there flourish on the vega below the date-palm and sugar-cane, while the ice-defying edelweiss embellishes the snows above—arctic and tropic in one.

Such extremes of climate react, as suggested, upon the character of the human inhabitants of a land which includes within its boundaries nearly all the physical conditions of Europe and North Africa. From the north, as might be expected, comes the worker—the sturdy laborious Galician, disdained and despised by his Andalucian brother, regarded as lacking in dignity—the very name Gallego is a term of reproach. But he is a happy and contented hewer of wood and drawer of water, that Gallego: throughout Spain he carries the baskets, bears the burdens, cleans the floors; and finally returns, a rich man, to his barren hills of Galicia.

The Andalucian will condescend to tend your cattle or garden, to drive your horses or ponies: and such offices he will perform well; but anything menial, or what he might regard as derogatory, he prefers—instinctively, not offensively—to leave to the Galician. From Castile and Navarre comes a different caste, stately and aristocratic by nature, yet with fiery temperament concealed beneath subdued exterior—honestly, we prefer both the preceding exemplars. The Catalan comes next, pushing and effervescent, all for his own little corner, his factories and his trade—impregnated, every man, with a sort of cinematograph of advanced views on social and political questions of the day—borrowed mostly from his up-to-date neighbours beyond the Pyrenees, yet grafted on to old-world fueros, or franchises, that date back to the times of the Counts of Barcelona.[1] Perhaps the most perfect example of contemporary natural nobility is afforded by the peasant-proprietor of pastoral León; then there is the Basque of Biscay, Tartar-sprung or Turanian, Finnic, or surviving aboriginal—let philologists decide. Among Spain’s manifold human types, we suggest to ethnologists (and suggested before, twenty years ago) the study of a surviving remnant that still clings secreted, lonely as lepers, in the far-away mountains of Northern Estremadura—the Hurdes. These wild tribes of unknown origin (presumed to be Gothic) live apart from Spain, four thousand of them, a root-grubbing race of homo sylvestris, squatted in a land without written history or record, where all is traditional even to the holding of the soil. Not a title-deed or other document exists; yet this is a region of considerable extent—say fifty miles by thirty. A recent pilgrimage to these forgotten glens enables us to give, in another chapter, some contemporary facts about “Las Hurdes.”

Throughout Spain the people of the “lower orders”—the peasantry—strike those who leave the beaten tracks by their independence and manly bearing. North or south, east or west, an infinite variety of races differing in habit and character, even in tongue, yet all agreeing in their solid manliness, in straight-forward honesty, in what the Romans entitled virtus—fine types save where contaminated by empléomania, call that “officialdom” (one of the twin curses of Spain). Largely there exists here ground-work for the rebuilding of Spanish greatness—such a land awaits but the wand of a magician to recall its people to front rank. Neither by despotic methods nor by the power that is only demonstrated by violence will the change be brought about, but by the enlightenment that has learnt to leave unimitated the follies of the past, and unused the forces of coercion.

Such a leader, we believe, to-day wields that wand. May he be spared to restore the destinies of his country.

It was in Spain, remember, that, more than 2000 years ago, the fate of Carthage and, later, that of Rome was decided. To the latter Imperial city Spain had given poets, philosophers, and emperors. It was in Spain that there dawned the earlier glimmerings of popular liberties, as such are now understood. Self-government with municipal rights were recognised by the Cortes of León previous to our Magna Charta. Individual guarantees, freedom of person and contract, and the inviolability of the home were granted by the Cortes of Zaragoza in 1348—more than three centuries before our Habeas Corpus was signed in 1679. A land with such traditions and achievements, with its twenty millions of inhabitants, cannot long be held back outside the trend of liberal expansion.

The pursuit of game, alike with other aspects of Spanish things, is not exempt from startling surprises. A ramble through the cistus-scrub, with no more exciting object than shooting a few redlegs, may result in bagging a lynx; or a handful of snipe from some cane-brake be augmented by the addition of a wild-boar. It is not that game abounds, but that the country is wide and wild, abandoned to natural state and combining conditions congenial to animal-life. Of the big-game that is obtained or of its habitats, there is no approximate estimate, nor do precise knowledge or records exist. Each village in the sierra or higher mountain-region lives its own life apart. Communication with other places is rare and difficult, nor is it sought. One must go oneself to the spot to ascertain with any sort of accuracy what game has been, or may be obtained thereat. This means finding out every fact at first-hand, for no reliance can be placed on reports or hearsay evidence. Nor does this remark apply to game alone: it applies universally in wilder Spain. The Englishman straying in these lone scenes finds himself amongst a kindly but independent people where sympathy and a knowledge of the language carry him further than money. Where all are Caballeros, neither titles nor wealth impress or subdue. The wanderer is free to join his new-made friends in the chase, taking equal chance with keen sportsmen and on terms of equality. He will find his nationality a passport to their liking, and soon discover that Arab hospitality has left an abiding impress in these wild regions; as, indeed, Moorish domination has done on every Spanish thing.

That last sentence sums up an ever-present and essential factor. In any description of this country, however superficial, this Oriental heritage must always be borne in mind as an influence of first importance. Previous to the Arab inrush, Spain had enjoyed practically no organic national existence. The Peninsula was occupied by a cluster of separate kingdoms, not united nor even homogeneous, and usually one or another at war with its neighbour. Neither Roman nor Goth had fused the Spanish races into a concrete whole during their eight centuries of overlordship. In A.D. 711 occurred a decisive day. Then, on Guadalete’s plain, below the walls of Jerez, that impetuous Arab chieftain Tarik overthrew the Gothic King Roderick and with him the power of Spain. Like an overwhelming flood, the Arabs swept across the land. Within two years (by 713) the insignia of the Crescent floated above every castle and tower, and Moslem rule was absolute throughout the country—excepting only in the wild northern mountains of Asturias, whence the tenacity of the mountaineers, guided by the genius of Pelayo, flung back the tide of war.

Spanish history for the next seven centuries (711-1492) records “Moorish domination.” Now history, as such, lies outside our scope; but we become concerned where Arab systems, and their methods of colonisation, have altered the face of the earth and left enduring marks on wilder Spain. And we may, beyond that, be allowed to interpolate a remark or two in elucidation of what sometimes appear popular misconceptions on these and subsequent events. Thus, during the period denominated “domination,” the Arab conquerors enjoyed no peaceful or undisputed possession. During all those centuries there continued one long succession of wars—intermittent attempts, successful and the reverse, at reconquest by the Christian power. Here a patch of ground, a city, or a province was regained; presently, perhaps, to be lost a second or a third time. Never for long was there a final acceptance of the major force. But during the interludes, the periods of rest between struggles, the two contending races lived in more or less friendly intercourse, exchanging courtesies and even maintaining a stout rivalry in those warlike forms of sport which in mediæval times formed but a substitute for war. It was thence that the custom of bull-fighting took its rise. If not fighting Arabs, fight bulls, and so prepare for the more strenuous contest. Such conditions could not but have tended towards greater coherence among the various elements on the Christian side, except for the incessant internecine rivalries between the Christians themselves. A Spanish knight or kinglet would invoke the aid of his nation’s foe to consolidate or establish his own petty estate. Christians with Moslem auxiliaries fought Moslems reinforced by Christian renegades.

The Moorish invader had to fight for his possession—every yard of it. Yet despite that, this energetic race found time to colonise, to develop and enrich the subjugated region with a thoroughness the evidence of which faces us to-day. We do not refer to their cities or to such monuments in stone as the Mezquita or Alhambra, but to their introduction into rural Spain of much of what to-day constitutes chief sources of the country’s wealth, and which might have been enormously increased had Moorish methods been followed up. The Koran expressly ordains and directs the introduction of all available fruits or plants suitable to soil that came, or comes, under Moslem dominion. “The man who plants or sows the seed of anything which, with the fruit thereof, gives sustenance to man, bird or beast does an action as commendable as charity”—so wrote one of their philosophers. “He who builds a house and plants trees and who oppresses no one, nor lacks justice, will receive abundant reward from the Almighty.” There you have the religion both of the good man and the good colonist. These precepts the Moors habitually and energetically carried out to the letter. Arboriculture was universal: the provinces of Valencia, Cordoba, and Toledo they filled with trees—fruit-trees and timber. In the warm valleys of the coast and in the sheltered glens of the mountains they acclimatised exotic fruits, plants, and vegetables hitherto restricted to the more benign climes of the East or to Afric’s scorching strand. Sugar-cane flourished in such luxuriance as to leave available a heavy margin for export. The fig-tree and carob, quince and date-palm, the cotton-plant and orange, with other aromatic and medicinal herbs, together with aloes and the anachronous-looking prickly-pear (Cactus), its amorphous lobes reminiscent of the Pleistocene, were all brought over for the use and benefit, the delight and profit of Europe. Of these, the orange to-day forms one of Spain’s most valuable exports, representing some three millions sterling per annum.

Silk and its manufacture represented another immense source of wealth and industry introduced into Spain—to-day extinct. The Moors covered Andalucia with mulberry-groves: in Granada alone ran 5000 looms for the weaving of the fibre, and the streets of the Zacatin and the Alcarcería became world-markets, where every variety of costly stuffs were bought and sold—tafetans, velvets, and richest textures that surpassed in quality and brilliancy of tint even the far-famed products of Piza, Florence, and the Levantine cities which since Roman days had monopolised the silk-supply of the world. These now found their wares displaced by Spanish silks; even the sumptuous “creations” of Persia and China met with a dangerous rivalry.

Such was the technical skill and success of the Moors in agriculture and acclimatisation that, on the eventual conquest and final expulsion of their race from Spain, overtures were made with a view of inducing a certain proportion to remain, lest Spain might lose every expert she possessed in these essential pursuits. Six families in every hundred were promised amnesty on condition of remaining, but none accepted the offer. Deep as was their love for Spain—so deep that the departing Moors are related to have knelt and kissed its strand ere embarking, broken-hearted, for Africa—yet not a man of them but refused to remain as vassals where, for centuries, they had lived as lords.

Such were the Moors—strong in war, yet equally strong in all the arts and enterprises of peace, filled with energy, an industrious and a practical race. It is safe to say that under their regime the resources of this difficult land were being developed to their utmost capacity.[2]

Of the final expulsion of the Moors (and that of the Jews was analogous) ‘tis not for us to write. Yet, for Spain, both events proved momentous, and, along with the antecedent practices of the Moriscos, provide side-lights on history that are worth consideration.[3]

The subjoined statistics give the state of Spanish agriculture at the present day, the total acreage being taken as 50,451,688 hectares (2½ acres each):—

These figures demonstrate precisely the extent of the authors’ condominium in Spain—well over one-half the country! With the area under cultivation (say 43 per cent), we have but one concern—the Great Bustard. The remaining 57 per cent pertain absolutely to our province—Wilder Spain. The term scrub or brushwood (in Spanish monte), though by a sort of courtesy it may be ranked as “pasture”—and parts of it do support herds of sheep and goats—implies as a rule the wildest of rough covert and jungle, rougher far than a Scottish deer-forest; and this monte clothes well-nigh one-half of Spain.

Such figures may appear to infer considerable apathy and lack of effort as regards agriculture. ‘Twere, nevertheless, a false assumption to conclude that Spanish mountaineers are an idle race—quite the reverse, as is repeatedly demonstrated in this book. In the hills every acre of available soil is utilised, often at what appears excessive labour—maybe it is a patch so tiny as hardly to seem worth the tilling, or so terribly steep that none save a serrano could keep a foothold, much less plough, sow, and reap.

The main explanation of the immense percentage of waste lies in the fact first set forth—the high general elevation of Spain; and, secondly, in her mountainous character.

Whether these or any other extenuating circumstances apply to the corn-lands, we are not sufficiently expert in such subjects as to express a confident opinion. But we think not. So antiquated, wasteful, and utterly inefficient have been Spanish methods of agriculture, that a land which might be one of the granaries of Europe is actually to some extent dependent on foreign grain, and that despite an import-duty! A distinct movement is, nevertheless, perceptible in the direction of employing modern agricultural machinery, chemical manures, and such-like. Irrigation in a land whose head-waters can be tapped at 2000 feet and upwards could be carried out on a larger scale and at cheaper rates than in any other European country—yet it is practically neglected; no considerable extension has been made to the two million acres of irrigated lands that existed when we last wrote, twenty years ago, although the ruined aqueducts of Roman, Goth, and Moor are ever present to suggest the silent lesson of former foresight and prosperity.

One incidental circumstance of rural Spain, the fatal effects of which are all-penetrating (though it will never be altered), is absenteeism on the part of landowners. Not even a tenant-farmer will live on his holding. No, he must have his town-house, and employ an administrator or agent to superintend the farm, only visiting it himself at rare intervals. Oh! that hideous nightmare, the hireling, how his dead-weight of apathy and dishonesty at secondhand crushes out every spark of interest and enterprise, and breeds in their stead a rampant crop of all the petty vices and frauds that prey on industry. But that evil can hardly be eradicated.

What we British understand by the expression “country life” totally fails to commend itself to the more gregarious peoples of the south. Rich and poor alike, from grandee to day-labourer, the Spanish ignore and disdain the joys of the country. They call it the campo and the campo they detest. Each nightfall must see every man of them, irrespective of class, assembled within the walls of their beloved town or city, irresistibly attracted to street-girt abode—be it humblest cot or sumptuous palace (and one stands next door to the other). Even suburban existence is eschewed. There are no outer fringes to a Spanish town. No straggling “villa residences,” no Laburnum Lodge or River-View “ornament” the extramural solitude. Back at dusk all hie, crowding to the paséo, to club or casino, to social gathering and games of chance or (more rarely) of skill. That ubiquitous term “animacion,” which may be translated gossip, chatter, light-hearted intercourse, fulfils the ideals of life. Its more serious side—reading, study, scientific pursuit—have little place; seldom does one see a library in any Spanish home, urban or rural.

