Unexplored Spain

THE tourist speeding along the Andalucian railways and surveying from his carriage-window the olive-clad and altogether mild-looking slopes of the Sierra Moréna, will form no adequate, much less a romantic, conception of that great mountain-system of which he sees but the southern fringe. Yet, in fact, the train hurries him past within a few leagues of perhaps the finest big-game country in Spain—of mountain-solitudes and a thousand jungled corries, wherein lurk fierce wolves and giant boars, together with one of the grandest races of red deer yet extant in Europe.

True, the Sierra Moréna lacks both the altitudes and the stupendous rock-ridges that characterise all other Spanish sierras—from Neváda and Grédos to the Pyrenees. It consists rather of a congeries of jumbled mountain-ranges of no great elevations, but of infinite ramification, and lacking (save at two points only) those bolder features that most appeal to the eye. Were the Spanish ranges all of the contour of Moréna, the name “Sierra” would not have applied. It is, moreover, a unilateral range—a buttress, banked up on its northern side by the high-lands of La Mancha, resembling in that respect the well-known Drakensberg of the Transvaal.

The Sierra Moréna, typical yet apart, divides for upwards of 300 miles the sunny lowlands of Andalucia from the bare, bleak uplands of La Mancha on the north. And in vertical depth (if we may include the contiguous Montes de Toledo) the range extends but little short of 150 miles.

Although the Sierra Moréna partakes rather of massive than of abrupt character, yet there occur at a couple of points outcrops of naked rock of real grandeur. Such, for example, is Despeñaperros, through whose gorges the Andalucian railway threads a semi-subterranean course. The very name Despeñaperros signifies in that wondrously adaptive Spanish tongue nothing less than that its living rocks threaten to hurl to death and destruction even dogs that venture thereon.

Another interpretation suggests that in olden days, such were the pleasantries of the Moors, it was not dogs, but Christians (since to a Moor the terms were synonymous) that were hurled to their death from the riscos of Despeñaperros.

These rock-formations are superbly abrupt. Great detached crags, massive and moss-marbled, jut perpendicular from ragged steeps, or vast monoliths protrude, each in rectilineal outline so exact that one wonders if these are truly of nature’s handiwork, and not some fabled fortalice of old-time Goth or Moor. Despite its striking contour, however, its crags and precipices are too scattered and detached (with traversable intervals between) to attract such a rock-lover as the ibex, and no wild-goat has ever occupied the gorges of Despeñaperros.

A similar rock-region, but more extensive and continuous, is found near Fuen-Caliente—by name the Sierra Quintána. This range, though its elevations barely exceed 7000 feet, forms the only spot in the Sierra Moréna at which the Spanish ibex retains a foothold.

Having tents and full camp-outfit, we had thought to live independent of the village posada. One night, however, as we climbed the rising ground that leads to the higher sierra there burst in our faces an easterly gale (levante), with driving snow-storms that even a mule could not withstand. Nothing remained but to seek shelter in the village below.

Here my bedroom measured twelve feet by four, with a door at each end. The door proper was reached by a vertical ladder; the second might perhaps be differentiated as a window, but could only be distinguished as such by its smaller size—both being made of solid wood. Thus, were the window open, snow swirled through as freely as on the open sierra; if shut, we lived in darkness dimly relieved by the flicker of a mariposa, that is, a cotton-wick reposing in a saucer of olive-oil. Under such conditions, with other nameless horrors, we passed three days and nights while gales blew and snow swirled by incessant.

On the fourth morning the wind fell, and snow had given place to fine rain. These levantes usually last either three or nine days; so, thinking this one had blown itself out, we packed the kit and set out in renewed search of ibex, Caraballo, with accustomed forethought, buying a bunch of live chickens, which hung by their legs from the after-pannier of the mule. On the limited area of Quintána, ibex offer the best chance of stalking.

Mules are marvellous mountaineers. The places that animal surmounted to-day passed belief. Two donkeys that belonged to the local hunters, Abad and Brijido, who accompanied us, soon got stuck, and had to be left below.

By three o’clock we, mule and all, had reached the highest ridge of Quintána, and encamped within a few hundred feet of its top-most riscos.

