Unexplored Spain Part 3

Nests in the mountain-forests of Central Spain, and winters in Andalucia. Sketched in Cote Donana--"Getting under way."]

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 _Alimanas_, to which a special chapter is devoted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE

WHITE-FACED DUCK (_Erismatura leucocephala_)

Bill much dilated, waxy-blue in colour. Wings extremely short; a sheeny grebe-like plumage, and long stiff tail, often carried erect.]

In Estremadura, where man is a negligible quant.i.ty, 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 Morena, but its like is seen nowhere else on earth till you reach China and j.a.pan!

CHAPTER III

THE COTO DOnANA: OUR HISTORIC HUNTING-GROUND

A Foreword by SIR MAURICE DE BUNSEN, G.C.M.G., British Amba.s.sador at Madrid.

Among my recollections of Spain none will be more vivid and delightful than those of my visits to the Coto Donana. 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 appet.i.te, 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 Donana.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAND WASTE IN COTO DOnANA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LANDSCAPE IN COTO DOnANA, WITH MARISMA IN BACKGROUND.

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY H.R.H. PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPANISH IMPERIAL EAGLE]

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 woodc.o.c.k between gun and lingering glow of the setting sun.

For no precious hours are wasted in the Coto Donana. 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 n.o.ble 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EGRET-HERONRY AT SANTOLALLA, COTO DOnANA.

(THE FOREGROUND IS SAND.)

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY H. R. H. PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS.]

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 s.h.i.+ne 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPANISH LYNX]

Among the fauna of the Coto Donana, 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 Donana?

MAURICE DE BUNSEN.

BRITISH EMBa.s.sY, MADRID,

_July 1910_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GREENSHANK (_Tota.n.u.s canescens_)]

CHAPTER IV

THE COTO DOnANA

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 ident.i.ty 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 Morena and full 200 miles of intervening plain, rolls down a tawny flood charged with yellow mud till its colour resembles _cafe 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 Donana, 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 Donana 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 const.i.tutes the soil-substance of Donana, 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 cla.s.sic 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_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN DOnANA.]

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 s.h.i.+fted bodily onwards to engulf in molecular ruin whole stretches of these isolated and enclosed _corrales_. n.o.ble 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 a.s.sumes, 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.