None can accuse the authors of desiring to use a comparison (proverbially odious) to the detriment of our Spanish friends. The above is merely a record of patent facts that must quickly become obvious to the least observant. It is but a definition of divergent idiosyncrasies as between different human genera. And remember that we in England have recently been told that our rural system is fraught with unseen and unsuspected evil. Into those wider questions we have no intention of entering. But at least our impressions are based upon personal experience of both lines of life, while much of the vituperation recently poured upon rural England is derived from a view of but one, and not a very clear view at that.

Where the owner—big or little, but the more of them the better—lives on the land, that land and the country at large benefit to a degree that is demonstrated with singular clearness by seeing the converse system as it is practised in Spain to-day. Here no one, owner or tenant—still less the hireling—takes any living interest (to say nothing of pride) in his possession or occupation beyond that very short-sighted “interest” of squeezing the utmost out of it from day to day. Ancient forests are cut down and burnt into charcoal, and rarely a tree replanted or a thought given to the resulting effects on rainfall or climate. As to beauty of landscape—what matter such æsthetic notions when the owner lives a hundred miles away? The collateral fact that, to a great extent, nature’s beauty and nature’s gifts are analogous and interdependent is ignored. Such simple issues are too insignificant, and too little understood, for frothy rhetoricians to reflect upon: the latter, moreover, like Gallio (and Pontius Pilate) care for none of these things.

A characteristic that differentiates the Spaniard, north or south, from other (more modern) nationalities, is a comparative indifference in money matters. Now a Spaniard requires money for his daily needs as much as the others; yet he never sinks to the level of total absorption in his pursuit of the dollar. Put that down to apathy, if you will—or to pride; at least there is dignity in the attribute. The leading Spanish newspapers quote the various market fluctuations and changes in value from day to day. Sometimes, possibly, the report may read sin operaciones, but never will you see conspicuously protruded, as a main item in the morning’s news, the headline “Wall Street.” There is (or was) dignity in commerce, and there may yet be readers in England who silently wish that such matters were relegated to their proper position—the monetary columns.

The chief financial flutter that interests is the Government lottery which is held every fortnight, and at which all classes lose their money; but the National Treasury profits to the tune of three millions sterling yearly. Spain is the home of “chance”: that element appeals to Spanish character. Thus in bull-fighting (the one popular pastime) the name applied to each of its formulated exploits is suerte—chance.

SPAIN is frequently accused of being a land of mañana. Hardly can we call to mind a book on the country in which some play on that word does not figure. But procrastination is not confined to any one country, and in this case the accusers are quite as likely to be guilty as the accused. A characteristic that strikes us as more applicable is rather the reverse—that of taking no thought for the morrow. Let us take an example or two. It is not the custom to repair roads. When, from long use, a road has gradually passed from bad to worse, till at length it has virtually ceased to exist, then it is “reconstruction” that is the remedy. Annual repairs, one may presume, would cost, say half the amount, would preserve continuous utility, and avoid that slowly aggravated destruction that ends finally in a hiatus. But that is not the Spanish way. “Reconstruction” is preferred. The ruthless cutting down of her forests without replanting a single tree has already been quoted. Next take an example or two of the things that lie most directly under the authors’ special view, such as game. The ibex—a unique asset, restricted to Spain, and of which any other country would be proud—has been callously shot down without thought for to-morrow, extirpated for ever in a dozen of its former habitats. The redleg—under the murderous system of shooting, year in and year out, over decoy-birds—would be exterminated within three or four years in any other country save this. It is merely the incredible fecundity of the bird and the vast area of waste lands that preserves the breed. Partridge in Spain are like rabbits in Australia—indestructible. The trout affords another example. Everywhere else on earth the trout is prized as one of nature’s valued gifts—hard to over-appreciate. Fully one-half of Spain is expressly adapted to its requirements. Trout were intended by nature to abound over the northern half of Spain—say down to the latitude of Madrid, and even in the extreme south where conditions are favourable, as in the Sierra Neváda. Trout might abound in Spain to the full as they abound in Scotland or Norway, adding value to every river and a grace to country life. But what is the treatment meted out to the trout in Spain? No sooner is its presence detected than the whole stock—big and little alike, even the spawn—is blown out of existence with dynamite, poisoned by quicklime, or captured wholesale (regardless of season or condition) in nets, cruives, funnel-traps, and every other abomination. Kill and eat, big or little, breeding female or immature—it matters not; kill all you can to-day and leave the morrow to itself. True, there are game-laws and close-seasons, but none observe them.[4]

We have selected these examples because we know and can speak with absolute authority. Presumption and analogy will naturally suggest that the same intelligence, the same blind improvidence will apply equally in other and far more important matters. Not one of our Spanish friends with whom we have discussed these subjects time and again but agrees to the letter with the above conclusions and most bitterly regrets them.

CHAPTER II
UNEXPLORED SPAIN (Continued)
ON TRAVEL AND OTHER THINGS

TRAVEL in all the wilder regions of Spain implies the saddle. Our Spain begins, as premised, where roads end. For us railways exist merely to help us one degree nearer to the final plunge into the unknown; and not railways only, but roads and bridges soon “petter out” into trackless waste, and leave the explorer face to face with open wilds—despoblados, that is, uninhabited regions—with a route-map in his pocket that is quite unreliable, and a trusty local guide who is just the reverse.

Riding light, with the “irreducible minimum” stowed in the saddle-bags, one may traverse Spain from end to end. But it is only a hasty and superficial view that is thus obtainable, and except for those who love roughing it for roughness’ sake, even the freedom of the saddle presents grave drawbacks in a land where none live in the country and none travel off stated tracks. In the campo, nothing—neither food for man nor beast—can be obtained, and no provision exists for travellers where travellers never come. The little rural hostelry of northern lands has no place; there is instead a venta or posada which may too often be likened to a stable for beasts with an extra stall for their riders. It is a characteristic of pastoral countries everywhere that their rude inhabitants discriminate little between the needs of man and beast.

But even towns of quite considerable size—when far removed from the track—are totally devoid of inns in our sense. Inns are not needed. The few Spanish travellers who, greatly daring, venture so far afield, usually bespeak beforehand the hospitality of some local friend or acquaintance.

Incidentally it may be added that a visit to one of these out-of-the-world cities—asleep most of them for the last few centuries—is a pleasing and restful change amidst the racket of exploration. One breathes a mediæval atmosphere and marvels at the revelation, enjoying prehistoric peeps in lost cities replete for the antiquary with historic memorial and long-forgotten lore. No one cares.

Yet in those bygone days of Spain’s world-power these somnolent spots produced the right stuff,—a minority, no doubt, belonged to the type satirised by Cervantes,—but many more strong in mind as in muscle, who went forth, knights-errant, Paladins and Crusaders, to conquer and to shape the course of history. Is the old spirit extinct? Our own impression is that the material is there all right ready to spring to life like the stones of Deucalion, so soon as Spain shall have shaken off her incubus of lethargy and the tyranny that clogs the wheels of progress. Nor need the interval be long.

That sound human material continues to exist in rural Spain we have had recent evidence during the calling-out of levies of young troops ordered abroad to serve their country in Morocco. None could witness the entrainment at some remote station of a detachment of these fine lads without being struck by their bearing, their set purpose, and above all their patriotism. With such material, with a well cared-for, contented, and loyal army and a broadening of view, wisely graduated but equally resolute, Spain moves forward. Alfonso XIII. is a soldier first—No! Above that he is a king by nature, but his care for his army and its well-being has already borne fruits that are making and will make for the honour, safety, and advancement of his country.

To resume our interrupted note on travel: whether you are riding across bush-clad hills, over far-spread prairie, or through the defiles of the sierra, as shadows lengthen the problem of a night’s lodging obtrudes. There is a variety of solutions. At a pinch—as when belated or benighted—one may, in desperate resort, seek shelter in a choza. Now a choza is the reed-thatched hut which forms the rural peasant’s lonely home. Assuredly you will be made welcome, and that with a grace and a courtesy—aye, a courtliness—that characterises even the humblest in Spain. The best there is will be at your disposal; yet—if permissible to say so in face of such splendid hospitality (and in the hope that these good leather-clad friends of ours may not read this book)—the open air is preferable. There exists in a choza absolutely no accommodation—not a separate room; a low settee running round the interior, or a withy frame, forms the bed; those kindly folk live all together, along with their domestic animals—and pigs are reckoned such in Spain. Let us gratefully pay this due tribute to our peasant friends—but let us sleep outside.

At each village will usually be found a posada. These differ in degree, mostly from bad downwards. The lowlier sort—little better than the choza—is but a long, low, one-storeyed barn which you share with fellow-wayfarers, and your own and their beasts, or any others that may come in, barely separated by a thatched partition that is neither noise-proof nor scent-proof. We can call instances to mind when even that small luxury was lacking, and all, human and other, shared alike. There are no windows—merely wooden hatches. If shut, both light and air are excluded; if open, hens, dogs, and cats will enter with the dawn—the former to finish what remains of supper. The cats will at least disperse the regiment of rats which, during the night, have scurried across your sleeping form.

Here we relate, as a specific example, a night we spent this last spring in northern Estremadura:—

Owing to a miscalculation of distance, it was an hour after sundown ere we reached our destination, a lonely hamlet among the hills. Our good little Galician ponies were dead-beat, for we had been in the saddle since 5 A.M., and it was past eight ere we toiled up that last steep, rock-terraced slope. We were a party of three, with a local guide and our own Sancho Panza—faithful companion, friend, and servant of many years’ standing. At a dilapidated hovel, the last in the village and perched on a crag, we drew rein, and after repeated knocks the door was opened by a girl—she had set down a five-year-old child among the donkeys while she drew the bolt, the ground-floor being (as usual) a stable. To our inquiry as to food—and the hunger of the lost was upon us—our hostess merely shrugged her shoulders, and with an expressive gesture of open hands, answered “Nada”—nothing! Sancho, however, was equal to the occasion. Within two minutes, while we yet stood disconsolate, he returned with a cackling cockerel in his arms. “Stew him quick before he crows,” he adjured the girl, and turned to unload the ponies.

What an age a cockerel takes to cook! It was midnight ere he smoked on the board and, hunger satisfied, we could turn in. In an upper den were two alcoves with beds, or rather stone ledges, ordinarily used by the family, and which were assigned to us, the luckless No. 3 by lot having to make shift (in preference to sleeping on a filthy floor) with three cranky tables of varying heights, and whose united lengths proved a foot too short at either end!

Oh, the joy of the morning’s dawn and delicious freshness of the mountain air, as we turned out at five o’clock for yet another ten-league spell to our next destination. Two nights later we slept in the gilded luxury of Madrid! But how we abused our previous neglect in not having brought a camp-outfit.

The above, however, presents the gloomier side of the picture, and there is a reverse, even in posadas. We cannot better describe the latter side than in our own words from Wild Spain:—

A Night at a Posada (Andalucia)

The wayfarer has been travelling all day across the scrub-clad wastes, fragrant with rosemary and wild thyme, without perhaps seeing a human being beyond a stray shepherd or a band of nomad gypsies encamped amidst the green palmettos. Towards night he reaches some small village where he seeks the rude posada. He sees his horse provided with a good feed of barley and as much broken straw as he can eat. He is himself regaled with one dish—probably the olla or a guiso (stew) of kid, either of them, as a rule, of a rich red-brick hue, from the colour of the red pepper or capsicum in the chorizo or sausage, which is an important (and potent) component of most Spanish dishes. The steaming olla will presently be set on a table before the large wood-fire, and with the best of crisp white bread and wine, the traveller enjoys his meal in company with any other guest that may have arrived at the time—be he muleteer or hidalgo. What a fund of information may be picked up during that promiscuous supper! There will be the housewife, the barber, and the padre of the village, perhaps a goatherd come down from the mountains, a muleteer, and a charcoal-burner or two, each ready to tell his own tale, or to enter into friendly discussion with the “Ingles.” Then, as you light your breva, a note or two struck on the guitar falls on ears predisposed to be pleased.

How well one knows those first few opening notes: no occasion to ask that it may go on: it will all come in time, and one knows there is a merry evening in prospect. One by one the villagers drop in, and an ever-widening circle is formed around the open hearth, rows of children collect, even the dogs draw around to look on. The player and the company gradually warm up till couplet after couplet of pathetic malagueñas follow in quick succession. These songs are generally topical, and almost always extempore; and as most Spaniards can—or rather are anxious to—sing, one enjoys many verses that are very prettily as well as wittily conceived.

But girls must dance, and find no difficulty in getting partners to join them. The malagueñas cease, and one or perhaps two couples stand up, and a pretty sight they afford! Seldom does one see girl-faces so full of fun and so supremely happy as they adjust the castanets, and one damsel steps aside to whisper something sly to a sister or friend. And now the dance begins; observe there is no slurring or attempt to save themselves in any movement. Each step and figure is carefully executed, but with easy, spontaneous grace and precision both by the girl and her partner.

Though two or more pairs may be dancing at once, each is quite independent of the others, and only dance to themselves; nor do the partners ever touch each other.[5] The steps are difficult and somewhat intricate, and there is plenty of scope for individual skill, though grace of movement and supple pliancy of limb and body are almost universal, and are strong points in dancing both the fandango and minuet. Presently the climax of the dance approaches. The notes of the guitar grow faster and faster; the man—a stalwart shepherd-lad—leaps and bounds around his pirouetting partner, and the steps, though still well ordered and in time, grow so fast that one can hardly follow their movements.

Now others rise and take the places of the first dancers, and so the evening passes; perhaps a few glasses of aguardiente are handed round—certainly much tobacco is smoked—the older folks keep time to the music with hand-clapping, and all is good nature and merriment.