Hardly had the sun gone down, than the easterly gale blew up again with redoubled force. All night it howled through our narrow gorge and around its pinnacled rock-minarets, with the result that at 11 P.M. the ill-secured guys gave way, and down came our tent with a crash. Two hours were spent (in drenching rain) remedying this; and when day broke, an icy neblina (fog) enveloped the sierra, shutting out all view beyond a few yards. The cold was intense, and a little dam we had engineered the night before was frozen thick. The fog held all that day and the next. Nothing could be done, though we persisted in going out each day, as in duty bound, for a few hours’ turn among the crags—how we prayed for one hour’s clear interval that might have given that glorious sight we sought! At dusk the second night snow fell heavily, and later on a thunderstorm added to our joys. Frequent and vivid flashes of lightning lit up the darkness, and caused the surviving chickens (which in common charity we had had tethered inside the tent) to crow so incessantly that sleep was impossible. Presently we noticed a sharp fall in temperature—the men had brought in a cube of ice, the solidified contents of one of our camp-buckets, which they proposed to melt at a little fire kept burning in the tent! But this was too much, even though it meant “no coffee for breakfast.”

The frost and fog continuing, on the third morning the men proposed we should move lower down the hill, to some cortijo they knew of, thereat to await milder weather.

By this time, however, the cold had penetrated deep into throat and chest, which felt raw and inflamed, leaving the writer almost speechless. We therefore decided to abandon the whole venture, and struck camp, still wrapt in that opaque shroud of driving sleet.

The “defences” of the ibex in the Sierra Quintána lie among some fairly big crags forming the eastern and southern faces of the range. The shooting at that time was free; hence the goats were never left in peace by the mountaineers, who all carried guns, and used them whenever a chance presented itself. The result was that the few surviving goats had become severely nocturnal in habit, spending the entire day in caves and crevices in the faces of sheer and naked precipices.

Some of their eyries appeared absolutely inaccessible to any creature unendowed with wings. One cave, though it had no visible approach, was situate only some eight or ten feet above a ledge in the perpendicular rock-face. One morning at dawn two ibex having been seen to enter this cave, at once a couple of the wiry goat-herds thought to reach them from the ledge below, one lad actually climbing on to the other’s shoulders as he stood on that narrow shelf. In its rush to escape, however, the leading ibex upset the precarious balance, and the poor lad was precipitated among the tumbled rocks in the abyss below.

Riding homewards through inhospitable brush-clad hills towards the railway (forty miles away), we put up one night at a village named, with unconscious irony, Cardeña Real. In the small hours broke out another terrific disturbance—shrieks, squeals, barking—all the dogs gone mad. The night was pitch-dark with rain falling in torrents; but next morning we ascertained that a pack of wolves had carried off the landlord’s pigs from their stye, not fifteen yards away—indeed, three mangled porkers lay piled up against the wall of our hovel.

The contingency of pigs being worse off than ourselves had not previously occurred to us. Thus ended, in a cycle of catastrophe, our first wrestle with Capra hispánica in Moréna; but initial failure only served to stimulate further efforts later on. Winter, moreover, is no season for camping in these high sierras; May is more favourable, but the early autumn is best of all.

Wolves

These animals, which perpetrate incredible destruction to game, are very abundant in Moréna, yet rarely shot in the monterías (mountain-drives). This is not due to any special astuteness of the wolf, but simply because, while waiting for deer, sportsmen naturally lie very low, thus giving opportunity to wolves to pass unseen; while, on the other hand, when boars only are expected, and sportsmen therefore remain less concealed, the wolf is apt to detect the danger before arriving within shot.

In May and June the she-wolves produce their young; but it is difficult to discover these broods, since at that period they betake themselves to remote regions far away from the haunts frequented in normal times.

There is, however, one method of discovering them which is known to the mountaineers as the otéo, or watching for them over-night, thus noting precisely where each she-wolf gives tongue. If on the following morning the howl is repeated at the same spot, it is a practical certainty that that wolf will have her brood in that immediate neighbourhood.

Lynx, or Gato Cerval

This animal breeds in April and May, and the number of young is generally two. If captured, the majority of the young lynxes die at the period when they change from a milk diet to solid food, and one may imagine that the same thing happens in the case of the wild lynxes, since otherwise it is difficult to explain why an animal, whose only enemy is mankind, should remain so scarce. Their food consists of partridges, rabbits, and other small game.