What is it that makes the recollection of such evenings so pleasant? Is it merely the fascinating simplicity and freedom of the dance, or the spectacle of those weird, picturesque groups, bronze-visaged men and dark-eyed maidens, all lit up by the blaze of the great wood-fire on the hearth, and low-burning oil-lamps suspended from the rafters? Perhaps it is only the remembrance of many happy evenings spent among these people since our boyhood. This we can truly say, that when at last you turn in to sleep you feel happy and secure among a peasantry with whom politeness and sympathy are the only passports required to secure to you both friendship and protection if required. Nor is there a pleasanter means of forming acquaintance with Spanish country life and customs than a few evenings spent thus at a farm-house or village inn in any retired district of laughter-loving Andalucia.

For rough living we are of course prepared, and accept the necessity without demur or second thought while travelling. But when more serious objects are in hand—say big-game or the study of nature, objects which demand more leisurely progress, or actually encamping for a week or more at selected points—then we prefer to assure complete independence of all local assistance and shelter.

An expedition on this scale involves an amount of care and forethought that only those who have experienced it would credit. For in Spain it is an unknown undertaking, and to engineer something new is always difficult. Quite an extensive camping-trip can be organised in Africa, where the system is understood, with less than a hundredth part of the care needed for a comparatively short trip in Spain where it is not. The necessary bulk of camp-outfit and equipment requires a considerable cavalcade, and this mule-transport (since no provender is obtainable in the country) involves carrying along all the food for the animals—the heaviest item of all. Naturally the cost of such expeditions works out to nearly double that of simple riding.

But, after all, it is worth it! Compare some of the miseries we have above but lightly touched upon—the dirt and squalor, the nameless horrors of choza or posada—with the sense of joyous exhilaration felt when encamped by the banks of some babbling trout-stream or in the glorious freedom of the open hill. Casting back in mental reverie over a lengthening vista of years, we certainly count as among the happiest days of life those spent thus under canvas—whether on the sierras and marismas of Spain, on high field or dark forest in Scandinavia, or on Afric’s blazing veld.

Should some remarks (here or elsewhere in this book) appear self-contradictory the reason will be found rather in our inadequate expression than in any confusion of idea. We love Spain primarily because she is wild and waste; but, loving her, are naturally desirous that she should advance to that position among nations that is her due. Such material development, nevertheless, need not—and will not—imply the total destruction of her wild beauties. Development on those lines would not consist with the peculiar genius of the Spanish race, and, while we trust the development will come, we fear no such collateral results. Take, for instance, the corn-lands. There the great bustard is alike the index and the price of vast, unwieldy farms unfenced and but half tilled, remote from rail, road, or market. That condition we neither expect nor hope to see exchanged for smug fields with a network of railways. For “three acres and a cow” is not the line of Spanish regeneration; it is rather a claptrap catch-word of politicians—a murrain on the lot of them!

True, the plan seems to answer in Denmark, and if the Danes are satisfied, well and good—that is no business of ours. But no such mathematical and Procrustean restriction of vital energies and ambitions will subserve our British race, nor the Spanish. In Spanish sierra may the howl of the wolf at dawn never be replaced by blast from factory siren, nor the curling blue smoke of the charcoal-burner in primeval forest be abolished in favour of black clouds belching from bristling chimneys that pierce a murky sky. Either in such circumstance would be misplaced.

Similarly, when the engineer shall have been turned loose in the Spanish marismas, he can, beyond all doubt, destroy them for ever. His straight lines and intersecting canals, hideous in utilitarian rectitude, would right soon demolish that glory of lonely desolation—those leagues of marshland, samphire, and glittering lucio. And all for nothing! Since the desecration will not “pay” financially—the reason we give in detail elsewhere—and you sacrifice for a shadow some of the grandest bits of wild nature that yet survive—the finest length and breadth of utter abandonment that still enrich a humdrum Europe. Should “progress” only advance on these lines no scrap of that continent will be left to wanderer in the wilds—no spot where clanging skeins of wild-geese serry the skies, and the swish of ten thousand wigeon be heard overhead; or that marvellous iridescence—as of triple flame—the passing of a flight of flamingoes, be enjoyed.[6]

That national progress and development may come, for Spain’s sake, we earnestly pray. But does there exist inherent reason why progress, in itself, should always come to ruin natural and racial beauties? Progress seems nowadays to be misunderstood as a synonym for uniformity—and uniformity to a single type. Disciples of the cult of insensate haste, of self-assertion and advertisement, have pretty well conquered the civilised world; but in Spain they find no foothold, and we glory to think they never will. Spain will never be “dragooned” into a servile uniformity. There remain many, among whom we count our humble selves, who bow no knee to the modern Baal, and who (while conceding to the “hustling” crowd not one iota of their pretensions to fuller efficiency in any shape or form) are proud to find fascination in simplicity, a solace in honest purpose and in old-world styles of life—right down (if you will) to its inertia.

Yes, may progress come, yet leave unchanged the innate courtesy, the dignity and independence of rural Spain—unspoilt her sierras and glorious heaths aromatic of myrtle and mimosa, alternating with natural woods of ilex and cork-oak—self-sown and park-like, carpeted between in spring-time with wondrous wealth of wild flowers. There is nothing incongruous in such aspiration. Incongruity rather comes in with misappreciation of the fitness of things, as when a coal-mine is planked down in the midst of sylvan beauties, to save some hypothetic penny-a-ton (as per Prospectus); where pellucid streams are polluted with chemical filth and vegetation blasted by noisome fumes; or where God’s fairest landscapes are ruined by forests of hideous smoke-stacks.

If vandalisms such as these be progress then we prefer Spain as she is.

A Note on the Spanish Fauna

After all, it is less with the human element that this book is concerned than with the wild Fauna of Spain; a brief introductory notice thereof cannot, therefore, be omitted.

As head of the list must stand the Spanish Ibex (Capra hispánica), a game-animal of quite first rank, peculiar to the Iberian Peninsula, and whose nearest relative—the Bharal (Capra cylindricornis)—lives 2500 miles away in the far Caucasus. In Spain the ibex inhabits six great mountain-ranges, each covering a vast area but all widely separated. After a crisis that five years ago threatened extermination, this grand species is now happily increasing under a measure of protection and the ægis of King Alfonso. Next—a notable neighbour of the ibex (and practically extinct in central Europe)—we place the lone and lordly Lammergeyer. A memorable spectacle it is to watch the huge Gypaëtus sweeping through space o’er glens and corries of the sierra in striking similitude to some weird flying dragon of Miocene age—a vision of blood-red irides set on a cruel head with bristly black beard, of hoary grey plumage and golden breast. Watch him for half an hour—for half a day—yet never will you discern a sign of force exerted by those 3-yard pinions. With slightly reflexed wings he sinks 1000 feet; then, shifting course, rises 2000, 3000 feet till lost to sight over some appalling skyline. You have seen the long cuneate tail deflected ever so slightly—more gently than a well-handled helm—but the wide lavender wings remain rigid, not an effort that indicates force have you descried. Yet the power (so defined as “horse-power”) required to raise a deadweight of 20 lbs. through such altitudes can be calculated by engineers to a nicety—how is it exerted? That the power is there is conspicuous enough, and at least it serves to explain fabled traditions of giant lammergeyers hurling ibex-hunter from perilous hand-hold on the crag, to feast on the remains below; or, in idler moment, bearing off untended babes to their eyries—alas! that the duty of nature-students involves dissipating all such romance.

Spain, as geologically designed, being, as to one-half of her superficies, either a desert wilderness or a mountain solitude, naturally lends congenial conditions of life to the predatory forms that rely on hooked bill, on tooth and claw, fang and talon, to ravage their more gentle neighbours. Savage raptores, furred and feathered, characterise her wilder scenes. Wherever one may travel, a day’s ride will surely reveal huge vultures and eagles circling aloft, intent on blood. Throughout the wooded plains the majestic Imperial Eagle is overlord—you know him afar in sable uniform, offset by snow-white epaulets. Among the sierras a like condominium is shared by the Golden and Bonelli’s Eagles—and they have half-a-dozen rivals, to say nothing of lynxes and fierce wolves (we give a photo of one, the gape of whose jaws exceeds by one-half that of an African hyaena). Then there patrol the wastes a horde of savage night-rovers, denominated in Spanish Alimañas, to which a special chapter is devoted.

In Estremadura, where man is a negligible quantity, and along the wild wooded valley of the Tagus, roams the Fallow-deer in aboriginal purity of blood—whether any other European country can so claim it, the authors have been unable to ascertain. In Cantabria and the Pyrenees the Chamois abounds.

Of the big game (the list includes red, roe, and fallow-deer, wild-boar, ibex, chamois, brown bear, etc.), we treat in full detail hereafter.

As regards winged game, this south-western corner of Europe, is singularly weak. There exists but a single resident species of true game-bird—the redleg. Compare this with northern Europe, where, in a Scandinavian elk-forest, we have shot five kinds of grouse within five miles; while southwards, in Africa, francolins and guinea-fowl are counted in dozens of species. True, there are ptarmigan in the Pyrenees, capercaillie, hazel-grouse, and grey partridge in Cantabria, but all these are confined to the Biscayan area. Nor are we overlooking the grandest game-bird of all, the Great Bustard, chiefest ornament of Spanish steppe, and there are others—the lesser bustard, quail, sand-grouse, etc.—but these hardly fall within our definition. As for the teeming hosts of wildfowl and waterfowl that throng the Spanish marismas (some coming from Africa in spring, the bulk fleeing hither from the Arctic winter), all these are so fully treated elsewhere as to need no further notice here.

Spain boasts several distinct species peculiar to her limits. Among such (besides the ibex) are that curious amphibian, the Pyrenean musk-rat (Myogale pyrenaica), not again to be met with nearer than the eastern confines of Europe. Birds afford an even more striking instance. The Spanish azure-winged magpie (Cyanopica cooki) abounds in Castile, Estremadura, and the Sierra Moréna, but its like is seen nowhere else on earth till you reach China and Japan!

CHAPTER III
THE COTO DOÑANA: OUR HISTORIC HUNTING-GROUND

A Foreword by Sir Maurice de Bunsen, G.C.M.G., British Ambassador at Madrid.

Among my recollections of Spain none will be more vivid and delightful than those of my visits to the Coto Doñana. From beginning to end, climate, scenery, sport, and hospitable entertainment combine, in that happy region, to make the hours all too short for the joys they bring. Equipped with Paradox-gun or rifle, and some variety of ammunition, to suit the shifting requirements of deer and boar, lynx, partridge, wild-geese and ducks, snipe, rabbit and hare, nay, perhaps a chance shot at flamingo, vulture, or eagle, the favoured visitor steps from the Bonanza pier into the broad wherry waiting to carry him across the Guadalquivir, a few miles only from its outflow into the Atlantic. In its hold the first of many enticing bocadillos is spread before him. Table utensils are superfluous luxuries, but, armed with hunting blade and a formidable appetite, he plays havoc with the red mullet, tortilla, and carne de membrillo, washed down with a tumbler of sherry which has ripened through many a year in a not far distant bodega.

In half an hour he is in the saddle. Distances and sandy soil prohibit much walking in the Coto Doñana.

Marshalled by our host, the soul of the party, the cavalcade canters lightly up the sandy beach of the river. Thence it strikes to the left into the pine-coverts, leading in five hours more to the friendly roof of the “Palacio.” A picturesque group it is with Vazquez, Caraballo, and other well-known figures in the van, packhorses loaded with luggage and implements of the chase, and lean, hungry podencos hunting hither and thither for a stray rabbit on the way. The views are not to be forgotten, the distant Ronda mountains seen through a framework of stone-pines, across seventy miles of sandy dunes, marismas, and intervening plains. After a couple of hours we skirt the famous sandhills, innocent of the slightest dash of green, which for some inscrutable reason attract, morning after morning, at the first tinge of dawn, countless greylag geese to their barren expanse and on which, si Dios quiere, toll shall be levied ere long. The marismas and long lagoons are covered here and there with black patches crawling with myriads of waterfowl, to be described after supper by the careful Vazquez as muy pocos, un salpicon—a mere sprinkling. Their names and habits, are they not written, with the most competent of pens, in this very volume? We stop, perhaps, for a first deer-drive on our line of march. How thrilling that sudden rustle in the brushwood! Stag is it, or hind, or grisly porker? As we approach the “Palacio” we see the spreading oak on which perched, contemptuous and unsuspecting, the imperial eagle, honoured this year by a bullet from King Alfonso’s unerring rifle. As we ride through the scrub the whirr of the red-legged partridge sends an involuntary hand to the gun. They may await another day. At dusk we ride into the whitewashed patio, just in time to sally forth and get a flighting woodcock between gun and lingering glow of the setting sun.

For no precious hours are wasted in the Coto Doñana. Next day at early dawn, maybe, if the lagoon be our destination, or at any rate after a timely breakfast, off starts again the eager cavalcade, be it in quest of red deer or less noble quarry. Then all day in the saddle, from drive to drive, dismounting only to lie in wait for a stag, or trudge through the sage-bushes after partridge, or flounder through the boggy soto, beloved of snipe, with intervening oases for the unforgotten bocadillo.

If Vazquez be kind, he will take you one day to crouch with him behind his well-trained stalking-horse, drawing craftily nearer and nearer to where the duck sit thickest, till, straightening your aching back, you have leave to put in your two barrels, as Vazquez lays low some twenty couples with one booming shot from his four-bore, into the brown.

But one morning surely a visit must be paid to the sandhills. Caraballo will call you at 4 A.M., and soon after you will be jogging over the six or eight miles which separate the “Palacio” from that morning rendezvous of the greylag. The stars still shine brightly as you dismount at the foot of the long stretch of dunes. A few minutes’ trudge will deposit you in a round hole dug deep in the dazzling white expanse the day before; for a hole too freshly dug will expose the damp brown sand from below, staining the spotless surface with a warning blotch, and causing the wary geese to swerve beyond the range of your No. 1 shot. It is still dark as you drop into your hole. Gradually the sky grows greyer and lighter, till the sun rises from the round yellow rim of the blue morning sky. Who shall describe the magic thrill of the first hoarse notes falling on your straining ear? The temptation to peep out is strong, but crouching deep down, you wait till the mighty pinions beat above you, and the first wedge of eight or ten sails grandly away in the morning sun. You judge them out of shot. But surely this second batch is lower down? Are they not close upon you? Why then no response to your two barrels? Was the emotion too great, or have you misjudged the speed of that easy flight or its distance through the crystal air? All the keener is the joy when, with heavy thump, your first goose is landed on the sand amid the tin decoys. When three or four lie there, Vazquez will send his fleet two-legged “water-dog” to set them up with twigs supporting their bills, to beguile more of their kind into line with the barrels. If the day be propitious, the sky will be dotted at times with geese in all directions. Now and again they will give you a shot, the expert taking surely three or four to the tyro’s one. It is half-past eight, and you have sat in your hole close on two hours before Vazquez comes to gather the slain, to which he will add two or three more, marked down afar, and picked up as dead as the rest. Never have two of your waking hours passed so quickly. What would you not give to live them over again and undo some of those inexplicable misses? But one goose alone would amply repay that early start. Even four or five are all you can carry, and the twenty or thirty that our expert [who must be nameless] would have shot, will live to stock the world afresh.

Among the fauna of the Coto Doñana, a word must be given to the lynx. Never can I forget sitting one afternoon, Paradox in hand, on the fringe of a covert. I was waiting for stag, rather drowsily, for the beat was a long one and the sun hot, when my eyes suddenly rested on a lynx standing broadside among the bushes, beyond a bare belt of sand, some fifty yards off. Fain would I have changed my bullet for slugs, but those sharp ears would have detected the slightest click; so I loosed my bullet for what it was worth.

The lynx was gone. When the beat came at last to an end, I thought I would just have a look at his tracks. He lay stone-dead behind a bush, shot through the heart.

The eventful days are all too soon over. But the recollection remains of happy companionship and varying adventure, of easy intercourse between Spaniard and Englishman, with the echo of many a sporting tale, mingled with sage discourse from qualified lips on the habits of bird and beast. Who can tell you more about them than that group of true sportsmen and lovers of nature whose names, Garvey, Buck, Gonzalez, and Chapman, are indissolubly linked with the more modern history of the famous Coto Doñana?

Maurice de Bunsen.

British Embassy, Madrid,
July 1910.

CHAPTER IV
THE COTO DOÑANA
NOTES ON ITS PHYSICAL FORMATION, FAUNA, AND RED DEER

THE great river Guadalquivir, dividing in its oblique course seawards into double channels and finally swerving, as though reluctant to lose all identity in the infinite Atlantic, practically cuts off from the Spanish mainland a triangular region, some forty miles of waste and wilderness, an isolated desert, singular as it is beautiful, which we now endeavour to describe. This, from our having for many years held the rights of chase, we can at least undertake with knowledge and affection.

Its precise geological formation ‘twere beyond our power, unskilled in that science, to diagnose. But even to untaught eye, the existence of the whole area is obviously due to an age-long conflict waged between two Powers—the great river from within, the greater ocean without. The Guadalquivir, draining the distant mountains of Moréna and full 200 miles of intervening plain, rolls down a tawny flood charged with yellow mud till its colour resembles café au lait. Thus proceeds a ceaseless deposit of sediment upon the sea-bed; but the external Power forcibly opposes such infringement of its area. Here the elemental battle is joined. The river has so far prevailed as to have grabbed from the sea many hundred square miles of alluvial plain, that known as the marisma; but at this precise epoch, the Sea-Power appears to have called checkmate by interposing a vast barrier of sand along the whole battle-front. The net result remains that to-day there is tacked on to the southernmost confines of Europe a singular exotic patch of African desert.

This sand-barrier, known as the Coto Doñana, occupies, together with its adjoining dunes on the west, upwards of forty miles of the Spanish coast-line, its maximum breadth reaching in places to eight or ten miles. The Coto Doñana is cut off from the mainland of Spain not only by the great river, but by the marisma—a watery wilderness wide enough to provide a home for wandering herds of wild camels. (See rough sketch-map above.)

Sand and sand alone constitutes the soil-substance of Doñana, overlying, presumably, the buried alluvia beneath. Yet a wondrous beauty and variety of landscape this desolate region affords. From the river’s mouth forests of stone-pine extend unbroken league beyond league, hill and hollow glorious in deep-green foliage, while the forest-floor revels in wealth of aromatic shrubbery all lit up by chequered rays of dappled sunlight. Westward, beyond the pine-limit, stretch regions of Saharan barrenness where miles of glistening sand-wastes devoid of any vestige of vegetation dazzle one’s sight—a glory of magnificent desolation, the splendour of sterility. To home-naturalists the scene may recall St. John’s classic sandhills of Moray, but magnified out of recognition by the vastly greater scale, as befits their respective creators—in the one case the 100-league North Sea, here the 1000-league Atlantic. Rather would we compare these marram-tufted, wind-sculptured sand-wastes with the Red Sea litoral and the Egyptian Soudan, where Osman Digna led British troops memorable dances in the ‘nineties—alike both in their physical aspect and in their climate, red-hot by day, yet apt to be deadly chilly after sundown. Resonant with the weird cry of the stone-curlew and the rhythmic roar of the Atlantic beyond, these seaward dunes are everywhere traced with infinite spoor of wild beasts, and dotted by the conical pitfalls dug by ant-lions (Myrmeleon).

Between these extremes of deep forest and barren dune are interposed intermediate regions partaking of the character of both. Here the intrusive pine projects forest-strips, called Corrales, as it were long oases of verdure, into the heart of the desert, hidden away between impending dunes which rear themselves as a mural menace on either hand, and towering above the summits of the tallest trees. Nor is the menace wholly hypothetic; for not seldom has the unstable element shifted bodily onwards to engulf in molecular ruin whole stretches of these isolated and enclosed corrales. Noble pines, already half submerged, struggle in death-grips with the treacherous foe; of others, already dead, naught save the topmost summits, sere and shrunk, protrude above that devouring smiling surface, beneath which, one assumes, there lie the skeletons of buried forests of a bygone age.

All along these lonely dunes there stand at regular intervals the grim old watch-towers of the Moors, reminiscent of half-forgotten times and of a vanished race. Arab telegraphy was neither wireless nor fireless when beacon-lights blazing out from tower to tower spread instant alarm from sea to sierra, seventy miles away.

In contrast with the scenery of both these zones, shows up the landscape of a third region, on the west—that of scrub. Here, one day later in geological sense, the eye roams over endless horizons of rolling grey-green brushwood, the chief component of which is cistus (Helianthemum), but interspersed in its moister dells with denser jungle of arbutus and lentisk, genista, tree-heath, and giant-heather, with wondrous variety of other shrubs; the whole studded and ornamented by groves of stately cork-oaks or single scattered trees. All these, with the ilex, being evergreen, one misses those ever-changing autumnal tints that glorify the “fall” in northern climes. Here only a sporadic splash of sere or yellow relieves the uniform verdure.

Obviously regions of such physical character can ill subserve any human purpose. As designed by nature, they afford but a home for wild beasts, fowls of the air, and other ferae which abound in striking and charming variety. For centuries the Coto Doñana formed, as the name imports, the hunting-ground of its lords, the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, and to not a few of the Spanish kings—from Phillip IV. in the early part of the seventeenth century (as recorded by the contemporary chronicler, Pedro Espinosa) to Alfonso XII. in 1882, and quite recently to H.M. Don Alfonso XIII. For five-and-twenty years the authors have been co-tenants, previously under the aforesaid ducal house; latterly under our old friend, the present owner.

The sparse population of Doñana includes a few herdsmen (vaqueros) who tend the wild-bred cattle and horses that in semi-feral condition wander both in the regions of scrub and out in the open marisma. Nomadic charcoal-burners squat in the forests, shifting their reed-built wigwams (chozas) as the exigencies of work require; while the gathering of pine-cones yields a precarious living to a handful of piñoneros. Lastly, but most important to us, there are the guardas or keepers, keen-eyed, leather-clad, and sun-bronzed to the hue of Red Indians. There are a dozen of these wild men distributed at salient points of the Coto, most of them belonging to families which have held these posts, sons succeeding fathers, for generations. Of three such cycles we have ourselves already been witnesses.

Briefly to summarise a rich and heterogeneous fauna is not easy; a volume might be devoted to this region alone. Elsewhere in this book some few subjects are treated in detail. Here we merely attempt an outline sketch.

Throughout the winter (excepting only the wildfowl) there exists no such conspicuous ornithic display as appeals to casual eye or ear—those, say, of the average traveller. Ride far and wide through these wild landscapes in December or January, and you may wonder if their oft-boasted wealth of bird-life be not exaggerated. You see, perhaps, little beyond the ubiquitous birds-of-prey. These are ever the first feature to strike a stranger. Great eagles, soaring in eccentric circles, hunt the cistus-clad plain; the wild scream of the kite rings out above the pines, and shapely buzzards adorn some dead tree. Over rush-girt bogs soar weird marsh-harriers—three flaps and a drift as, with piercing sight, they scan each tuft and miss not so much as a frog or a wounded wigeon. All these and others of their race are naturally conspicuous. But, though unseen, there lurk all around other forms of equal beauty and interest, abundant enough, but secretive and apt to be overlooked save by closest scrutiny. That, however, is a characteristic of winter in all temperate lands. Birds at that season are apt to be silent and elusive, but their absence is apparent rather than real.

All around you, in fact, forest and jungle, scrub, sallow, and bramble-brake abound with minor bird-forms—with our British summer visitors, here settled down in their winter quarters; with charming exotic warblers and silent songsters—all off work for the season. Where nodding bulrush fringes quaking bog, or miles of tasselled cane-brakes border the marsh, there is the home of infinite feathered amphibians, crakes and rails, of reed-climbers and bush-skulkers, all for the nonce silent, shy, reclusive.

Their portraits, roughly caught during hours of patient waiting, may be found (some of them) scattered through these chapters. But the present is not the place for detail.

The land-birds in winter you hardly see, for they “take cover.”

Diametrically different—in cause and effect—is the case of wildfowl. These, by the essence of their natures and by their economic necessities, are always conspicuous, for they inhabit solely the open spaces of earth—the “spaces” that no longer exist at home: shallows, wastes, and tidal flats devoid of covert. Wildfowl, for that reason, have long learnt to discard all attempt at concealment, to rely for safety upon their own eyesight and incredible wildness. No illusory idea that security may be sought in covert abuses their keen and receptive instincts. Probably it never did. Nowadays, at any rate, they openly defy the human race with all its brain-begotten devices. There, in “waste places,” wildfowl sit or fly—millions of them—conspicuous and audible so far as human sense of sight and sound can reach, and there bid defiance to us all. Much of these wastes are not (in the cant of a hypocritical age) “undeveloped,” but rather, as means exist, incapable of development. Such spectacles of wild life as these Andalucian marismas to-day present are probably unsurpassed elsewhere in Europe—or possibly in the world. In foreground, background, and horizon both earth and sky are filled with teeming, living multitudes; while the shimmering grey monotony of the marisma, tessellated with its grey armies of the Anatidae, is everywhere brightened and adorned by rosy battalions of flamingoes. And out there, far beyond our visible horizon, there wander in that watery wilderness the wild camels, to which we devote a separate chapter.

Flamingoes ignore the limits of continents, and shift their mobile headquarters between Europe and Africa as the respective rainfall in either happens to suit their requirements. Hence, whether by day or night, the sight or sound of gabbling columns of flamingoes passing through the upper air is a characteristic of these lonely regions, irrespective of season. Cranes also in marshalled ranks, and storks, continually pass to and fro. The African coast, of course, lies well within their range of vision from the start.

Then as winter merges into spring—what time those clanging crowds of wild-geese and myriad north-bound ducks depart—there pours into Andalucia an inrush of African and subtropical bird-forms. The sunlit woodland gleams with brilliant rollers and golden orioles, while bee-eaters, rivalling the rainbow in gorgeous hues, poise and dart in the sunshine, and their harsh “chack, chack,” resounds on every side. Woodchats, spotted cuckoos, hoopoes, and russet nightjars appear; lovely wheatears in cream and black adorn the palm-clad plain. With them comes the deluge—no epitomised summary is possible when, within brief limits, the whole feathered population of southern Europe is metamorphosed. The winter half has gone north; its place is filled by the tropical inrush aforesaid. Warblers and waders, larks, finches, and fly-catchers, herons, ibis, ducks, gulls, and terns—all orders and genera pour in promiscuously, defying cursory analysis.

A single class only will here be specifically mentioned, and that because it throws light on climatic conditions. Among these vernal arrivals come certain raptores in countless numbers—all those which are dependent on reptile and insect food. For even in sunny Andalucia the larger reptiles and insects hibernate; hence their persecutors (including various eagles, buzzards, and harriers, with kites and kestrels in thousands) are driven to seek winter-quarters in Africa.

Another phenomenon deserves note. Weeks, nay months, after this great vernal upturn in bird-life has completed its revolution, and when the newcomers have already half finished the duties of incubation, then in May suddenly occurs an utterly belated little migration quite disconnected from all the rest. This is the passage, or rather through-transit, of those far-flying cosmopolites of space that make the whole world their home. They have been wintering in South Africa and Madagascar, in Australia and New Zealand, and are now returning to their summer breeding-grounds in farthest Siberia, beyond the Yenisei. Thus some morning in early May one sees the marismas filled with godwits and knots, curlew-sandpipers and grey plovers, all in their glorious summer-plumage. But these only tarry here a few days. A short week before they had thronged the shores of the southern hemisphere—far beyond the zodiac of Capricorn. A week hence and they are at home in the Arctic.

Andalucia possesses a feathered census that approaches 400 species; but of these hardly a score are permanently resident throughout the year.

Four-footed creatures are less difficult of diagnosis than are birds. By nature less mobile, they are infinitely less numerous specifically. Relatively the Spanish census is long, and includes, locally, quite a number of interesting beasts that are “lumped together” as Alimañas—to wit, lynxes, wild-cats, genets, mongoose, foxes, otters, badgers, of which we treat separately. The two chief game-animals of the Coto Doñana are the red deer and the wild-boar. These two we here examine from the sportsman’s point of view as much as from that of the naturalist.

The Spanish red deer are specifically identical with those of Scotland and the rest of Europe, and are distributed over the whole southern half of the Iberian Peninsula—say south of a line drawn through Madrid. Their haunts, as a rule, are restricted to the mountain-ranges—especially the Sierra Moréna, where they attain their highest development. That red deer should be found inhabiting lowlands such as the Coto Doñana is wholly exceptional. In Estremadura, it is true, there are wild regions (in Badajoz and Cáceres) where deer are spread far and wide over wooded and scrub-clad plains, all these, however, being subjacent to neighbouring sierras, which refuges are available for retreat in case of need. Nowhere else in Spain, save here in the Coto Doñana only, are red deer restricted exclusively to lowlands.

This South-Spanish race (the southernmost of all if we except the distinct but limited breed that yet maintains a foothold in North Africa, the Barbary stag, which is white-spotted) differs from Scotch types in their longer faces and slim necks unadorned with the hairy “ruff” of harsher climes. Beyond a doubt, when our species-splitting friends arrive in Spain, they will differentiate her red deer (and ibex also) in various species or subspecies, each with a Latin trinomial. Such energies, however, may easily be superfluous, even where not actually mischievous. For practical purposes there exists but one European species, though it has, even within Spain, its local varieties; while, further afield, geographical and climatic divergencies naturally tend to increase.[7]

We cannot claim for our lowland deer of Doñana a high standard of comparative quality; they are, in fact, the smallest race in Spain, almost puny as compared with her mountain breed—smaller also than the Barbary stag. Clean weights here rarely exceed 200 lbs., while a 30-in. head must be accounted beyond the average. The general type, both of horn and body, is illustrated by various photos and drawings in this book.

Deer-shooting in Spain takes place in the winter. The rutting season commences at the end of August, terminating early in October, and stags have recovered condition by the end of November.

The habits of red deer being, here as elsewhere, strictly nocturnal, and the country densely clad with bush, it follows that these animals are seldom seen amove during daylight. Hence deer-stalking, properly so called, is not available, nor is the method much esteemed in Spain. In Scotland one may detect deer, though it be but a tip of an antler, when couched in the tallest heather or fern. Here, where heather grows six or eight feet in height with a bewildering jumble of other shrubbery of like proportions, no such view is possible. Hence “driving” is in Spain the usual method of deer-shooting, whether in mountain or lowland.

There is, nevertheless, one opportunity of stalking which (though not regarded with favour) has yet afforded us delightful mornings, and to which a few lines of description are due. The plan is based upon cutting-out the deer as they return from their nocturnal pasturages at daybreak. As the last watch of night wears on towards the dawn, the deer, withdrawing from their feeding-grounds on open strath or marsh, slowly direct a course covertwards, lingering here and there to nibble a tempting genista, or to snatch up a bunch of red bog-grass on their course. We have reached a favourite glade, often used by deer. It is not yet light—rather it might be described as nearly dark—when the splashing of light hoofs through water puts us on the alert. A few moments suffice to gain a bushy point beyond; whence presently six or eight nebulous forms emerge from deceitful gloom. Of course there is not a horn among them, bar a little yearling, for good stags never come thus in troops, and with all due caution, so as to avoid alarming these, we hurry away to try another likely spot. Time is of the essence of this business, for light is now strengthening, and in another half-hour the deer will all have gained their coverts and the chance will be past. Again groups of hinds and small beasties meet our gaze; but some distance beyond are a couple of stags. It is light enough now, by aid of the glass, to count their points—only eight apiece, no use. While yet we watch, a pack of graceful white egrets alight close around the nearer deer—some dart actively between the grazing animals picking flies and insects from their legs and stomachs; two actually perching, cavalier-like, on their withers to search for ticks—magpies, on occasion, we have observed similarly employed. The sun’s rim now peers from out the watery wastes in front; nothing worth a bullet has appeared, and our morning’s work looks as good as lost when my companion, Pepe, detects two really good stags which, though already within the shelter of fringing pines, yet linger in a lovely glade, tempted for fatal minutes by a clump of flowering rosemary. The wind demands a considerable detour; yet the pair still dally while we gain the deadly range, and a second later the better of the two drops amidst the ensnaring blue blossoms. Pepe’s half-soliloquising comment precisely interprets the Spanish estimate of stalking:—“The first stag I ever saw shot with his head down!” Other countries, other standards; but there is a ring of sterling chivalry in it too. The idea conveyed is that the noble stag should meet his death, only when duly forewarned of danger and bounding in wild career o’er bush and brake.

Without unduly trespassing on our Spanish friends’ susceptibilities, we have nevertheless enjoyed such mornings as this. To begin with, that hour of breaking day is ever delicious to spend afield. Therein one observes to best advantage the wild beasts, undisturbed and following their secret, solitary lives—one learns more in that hour than in all the other twenty-three. One seems almost to associate with deer, so near can the troops of hinds and small staggies be approached; and, moreover, there may be afforded the advantage of selecting some splendid head afar, and thus commencing a stalk which, believe me, does not always prove easy. Yonder comes a fox, trotting straight in from his night’s hunting in the distant marisma. Let him come on within fifty yards, and then give him a bit of a fright—it is a wild goose he drops as he turns to fly! A single glint of something ruddy catches the eye; this the glass shows to be a sunray playing on the pelt of a prowling lynx, hateful of daylight and hurrying junglewards. Rarely are these nocturnals seen thus, after sun-up, and not for many seconds will the spectacle last; for no animal is more intensely habituated to concealment, or hates so much to move even a few yards in the open.

Following are two or three incidents selected as illustrative of this matutinal work:—

...A really fine stag—already against the glory of the eastern light, I have counted thirteen points and there may be more. Half an hour later we have gained a position—not without infinite manœuvres, including a crawl absolutely flat across forty yards of bog and black mire—a position that in five more minutes should secure to us that trophy. The five hinds that, before it was fully light, had been in the Royal company, have already, long ago, passed away in the scrub on our right, and give us now no further concern. Never should hinds be thus lightly regarded! The slowly approaching stag stops to nibble a golden broom. He is already almost within shot—seconds must decide his fate—when a triple bark, petulant and defiant, breaks the silence behind. Those five hinds, sauntering round, have gone under our wind, and now ... the landscape is vacant.

“Hinds only bark at a persona,” remarks Dominguez, as we turn homewards, “never at any other bicho.” The stag knew that too. But it was a curious way of putting it.

...We are too early; it is still pitch-dark; no sign of dawn beyond a slight opalescence low on the eastern horizon. Moreover, an icy wind rustles across the waste, and for dreary minutes we seek shelter, squatting beneath some friendly gorse. Presently a strange sound—a distinct champing, and close by—strikes our ears. “Un javato comiendo” = “a boar feeding,” whispers Dominguez, and creeping a few yards towards an open strath, we dimly descry a dusky monster. At the moment his snout is buried deep in the soil, up to the eyes, and the tremendous muscular power exerted in uprooting bulbs of palmetto arrests attention even in the quarter-light. Now he stands quiescent, head up, and the champing is resumed—a rare scene. The distance is a bare fifteen yards, and all the while my companion insists on hissing in my ear, “tiré-lo, tiré-lo” = “shoot, shoot.” Presently up goes the boar’s muzzle; straight and steadfastly he gazes in our direction, but his glance seemed to pass high over our heads. I don’t think he saw us; yet a consciousness of danger had got home—in two bounds he wheeled and disappeared, headlong, amid the bush beyond.

...Far and wide the bosky glade is furrowed with sinuous trenches, and infinite turrets stand erect as where children build sand-castles on the beach. Last night a troop of wild-pig have sought here for mole-crickets—small fry, one may think; yet even worms they don’t despise, for we have seen masses of these reptiles (some still alive) in the stomach of a newly-shot boar. Follow the spoor onwards, and where it enters a pine-grove, you notice splintered cones and scattered seed. Thus wild-beasts are assisting to fulfil nature’s plan, and if you care to advance it another stage, turn some soil over those overlooked pine-nuts, and some day forest-monarchs will result to reward another generation.

Such matutinal forays are, however, but an incident. The main system of dealing with the deer is by driving. For this purpose both the fragrant solitudes of pine and far-stretched wilds of bending cistus are mentally mapped out by the forest-guards into definite “beats,” each of which has its own name; though to a casual visitor (since guns are necessarily placed differently day by day according to the wind) the actual boundaries may appear indefinite enough.

On lowlands such as the Coto Doñana, which is more or less level and open, the use of far-ranging rifles is necessarily restricted by considerations of safety. Obviously no shot, on any pretext whatever, may be fired either into the beat or until the game has passed clear of and well outside the line of guns. In every instance, as a gun is placed, the keeper in charge indicates by lines drawn in the sand or other unmistakable means the limits within which shooting is absolutely prohibited. The result, it follows, not only increases the prospective difficulty of the shot, but gives fuller scope to the instinctive intelligence of the game. For deer, unlike some winged game, do not, when driven, dash precipitately straight for illusory safety, but retire slowly and with extreme circumspection; all old stags, in particular, fully anticipate hidden dangers to lie on their line of flight, and narrowly scrutinise any suspicious feature ahead before taking risks. The gunner will therefore be wise to occupy the few minutes that remain available in so arranging both himself and his post as to be inconspicuous; and also in an accurate survey of his environment with its probable chances, thereby minimising the danger of being taken by surprise. The cunning displayed by an old stag when endeavouring to evade a line of guns at times approaches the marvellous. Thus, on one occasion, the writer was warned of the near approach of game by a single “clink”—a noise which deer sometimes make, probably unintentionally, with the fore-hoof—yet seconds elapsed, and neither sight nor sound were vouchsafed. Then the slightest quiver of a bough beneath caught my eye. A big stag with antlers laid flat aback, and crouching to half his usual height, though going fairly fast, was slipping, silent and invisible, through thick but low brushwood immediately beneath the little hillock whereon I lay. On examining the spot, the spoor showed that he had passed thus through openings barely exceeding two feet in height, though he stood himself forty-six inches at the withers. The feat appeared impossible.[8]

In thick forest or brushwood that limits the view it may be advisable to sit with back towards the beat, relying on ears to indicate the approach or movements of game. While sitting thus, it will occur that you become aware of the arrival of an animal, or of several animals, immediately behind you. The natural inclination to look round is strong; but ‘twere folly to do so—fatal to success. This is the critical moment, when a few seconds of rigid stillness will be rewarded by a shot in the open. But that stillness must be statuesque, as of a stone god. For piercing eyes are instantly studying each bush and bough, and analysing at close quarters the least symptom of danger ahead.

Should a good stag break fairly near, it is advisable to allow it to pass well away before moving a muscle. For should the game be prematurely alarmed—say by your missing exactly upon the firing-line, or otherwise by its detecting your movement of preparation—that stag will instantly bounce back again into the beat. Then, assuming that the sportsman is a tyro, or subject to “emotions” or buck-fever, there is danger of his forgetting for one moment his precise permitted line of fire; in which case a perilous shot must result. Once allowed to pass well outside, the stag will usually continue on his course.

In this, as in every form of sport, “soft chances” occasionally occur. More often, the rifle will be directed at a galloping stag crashing through bush that conceals him up to the withers; or, it may be, bounding over inequalities of broken ground or brushwood, or among timber, at any distance up to 100 yards, sometimes 150, while, should he have touched a taint in the wind, his pace will be tremendous.

Although to casual view a plain of level contours this country is undulated to an extent that deceives a careless eye—the more accentuated by the monotone of cistus-scrub that appears so uniform. In reality there traverse the plain glens and gently graded hollows the less apt to be noticed, inasmuch as the scrub in moister dell grows higher.

Far through the marish green and still the watercourses sleep.

Inspiring moments are those when—before the beat has commenced—your eye catches on some far-away skyline the broad antlers of a stag. This animal has perhaps been on foot and alert, or maybe has taken the “wind” from the group of beaters wending a way to their points far beyond. For three seconds the antlers remain stationary, then vanish into some intervening glen. A glance around shows your next neighbour still busy completing his shelter—meritorious work if done in time—and you have strong suspicion that the man beyond will just now be lighting a cigarette! Such thoughts flash through one’s mind; the dominant question that fills it is: “Where will that great stag reappear?” But few seconds are needed to solve it. Perhaps he dashes, harmless, upon the careless, perhaps upon the slow—lucky for him should either such event befall! On the other hand, those moments of glorious expectancy may resolve in a crash of brushwood hard by, in a clinking of cloven hoofs, and a noble hart with horns aback is bounding past your own ready post. What proportion, we inwardly inquire, of the stags that are killed by craftsmen has already, just before, offered first chance to the careless or the slovenly?

We may conclude this chapter with an independent impression.

Lying hidden in one of these lonely puestos—writes J. C. C.—ever induces in me a powerful and sedative sense of contemplation and reflection, though fully alert all the time. While thus waiting and watching, I can’t but marvel, first at nature’s wondrous plan of waste—a scheme here without apparent object or promise of fulfilment. Where I lie the prospect comprises nothing but melancholy and unutterably silent solitudes of sand, droughty wastes with but at rare intervals some starveling patch of scant weird shrub destined either to shrivel in summer’s sun or shiver in winter’s winds. But, lying in that environment, one marvels yet more at the extreme caution displayed by wild animals; one has exceptional opportunity of admiring the exquisitive gifts bestowed by nature upon her ferae. Here is a young stag coming straight along, down-wind, ere yet the beat has begun, and in a desolate spot which to human sense could betray absolutely no feature or taint of danger. Suddenly he becomes rigid, arrested in mid-career—sniffing at a pure untainted air, yet conscious somehow of something wrong somewhere! It is a miraculous gift, though one cannot but feel grateful that we humans are devoid of senses that ever keep nerves in highest tension. Here is a sketch of a non-shootable stag thus suddenly statuetted thirty yards from me snugly hidden well down-wind, and so intensely interested that something else (a very old pal) well-nigh escaped notice.

That something was our good friend Reynard—Zorro they style him out here—whose proverbial cunning exceeds all other cunnings. He has come down to my track and there stopped dead, expressing in every detail the very essence of doubly-distilled subtlety and craft. At those footprints he halts, sniffs the wind, curls his brush dubiously—as a cat will do when pleased—but not sure yet of his next move. One second’s consideration decides him and it is executed at once—he is off like a gust of wind. But a Paradox ball at easy range in the open broke a hind-leg, and it was curious to note his evolutions—he, poor fellow, not realising what had occurred, flung himself round and round in rapid gyrations, the while biting at his own hind-leg. Needless to say not an instant passed ere a second ball terminated his sufferings. To observe the beautiful traits in the habits of wild beasts is to me quite as great a joy as adding them to my score and immensely augments the enjoyment of a big-game drive.

RED DEER HEADS—COTO DOÑANA.

This list is neither comprehensive nor consecutive, but merely a record of such good and typical heads as we happened to have within reach.

For Table of Heads of Mountain-Deer see Chapter on Sierra Moréna.

Ordinary Royals (by which we mean full-grown stags in their first prime) average 24 or 25 inches in length of horn. Heads of 26 to 28 inches belong to rather older beasts which have continued to improve. Anything beyond the latter measurement is quite exceptional, and is often due, not so much to fair straight length of the main beam as to an abnormal development of one of the top tines—usually directed backwards. There are, however, included in our records two or three examples of long straight heads which fairly exceed the 30-inch length.

CHAPTER V
ANDALUCIA AND ITS BIG GAME
STILL-HUNTING (RED DEER)

THE line of least resistance represents twentieth-century ideals—maximum results for the minimum of labour or technical skill. In the field of sport, wherever available, universal “driving” supersedes the arts of earlier venery—the pride of past generations.

In Spain, more leisurely while no less dignified, there survive in sport, as in other matters, practices more consonant with the dash and chivalry popularly ascribed to her national character. Such, for example, is the attack, single-handed, on bear or boar with cold steel—á arma blanca, in Castilian phrase. Here we purpose describing the system of “Still-hunting” (Rastreando) as practised in Andalucia with a skill that equals the best of the American “Red Indian,” and is only surpassed, within our experience, by Somalis and Wandorobo savages in East Africa.

Before day-dawn we are away with our two trackers. Maybe it is a lucky morning, and as the first streaks of light illumine the wastes, they reveal to our gaze a first-rate stag. In that case the venture is vastly simplified. It is merely necessary to allow time for the stag to reach his lie-up, and the spoor can be followed at once. But barring such exceptional fortune, it is necessary to find, or rather to select from amidst infinity of tracks crossing and recrossing hither and thither in bewildering profusion the trail of such a master-beast as clearly is worthy the labour of a long day’s pursuit. Twice and again we follow a spoor for 100 yards or more over difficult ground before finally deciding that its owner is not up to our standard of quality, and the interrupted search is resumed. Once found, there is rarely room for mistake with a really big spoor. The breadth of heel, the length and deep-cut prints of the cloven toes attest both weight and quality. The ground is open, soft, and easy. The big new track, with its spurts of forward-projected sand, are visible yards ahead. We follow almost at a run—how simple it seems! But not for long. Soon comes check No. 1. A dozen other deer have followed on the same line, and the original trail is obliterated. The troop leads on into a region of boundless bush, shoulder-high, where the ground is harder and the trackers spread out to right and left, backing each other with silent signals. Their skill and patience fascinate; but it is to me, in the centre, that after a long hour’s scrutiny, falls the satisfaction of rediscovering that big track where it diverges alone on the left. Half a mile beyond, our erratic friend has passed through water. For a space a broken reed here or displaced lilies there help us forward; then the deepening water, all open, bears no trace. The opposite shore, moreover, is fringed by a 200-yard belt of bulrush and ten-foot canes, and beyond all that lies heavy jungle.

You give it up? Admittedly these are no lines of least resistance, but we will cut the unpopular part as short as may be and merely add that it was high noon ere, after three hours’ work—puzzling out problems and paradoxes, now following a false clue, anon recovering the true one—that at last the big spoor on dry land once more rejoiced our sight. More than that, it now bears evidence—to eyes that can read—that our stag is approaching his selected stronghold. He goes slowly. Here he has stopped to survey his rear—there he has lingered to nibble a genista, and the spoor zigzags to and fro. Now it turns at sharp angle, following a cheek-wind, and a suggestive grove of cork-oaks embedded in heavy bush lies ahead. One hunter opines the stag lies up here: the other doubts. No half-measures suffice. We turn down-wind, detouring to reach the main outlet (salida) to leeward; here I remain hidden, while my companions, separating on right and left, proceed to encircle the mancha. Two hinds break hard by, and presently Juan returns with word that the stag has passed through the covert—better still, that a second big beast has joined the first, and that the double spoor, moving dead-slow and three-quarters up wind, proceeds due north. Another mile and then right ahead lies heavy covert, but long and straggling, and the halting trail indicates this as a certain find.

The strategic position is simple, but tactics, for a single gun, leave endless scope for decision. Our first rule in all such cases is to get close in, risk what it may. Hence, while my companions separated, as before, to encircle the covert from right and left, the writer crept forward yard by yard till a fairly broad and convenient open suggested the final stand.

Not ten minutes had elapsed, nor had a sound reached my ears, when as by magic the figure of a majestic stag filled a glade on the left—what a picture, as with head erect he daintily picked his unconscious way! Clearly he suspected nothing here; but, having got sense, sight, or scent of Juan far beyond, was astutely moving away, with intelligent anticipation, to safer retreat. The shot was of the simplest, and merely black antlers crowned with triple ivory tips marked the fatal point among deep green rushes.

Now when two big stags fraternise, as they frequently do, it usually happens that, when pressed, both animals will finally seek the same exit, even though a shot has already been fired there. I had accordingly instructed the keepers that in the event of my firing, each should discharge his gun in the air, at the same time loosing one dog. The expected shots now rang out, presently followed by a crashing in the brushwood. This proved to be caused by a handful of hinds with, alas! the loose dog baying at their heels. The adverse odds had fallen to zero, till Juan, divining what had occurred, fired again and slipt the other dog. Anxious minutes slowly passed while my two biped sleuth-hounds on the other side gradually, yard by yard, made good their advance; for the wit and wiles, the practised cunning of an old stag when thus cornered, need every scrap of our human skill to out-general, and nothing to spare at that. But that skill was not at fault to-day, and in the thick of the mancha, Manuel presently “jumped” the recusant hart from almost beneath his feet, and his view-halloa reached expectant ears.

Then, within a few yards of the spot where No. 1 had silently appeared, out bounced No. 2, but in widely different style. In huge bounds, with head and neck horizontal and antlers laid flat aback, he covered the open like a racer. The first shot got in too far back, but the second went right, and the two friends lay not divided in death. Both were coronados (triple-crowned), indeed the second carried four-on-top in double pairs as sketched—a not uncommon formation—but being very old, lacked bez tines.

Very nearly five hours had elapsed since we had first struck the spoor, five hours of concentrated attention, crowned by the final assertion of human “dominion.” And during these moments of permissible expansion, there was impressed on our minds the fact that such success involves mastery of a difficult craft.

Illustrative of how astutely a cornered stag will exploit every device and avenue of escape, an excellent instance is given in Wild Spain, p. 434.

Skilled deer-driving is a different undertaking from the force majeure by which pheasants and such-like game may be pushed over a line of guns. For deer do not act on timid impulse, but on practical instinct. Scent is their first safeguard when danger threatens and their natural flight is up-wind. But as it is obviously impossible to place guns to windward, the operation resolves itself into moving the game—dead against its instinct and set inclination—down-wind, or at least on a “half-wind.” The latter is easier as an operation, but less effective in result: since the guns must be posted in echelon—otherwise each “gives the wind” to his next neighbour below. Consequently the firing-zone of each is greatly circumscribed.

In practice, therefore, the game has to be moved or cajoled—it can hardly be said to be “driven”—into going, at least so far, down-wind by skilled handling of the driving-line and by intelligent co-operation on the part of each individual driver. In the great mountain-drives of the sierras (elsewhere described) packs of hounds, being carefully trained, perform infinite service. Always under control of their huntsman, they systematically search out thickets impenetrable to man and push all game forward. In the Coto Doñana, our scratch-pack of podencos and mongrels of every degree, run riot unchecked at hind, hare, or rabbit, giving tongue in all directions at once, and probably do as much harm as good.

Our mounted keepers, however, expert in divining afar the yet unformed designs of the game ahead, are quick to counter each move by a feint or demonstration behind; and when desirable, to forestall attempted escape by resolute riding. The Spanish are a nation of horsemen, and a fine sight it is to see these wild guardas galloping helter-skelter through scrub that reaches the saddle—especially the way they ride down a wounded stag or boar with the garrocha—a long wooden lance.

Despite it all, however, many stags break back. Riding with the beaters it is instructive to watch the manœuvres of an old stag as, sinking from sight, he couches among quite low scrub on some hillock, or stands statuesque with horns aback hiding behind a clump of tall tree-heaths—alert all the while, stealthily to shift his position as yapping podencos on one side or the other may suggest—and watching each opportunity to evade the encompassing danger. Now a stretch of denser jungle obstructs the advancing line. The beaters are forced apart to pass it, and a gap or two yawns in the attack. Instantly that introspective wild beast realises his advantage—he springs to sight, ignores Spanish expletives that scorch the scrub, and in giant bounds breaks back in the very face of encircling foes. Within thirty seconds he has regained security amid leagues of untrodden wilds.

Some years ago we tried the plan of placing one (or two) guns with the driving-line; but the experiment proved impracticable. Obviously only the coolest and most reliable men could be trusted in an essay which otherwise involved danger. Unfortunately—and it is but human nature—every one considers himself equally cool and reliable. Hence the breakdown and abandonment of the practice. For the long line of beaters, struggling at different points through obstacles of varying difficulty, necessarily loses precise formation; it becomes more or less broken and scattered. Here and there a man may get “stuck” and left a hundred yards behind the general advance. The risk in “firing back” is obvious. The writer remembers being one of two guns with the beaters, when a pair of stags, jumping up close ahead, bolted straight back, passing almost within arm’s length. As the second carried a fairly good head, I dismounted and shot it, but was then horrified to discover that my companion-gun had (contrary to all rules) gone back in that very direction to shoot a woodcock!

Driving Big Game

On “driving” as such we do not propose to enlarge. The system is simple though the practice is subject to variation. On the gently undulated levels of Doñana, for example, the latter (as already indicated) is widely differentiated from the systems practised in mountainous countries—whether in Scotland or the Spanish sierras—where shots can safely be accepted at incoming or at passing game. Guns are there protected from danger by intervening ridges, crags, and piled-up rocks that flank each “pass.” Here the game must be left to pass well through and outside the line of guns before a shot is permissible.

Our “drives,” whether in forest or scrub, seldom exceed a couple of miles in extent; but in wild regions where isolated patches of covert are scattered, inset amid wastes of sand, the area may be extended to half a day’s ride. These long scrambling drives gain enhanced interest to a naturalist in precisely inverse ratio with their probability of success.

In a big-game drive the first animals to come forward are, as a rule, foxes and lynxes—creatures which move on impulse, and instantly quit a zone where danger threatens. Both, however, will certainly pass unseen should there be any scrub to conceal their retreat. The lynx especially is adept at utilising cover, however slight. Should open patches or sandy glades occur among the bush, foxes will be viewed bundling along, to all appearance quite carelessly. Here in Spain foxes are merely “vermin”; but it is a mistake to shoot them, owing to the risk of thereby turning back better game. Neither lynx nor fox, by the way, are accounted caza mayor unless killed with a bullet.

As elsewhere mentioned, there is always a considerable possibility at the earlier period of a “drive” (and even before the operation has actually commenced) of some old and highly experienced stag attempting to slip through the line in the calculated hope (which is often well founded) that he will thereby take most of the guns by surprise and so escape unshot at. Never be unready.

Although in “driving,” that element of ceaseless personal effort, observation and self-reliance that characterise stalking, still-hunting, or spooring, is necessarily reduced, yet it is by no means eliminated. Nor are there lacking compensating charms in those hours of silent expectancy spent in the solitude of jungle or amid the aromatic fragrance of pine-forest. Every sense is held in tension to mark and measure each sign or sound; ‘tis but the fall of a pine-cone that has caught your ear, but it might easily have been a single footfall of game. The wild-life of the wilderness pursues its daily course around unconscious of a concealed intruder in its midst. Overhead, busy hawfinches wrestle with ripening cones, swinging in gymnastic attitude. These are silent. You have first become aware of their presence by a shower of scales gently fluttering down upon the shrubbery of genista and rosemary alongside, amidst the depths of which lovely French-grey warblers with jet-black skull-caps (Sylvia melanocephala) pursue insect-prey with furious energy—dashing into the tangle of stems reckless of damage to tender plumes. There are other bush-skulkers infinitely more reclusive than these—some indeed whose mere existence one could never hope to verify (in winter) save by patience and these hours of silent watching. Such are the Fantail, Cetti’s, and Dartford warblers, while among sedge and cane-brake alert reed-climbers beguile and delight these spells of waiting. Soldier-ants and horned beetles with laborious gait, but obvious fixity of purpose, pursue their even way, surmounting all obstruction—such as boot or cartridge-bag. Earth and air alike are instinct with humble life.

To a northerner it is hard to believe that this is mid-winter, when almost every tree remains leaf-clad, the brushwood green and flower-spangled. Arbutus, rosemary, and tree-heath are already in bloom, while bees buzz in shoulder-high heather and suck honey from its tricoloured blossoms—purple, pink, and violet. Strange diptera and winged creatures of many sorts and sizes, from gnat and midge to savage dragon-flies, rustle and drone in one’s ear or poise on iridescent wing in the sunlight, and the hateful hiss of the mosquito mingles with the insect-melody. Over each open flower of rock-rose or cistus hovers the humming-bird hawk-moth with, more rarely, one of the larger sphinxes (S. convolvuli), each with long proboscis inserted deep in tender calyx. Not even the butterflies are entirely absent. We have noticed gorgeous species at Christmas time, including clouded yellows, painted lady and red admiral, southern wood-argus, Bath white, Lycaena telicanus, Thäis polyxena, Megaera, and many more. On the warm sand at midday bask pretty green and spotted lizards,[10] apparently asleep, but alert to dart off on slightest alarm, disappearing like a thought in some crevice of the cistus stems.

Hard by a winter-wandering hoopoe struts in an open glade, prodding the earth with curved bill and crest laid back like a “claw-hammer”; from a tall cistus-spray the southern grey shrike mumbles his harsh soliloquy, and chattering magpies everywhere surmount the evergreen bush. Where the warm sunshine induces untimely ripening of the tamarisk, some brightly coloured birds flicker around pecking at the buds. They appear to be chaffinches, but a glance through the glass identifies them as bramblings—arctic migrants that we have shot here in midwinter with full black heads—in “breeding-plumage” as some call it, though it is merely the result of the wearing-away of the original grey fringe to each feather, thus exposing the glossy violet-black bases.

Birds, as a broad rule, possess no “breeding-plumage.” They only renew their dress once a year, in the autumn, and breed the following spring in the worn and ragged plumes. It’s not poetic, but the fact.[11] This is not the place to enumerate all the characteristic forms of bird-life, and only one other shall be mentioned, chiefly because the incident occurred the day we drafted this chapter. One hears behind the rustle of strong wings, and there passes overhead in dipping, undulated flight a green woodpecker of the Spanish species, Gecinus sharpei. With a regular thud he alights on the rough bark of a cork-oak in front, clings in rigid aplomb while surveying the spot for any sign of danger, then projects upwards a snake-like neck and with vertical beak gives forth a series of maniacal shrieks that resound through the silences.[12] By all means watch and study every phase of wild-life around you—the habit will leave green memories when the keener zest for bigger game shall have dimmed—but never be caught napping, or let a silent stag pass by while your whole attention is concentrated on a tarantula!

By way of illustrating the practice of “driving,” we annex three or four typical instances:—

Las Angosturas, February 5, 1907.—The writer’s post was in a green glade surrounded by pine-forest. A heavy rush behind was succeeded (as anticipated) by the appearance of a big troop of hinds followed by two small staggies. A considerable distance behind these came a single good stag, and already the sights had covered his shoulder, when from the corner of an eye a second, with far finer head, flashed into the picture, going hard, and I decided to change beasts. It was, however, too late. Half automatically, while eyes wandered, fingers had closed on trigger. At the shot the better stag bounded off with great uneven strides through the timber, offering but an uncertain mark. Both animals, however, were recovered. The first, an eleven-pointer, lay dead at the exact spot; the second was brought to bay within 300 yards, a fine royal.

Los Novarbos, January 9, 1903.—My post was among a grove of pine-saplings in a lovely open plain surrounded by forest. Two good stags trotted past, full broadside, at 80 yards. The first dropped in a heap, as though pole-axed, the second receiving a ball that clearly indicated a kill. While reloading, noticed with surprise that No. 1 had regained his legs and was off at speed. A third bullet struck behind; but it was not till two hours later, after blood-spooring for half a league, that we recovered our game. The first shot had struck a horn (at junction of trez tine) cutting it clean in two. This had momentarily stunned the animal, but the effect had passed off within ten seconds. Both were ten-pointers, with strong black horns, ivory-tipped. During that afternoon I got & big boar at Maë-Corra; and B., who had set out at 4 A.M., twenty-three geese at the Cardo-Inchal.

Far North, January 31, 1907.—First beat by the “Eagles’ Nest” (in the biggest cork-oak we ever saw, the imperial bird soaring off as we rode up). Brushwood everywhere tall and dense, giving no view. On placing me the keeper remarked, “By this little glade (canuto) deer must break, but amidst such jungle will need un tiro de merito!” Four stags broke, two were missed, but one secured—seven points on one horn, the other broken. So dense is the bush here that a lynx ran almost over the writer’s post, yet had vanished from sight ere gun could be brought to shoulder. In the next beat, La Querencia del Macho (again all dense bush), B. shot two really grand companion stags, but again one of these had a broken horn. This animal while at bay so injured the spine of one of our dogs that it had to be killed two days later.[13] A third beat added one more big stag, and the day’s result—four stags with only two “heads”—is so curious that we give the detail:—

Amidst forest or in dense jungle (such as last described) where no distant view is possible, it is usually advisable to watch outwards—that is, with back towards the beat, relying on ears to give notice of the movements of game within. But in (more or less) open country where a view, oneself unseen, can be obtained afar, the situation is modified. The following is an example:—

Corral Quemado, February 1, 1909.—The authors occupied the two outmost posts on a high sand-ridge which commanded an introspect far away into the heart of the covert. Already before the distant signal had announced that the converging lines of beaters had joined, suddenly an apparition showed up. Some 300 yards away a low pine-clad ridge traversed the forest horizon, and in that moment the shadows beneath became, as by magic, illumined by an inspiring spectacle—the tracery of great spreading antlers surmounting the sunlit grey face and neck of a glorious stag. For twenty seconds the apparition (and we) remained statuesque as cast in bronze. Then, with the suddenness and silence of a shifting shadow, the deep shade was vacant once more. The stag had retired. It boots not to recall those agonies of self-reproach that gnawed one’s very being. Suffice it, they were undeserved; for five or six minutes later that stag reappeared, leisurely cantering forward. Clearly no specific sign or suspicion of danger ahead had struck his mind or dictated that retirement. But his course was now, by mere chance and uncalculated cunning, 300 yards outside the sphere of your humble servants, the authors. That stag was now about to offer a chance to gun No. 3, instead of, as originally, to Nos. 1 and 2. Eagerly we both watched his course, now halting on some ridge to reconnoitre, gaze shifting, and ears deflecting hither and thither, anon making good another stage towards the goal of escape. A long shallow canuto (hollow) concealed his bulk from view, but we now saw by the bunchy “show” on top that this was a prize of no mean merit. Then came the climax. Rising the slope which ended the canuto, in an instant the stag stopped, petrified. Straight on in front of him, not 100 yards ahead, lay No. 3 gun, and the fatal fact had been discovered. It may have been an untimely movement, perhaps a glint of sunray on exposed gun-barrel, or merely the outline of a cap three inches too high—anyway the ambush had been detected, and now the stag swung at right angles and sought in giant bounds to pass behind No. 2. It was a long shot, very fast, and intercepted by intervening trees and bush—the second barrel directed merely at a vanishing stern. Yet such was our confidence in the aim—in both aims—that not even the subsequent sight of our antlered friend jauntily cantering away down the long stretch of Los Tendidos impaired by one iota its self-assurance. For a mile and more we followed that bloodless spoor, far beyond the point whereat the keeper’s solemn verdict had been pronounced, “No lleva náda—that stag goes scot-free.” As usual, that verdict was correct.

An incident worth note had occurred meanwhile. On the extreme left of our line, a mile away, two stags out of four that broke across the sand-wastes had been killed; and these, while we yet remained on the scene (though a trifle delayed by fruitless spooring) had already been attacked and torn open by a descending swarm of vultures. That, in Africa, is a daily experience, but never, before or since, have we witnessed such unseemly voracity in Europe.

Majada Real.—This is the one lowland covert where shots are permissible at incoming game. Being flanked on the west by gigantic sand-dunes, the guns (under certain conditions) may be lined out a couple of miles away, along the outskirts of the next nearest covert—the idea being to take the stags as they canter across the intervening dunes. The conditions referred to are (1) a straight east wind, and (2) reliable guns. Obviously the element of danger under this plan is vastly increased, and as the keepers are responsible for any accident, they are reluctant to execute the drive thus save only when their confidence in the guns is complete.[15] A careless man on a grouse-drive is dangerous enough; but here, with rifle-bullets, a reckless shot may spell death. The “in-drive,” nevertheless, is both curious and interesting. A spectacle one does not forget is afforded when the far-away skyline of dazzling sand is suddenly surmounted by spreading antlers, and some great hart, perhaps a dozen of them, come trotting all unconscious directly towards the eager eyes watching and waiting. The effect of a shot under these conditions is frequently to turn the game off at right angles. The deer then hold a course parallel with the covert-side, thus running the gauntlet of several guns, and the question of “first blood” may become a moot point—easily determined, however, by reference to the spoor. Boar naturally are averse to take such open ground; but when severely pressed, we have on occasion seen them scurrying across these Saharan sands, a singular sight under the midday sun.

To introspective minds two points may have showed up in these rough outline illustrations. First, that the best stags are ever the earliest amove when danger threatens. These not seldom escape ere a slovenly gunner is aware that the beat has begun. The moral is clear. Secondly, as these bigger and older beasts exhibit fraternal tendencies, it follows that a first chance (whether availed or bungled) need not necessarily be the last.

Besides deer, it is quite usual that wild-boar, as well as lynxes and other minor animals, come forward on these “drives.” The divergent nature of pig, however, renders a more specialised system advisable when wild-boar only are the objective. For whereas the aboriginal stag seeking a “lie-up” wherein to pass the daylight hours was satisfied by any sequestered spot that afforded shelter and shade from the sun, that was never the case with the jungle-loving boar. To the stag strong jungle and heavy brushwood were ever abhorrent, handicapping his light build and branching antlers. Clumps of tall reed-grass or three-foot rushes, a patch of cistus or rosemary, amply fulfilled his diurnal ideals and requirements. Nowadays, it is true, the expanded sense of danger, the increasing pressure of modern life—even cervine life—force him to select strongholds which offer greater security though less convenience. The wild-boar, on the reverse, with lower carriage and pachydermatous hide, instinctively seeks the very heaviest jungle within his radius—the more densely briar-matted and impenetrable the better he loves it.

Many such holts—some of them may be but a few yards in extent—are necessarily passed untried both by dogs and men when engaged in “driving” extended areas, sometimes miles of consecutive forest and covert. The somnolent boar hears the passing tumult, lifts a grisly head, grunts an angry soliloquy, and goes to sleep again, secure. Another day you have returned expressly to pay specific attention to him. In brief space he has diagnosed the difference in attack. Instantly that boar is alert, ready to repel or scatter the enemy, come who may, on two legs or four.

CHAPTER VI
ANDALUCIA AND ITS BIG GAME (Continued)
WILD-BOAR

FROM one’s earliest days the wild-boar has been invested with a sort of halo of romance, identified in youthful mind with grim courage and brute strength. Perhaps his grisly front, the vicious bloodshot eyes, savage snorts, and generally malignant demeanour, lend substance to such idea. But even among adults there exists in the popular mind a strange mixture of misconception as between big game and dangerous game—to hundreds the terms are synonymous. Thus a lady, inspecting our trophies, exclaimed, “Oh, Mr.——, aren’t these beasts very treacherous?” which almost provoked the reply, “You see, we are even more treacherous!”

In sober truth, nevertheless, a big old boar when held up at bay, or charging in headlong rushes upon the dogs, his wicked eyes flashing fire, and foam flying from his jaws as tushes clash and champ, presents as pretty a picture of brute-fury and pluck as even a world-hunter may wish to enjoy.

Yet among hundreds of boars that we have killed or seen killed (though dogs are caught continually, and occasionally a horse), there has never occurred a serious accident to the hunter, and only a few narrow escapes.

As an example of the latter: the keeper, while “placing” the writer among bush-clad dunes outside the Mancha of Majada Real, mentioned that a very big boar often frequented some heavy rush-beds on my front. “Should the dogs give tongue to pig at that point, your Excellency will at once run in to the function.” Such were his instructions.

At the point indicated the dogs bayed unmistakably, and seizing a light single carbine, ·303 (as there was a stretch of heavy sand to cover) I ran in. Arriving at the covert and already close up to the music, suddenly the “bay” broke, and I felt the bitter annoyance of being twenty seconds too slow. I had entered by a narrow game-path, and was still hurrying up this when I met the flying boar face to face. By chance he had selected the same track for his retreat! As we both were moving, and certainly not six yards apart, there was barely time to pull off the carbine in the boar’s face and throw myself back against the wall of matted jungle on my left. Next moment the grizzly head and curving ivories flashed past within six inches of my nose! The spring he had given carried the boar a yard past me, and there he stopped, stern-on, champing and grunting, both tushes visible—I could see them in horrid projection, on either side of the snout! I had brought the empty carbine to the “carry,” so as to use it bayonet-wise, to ward the brute off my legs; but he remained stolidly where he had stopped, and, as may be imagined, I stood stolid too. As it proved, the bullet, entering top of shoulder, had traversed the vitals—hence the cessation of hostilities. A few moments later the arrival of the dogs terminated an untoward interval.

On another occasion at the Veta de las Conchas, amidst the lovely pinales, just as the beat was concluded, there dashed from a small thicket a troop of a dozen pig, making direct for the solitary pine behind which the writer held guard. Passing full broadside, at thirty yards the biggest dropped dead on the sand, and, just as the troop disappeared in a donga, a second, it seemed, was knocked over. On the beaters approaching I walked across to see, and there, in the hollow, lay the second pig apparently dead enough. Having picked up my field-glasses, cartridge-pouch, etc., I stood close by awaiting the keeper’s arrival. Three or four dogs, however, following on the spoor, arrived first; and on their worrying the deceased, it at once sprang to its feet, gazed for one instant, and charged direct. Never have I seen an animal cover twenty yards more quickly! Dropping the handful of chismes aforesaid, I pulled off an unaimed cartridge in my assailant’s face and a lucky bullet struck rather below the eyes. This is not a dead shot, but the shock at that short distance proved sufficient.

An amusing incident, not dissimilar, occurred at Salavar. A youthful sportsman was approaching a boar which had fallen and lay apparently dead, when it, too, suddenly sprang up and charged. Our friend turned and fled; but, tripping over a fallen branch, fell headlong amidst the green rushes. There, face-downwards, he lay, preferring, as he explained later, “to receive his wound behind rather than have his face messed about by a boar!” Luckily the animal, on losing sight of its flying foe, pulled up and stood, grunting surprise and disapproval.

A similar experience befell King Alfonso XIII. in this Mancha of Salavar, December 29, 1909. We need not tell English readers that His Majesty proved equal to this, as to every occasion, and dropped his adversary at arm’s length.

When one reads (as we do) descriptions of big-game hunting, a recurring expression gives pause—that of “charging.” A recent discussion in a sporting paper turned on the question of “the best weapon for a charging boar.” Now such a thing as a “charging boar” has never, in a long experience, occurred to the authors—that is, a boar charging deliberately, and of its own initiative, upon human beings; and we do not believe in the possibility of such an event. Of course should a boar (or any other savage animal) be disabled, or in a corner, that is a different matter—then a wild-boar will fight, and right gallantly too.

The nearest approach to a “charge” (though it wasn’t one really) occurred at the Rincon de los Carrizos. Towards the end of the beat the dogs ran a pig, and, seeing it was a big one, the writer followed, and after a spin of 300 yards overtook the boar at bay in a deep water-hole. The place was all overhung with heavy foliage and thick pines above, giving very poor light. Though the boar’s snout pointed straight towards me about ten yards away, I imagined (wrongly) that his body stood at an angle—about one-third broadside: hence the bullet (aimed past the ear), splashed harmlessly in the water, and next moment the pig was coming straight as a die, apparently meaning mischief. When within five yards, however, he jinked sharply to right, passing full broadside, when I killed him á-boca-jarro, as the phrase runs, “at the mouth of the spout.”

That idea of “charging at large” is so splendidly romantic, and fits in so appropriately with preconceived ideas, that we almost regret to disturb its semi-fossilised acceptance. But, in mere fact, neither boars nor any other wild beasts “charge” at sight—always and only excepting elephant and rhinoceros, either of which may (or may not) do so, though previously unprovoked. It would, at least, be unwise entirely to ignore the contingency of either of these two so acting.

There exist, nevertheless, old and evil-tempered boars that are quite formidable adversaries. We have many such in our Coto Doñana—boars that, having once overmastered our hounds, practically defy us. Each of these old solitary tuskers occupies some densely briared stronghold—it may be but an isolated patch of jungle, scarce half an acre in extent, or alternatively, a little sequence of similar thickets, each connected by intervals of lighter bush. Such spots abound by the hundred, but once the lair of our bristled friend is found, then there is work cut out for man, horse, and hound. For long-drawn-out minutes the silence of the wilderness re-echoes with doubly concentrated fury—frantic hound-music mingled with lower accompaniment of sullen, savage snorts and grunts and the champing of tusks; then a sharp crunch of breaking boughs ... and the death-yell of a podenco tells that that blow has got home. But the seat of war remains unchanged—the same rush and the same fatal result are repeated. Presently some venturous hound may discover an entry from behind. The enemy’s flank is turned, and with a crash that seems to shake the very earth, our boar retreats to a second stronghold only twenty yards away. All this is occurring within arm’s length; one hears, can almost feel, the stress of mortal combat, but one sees nothing inside the mural foliage, nor knows what moment the enemy may sally forth. Such moments may even excite what are termed in Spanish phrase “emotions.”

In his second “Plevna” our boar is secure, and he knows it. With rear and flanks protected by a revêtement of gnarled roots and a labyrinth of stems, he fears nothing behind, while the furiously baying hounds on his front he now utterly despises. Blank shots fired in the air alarm him not, nor will Pepe Espinal—in a service of danger—succeed in dislodging him with a garrocha, after a perilous climb along the briar-matted roof. That boar is victor—master of a stricken field.

One human resource remains, to go in á arma blanca—with the cold steel. There are dashing spirits who will do this—in Spain we have seen such. But to crawl thus, prostrate, into the dark and gloomy tunnels that form a wild-boar’s fortress, intercepted and obstructed on every side, there to attack in single combat a savage beast, still unhurt and in the flush of victory, pachydermatous, and whose fighting weight far exceeds your own—well, that we place in the category of pure recklessness. Courage is a quality that all admire, though one may wonder if it is not sometimes over-esteemed, when we find it possessed in common, not only by very many wild-beasts, but even by savage races of human kind—races which we regard as “lower,” yet not inferior in that cherished quality of “pluck.”

Before you crawl in there, stop to think of the annoyance the act may cause not merely to our hunt, but possibly to a wife, otherwise to sisters, friends, or hospital nurses, even, it may be, to an undertaker—though he will not object.

Once victorious over canine foes, it will be a remote chance indeed that that boar, unless caught by mishap in some carelessly chosen lair, will ever again show up as a mark for the fore-sight of a rifle.

After one such rout, we remember finding our friend the Reverend Father, who had sallied forth with us for a mild morning’s shooting, perched high up among the branches of a thorny sabina (a kind of juniper), whence we rescued him, cut and bleeding, and badly “shaken in nerve!”

We add the following typical instances of boar-shooting:—

Salavar, February 1, 1900.—A lovely winter’s morn, warm sun and dead calm. The distant cries of the beaters (nigh three miles away) had just reached my ears, when a nearer sound riveted attention—the soft patter of hoofs upon sand. Then from the forest-slope behind appeared a pig—big and grey—trotting through deep rushes some forty yards away. Already the fore-sight was “touching on” its neck, when a lucky suspicion of striped piglings following their mother arrested the ball. Next came along a gentle hind with all her infinite grace of contour and carriage. At twenty-five yards she faced full round, and for long seconds we stared eye to eye. Curious it is that absolute quiescence will puzzle the wildest of the wild! Hardly had she vanished ‘midst forest shades, than once again that muffled patter—this time an unmistakable tusker. But, oh! what an abominable shot I made—too low, too far back—and onwards he pursued his course. By our forest laws it was my deber (bounden duty) to follow the stricken game. All that noontide, all the afternoon—through bush and brake, by dell and dusky defile—patiently, persistently, did Juanillo Espinal and I follow every twist and turn of that unending spoor. There was blood to help us at first, none thereafter. Through the thickets of Sabinal, then back on the left by Maë-Corra, forward through the Carrizal, thence crossing the Corral Grande, and away into the great pinales beyond—away to the Rincon de los Carrizos, three solid leagues and a bit to spare! That was the price of a bungled shot.

Here at last we have tracked him to his lair. Within that sullen fortress of the Rincon lies our wounded boar. How to get him out is a different problem. Though wounded, he is in no way disabled, and is ready, aye “spoiling,” to put up a savage fight for his life. Having precisely located him in a dense tangle of lentisk and briar, our single dog, Careto, a tall, shaggy podenco, not unlike a deerhound, but on smaller scale, is let go. Up a gloomy game-path he vanishes, and in a moment fierce music startles the silent woods. The boar refused to move. But one resource remained. We must go in to help Careto, crawling up a briar-laced tunnel. It was horribly dark at first, and I began to think of ... when, fortunately, the light improved, and a few yards farther in a savage scene was enacting in quite a considerable open. Beneath its brambled roof we could stand half upright. In its farthest corner stood our boar at bay, a picture of sullen ferocity. Upon Juanillo’s appearance the scene changed as by magic—there was a rush and resounding crash. Precisely what happened during the three succeeding seconds deponent could not see, it being so gloomy, and Juanillo on my front. Ere a cartridge could be shoved into the breech the great boar was held up, Careto hanging on to his right ear, and Juanillo, springing over the dog, had seized the grisly beast by both hind-legs—at the hocks—and stepping backward, with one mighty heave flung the boar sidelong on the earth. Next moment I had driven the knife through his heart.

Though the method described is regularly employed by Spanish hunters to seize and capture a wounded or “bayed” boar—and we have seen it executed dozens of times—yet seldom in such a spot as this, cramped in space, handicapped by bad light and intercepting boughs and briars. It was a dramatic scene, and a bold act that bespoke cool head and brawny biceps.

The head of this boar hangs on our walls to commemorate an event we are not likely to forget.

We remember following a wounded lynx into a similar spot—a deep hollowed jungle. A pandemonium of savage snarling and spitting, barks and yowls greeted our ears as we crawled in, while on reaching the cavern the green eyes of the lynx flashed like electric lights from a dark recess. Though one hind-leg had been broken and the other damaged by a rifle-ball, yet she held easy mastery over five or six dogs. Sitting bolt upright, she kept the lot at bay with sweeping half-arm blows. Not a dog dared close, and the brave feline had to be finished with the lance.

Mancha del Milagro, February 4, 1908.—The covert, we knew by spoor, held a first-rate boar, and his most probable salida (break-out) was at the foot of a perpendicular sand-wall, within fifty yards of which the writer held guard. Within brief minutes the music of the pack corroborated what had been foretold by spoor. Twice the boar with crashing course encircled the mancha within, passing close inside my post. Each moment I watched for his appearance at the expected point on the right. Then, without notice or sound of broken bough, suddenly he stood outside on the left—almost beneath the gun’s muzzle—not eight feet away. Luckily (as he stood within my firing-lines) the boar steadfastly gazed in the opposite direction, nor did I seek by slightest movement to attract attention to my presence. For some seconds we both remained thus, rigid. Then with sudden decision the boar bounded off, flying the gentle slope in front, and ere he had passed a yard clear of the firing-line, fell dead with a bullet placed in the precise spot.

Weight, 164 lbs. clean, and grey as a donkey.

A wounded boar should always be approached with caution. Remember he is a powerful brute, very resolute, and furnished with quite formidable armament, which, while life remains, he will use. One of the biggest, after receiving a bullet slightly below and behind the heart, went slowly on some fifty yards, when he subsided, back up, among some green iris. Half an hour later the writer silently approached from directly behind. At ten yards the heaving flanks showed that plenty of life remained, and beautiful scimitar-like tushes were conspicuous enough on either side. I therefore quietly withdrew. On a keeper presently riding up, the boar at once dashed on a dog, flung him aside (laying open half his ribs), and charged the horse. The latter was smartly handled and cleared, when the boar instantly turned on me. The dash of that onset was splendid to watch. Luckily he had a yard or two of soft bog to get through, but it was necessary to stop him with another bullet.

Impressive is the mental sensation aroused when any savage wild-beast—normally the object of pursuit—suddenly turns the tables and becomes the aggressor. The actual incident is necessarily but momentary, yet its effect remains graven on the tablets of memory. Pity ‘tis so rare.

Again we conclude with an independent impression by J. C. C.:—

Never a visit to the Coto Doñana but brings some separate experience—possibly more pleasurable in retrospect than reality! I will instance my first interview with wild-boars. Now, of course, I know more about them and can almost regard them with serenity; but at that time, believe me, it was not so. That first encounter at really close quarters occurred at the close of a long day’s work. My post was behind a twelve-inch pine on an otherwise bare hill, the reverse slope of which dipped down to dense bamboo-thickets just out of my sight, though close by. Within a few minutes commenced and continued the hullabaloo of hounds. Close glued to my pine-trunk I listened in tense excitement. Suddenly, ere I had quite realised such possibility, there rushed into view on the ridge, not twenty paces distant, a great shaggy grey boar. He had dashed up the steep bank beyond and was now making direct for my legs. This is not the confession of a nervous man, but it did occur to me that truer safety lay in the fork of my tree! but B. was the next gun, only sixty or seventy yards away, and keenly interested. In a moment I was myself again; but the interval had been, to say the least, painfully enthralling. I had, of course, to wait till the great “Havato” had crossed my “firing-lines.” He certainly saw something, for he paused momentarily, took rapid counsel, and bolted past. Nerves were steady now, and once across the line the boar had my right in the ribs, left in flank. I actually saw blood spurt—hair fly—at each shot, yet the boar followed on his course unmoved. Pachydermatous pig! I pondered while reloading. Ten seconds later on my boar’s sleuth follows Boca-Negra, a veritable Beth Gelert. Utterly ignoring me, he passes away into gloom and silence; but shortly I see him coming back, blood-stained and satiated, and my self-respect returns. Ten minutes later, a second tusker gallops along the hollow behind. Him also my right caught fair in the ribs—only a few inches left of the heart, yet again without visible result. The second bullet, however, broke his spine as he ascended the sand-bank beyond, and he fell stone dead. When the beat was over we followed No. 1. He also lay still, 200 yards away—a pair of first-rate tuskers.

I remember, during the gralloch, some dreadfully poor charcoal-burners appearing on the scene to beg for food. This, of course, was gladly conceded; but so famished were those poor creatures that old women filled their aprons with reeking viscera, while it was with difficulty that children could be prevented from starting at once on raw flesh and liver. Truly it was a grievous spectacle, and filled the homeward ride with sad reflections on the awful hardships such poor folk are destined to endure.

In days of rapid change, when, in our own generation, sporting weapons have been at least thrice utterly metamorphosed, it is unwise to be dogmatic. Yet we may summarise our personal experience that the most efficient weapon for all such purposes as here described is that known as the “Paradox,” or at least of the Paradox type. The old “Express rifle” (the best in its day, less than a score of years ago, but now mere “scrap”) was also useful. But it always fell second to the Paradox, as the latter (being really a shot-gun, equally available for small game, snipe, duck, or geese) came up quicker to the eye for snap-shooting with ball.

The invention of the Paradox type of gun has practically introduced a third style of shooting where there previously existed only two, to wit:—

(1) Gun-shooting with shot where any “aim” or even an apology for an aim is fatal to modern maximum success.

(2) Rifle-shooting proper, which must be mechanical and deliberate—the more so, the more effective.

(3) Thirdly, we have this new system intermediate between the two—“gun-shooting with ball.”

Using the Paradox as a rifle, an alignment must be taken; but it may be taken as with a gun, and not necessarily the deliberate and mechanical alignment essential with a rifle, properly so called.