Red Deer

With the red deer of these mountains, as elsewhere in Spain, the rut (celo) depends upon the autumn, which season may be earlier or later; but the celo always takes place between mid-September and mid-October. The calves are born at end of May or early in June, and suckled by their mothers till the following autumn.

The casting of the horns, together with the change of hair, varies in date, depending on the state of health in each individual. It generally occurs in May, but in very robust animals we have seen cases in April, and in the barétos, or stags of one year, in March. The development of the new horn is complete by the end of July, and in August occurs the shedding of the velvet. The horn at first is of a white bone-colour, but gradually darkens, the final colour depending on the nature of the bush frequented, the blackest being found in those stags which inhabit the gum-cistus (jarales).

Although it is currently believed among country folk that the age of a stag can be determined by the number of his points, this is incorrect, the horn development depending solely on the robustness of the animal. It frequently happens that a stag carries fewer points than he did the year before.

In the higher ranges skylines are frequently pierced by nicks or “passes” (termed portillas) sufficiently marked as to suggest, even to a stranger possessed of an eye for such things, the probable lines of retreat for moving game. But “passes” are not always conspicuous, nor are all skylines of broken contour. On the contrary, there frequently present themselves long summits that to casual glance appear wholly uniform. Here comes to aid that local intuition referred to, nor will it be found lacking. Many a long hill-ridge apparently featureless may (and often does) include several well-frequented passes. Some slight sense of disappointment may easily lurk in one’s breast in surveying one’s allotted post to perceive not a single sign of “advantage” within its radius—or “jurisdiction,” as Spanish keepers quaintly put it. Yet it may be after all—and probably is—the apex of a congeries of converging watercourses, glens, or other accustomed salidas (outlets), all of which are invisible in the unseen depths on one’s front; but which salient points in cynegetic geography are perfectly appreciated by our guide.

The brushwood of Moréna consists over vast areas—many hundreds of square miles—of the gum-cistus, a sticky-leaved shrub that grows shoulder-high on the stoniest ground. Wherever a slightly more generous soil permits, the cistus is interspersed and thickened with rhododendron, brooms, myrtle, and a hundred cognate plants. On the richer slopes and dells there crowd together a matted jungle of lentisk and arbutus, white buck-thorn and holly, all intertwined with vicious prehensile briar and woodbine, together with heaths, genista, giant ferns, and gorse of a score of species. Watercourses are overarched by oleanders, and the chief trees are cork-oak and ilex, wild-olive, juniper, and alder, besides others of which we only know the Spanish names, quejigos, algarrobas, agracejis, etc.

Naturally, in such rugged broken ground as the sierras, where the guns are protected by intervening heights, shooting is permissible in any direction, whether in front or behind, and even sometimes along the line itself. A survival of savage days, when beaters didn’t count, is suggested by a refrain of the sierra:—

A word here as to the game and its habits. The lairs of wild-boar are invariably in the densest jangle and on the shaded slope where no sun ever penetrates. There is always at hand, moreover, a ready salida, or exit, along some deep watercourse or by a rocky ravine or gully—rarely do these animals show up in the open, or even in ground of scanty covert. It is usually the strongest arbutus-thickets (madronales) that they select for their quarters.

It is seldom that wild-boar are “held-up” by the dogs during a beat—the old tuskers never.

Deer, on the contrary, avoid the denser jungle, lying-up in more open brushwood and invariably on the sunny slope. Though their “beds” (camas) may be on the lower ground, they invariably seek the heights when disturbed, and then select a course through the lighter cistus-scrub or across open screes, knowing instinctively that thus they can travel fastest and best throw off the pursuing pack.

Owing to the wide areas of each beat, a montería in the sierras is confined to a single drive each day, the guns usually reaching their posts about eleven o’clock, and remaining therein till late in the afternoon. In the lowlands, as already described, four, five, and even six batidas (drives) are sometimes possible during the day.

A Montería at Mezquitillas (Province of Córdoba)

A glorious ride amid splendid mountain scenery all lit up with southern sunshine—the narrow bridle-track now forms a mere tunnel hewn out of impending foliage; anon it descends abrupt rock-faces, in zigzags like a corkscrew, apt to make nerves creep, when one false step would precipitate horse and rider into a half-seen torrent hundreds of feet below. Some eight miles of this, and by eleven o’clock we have reached our positions at Los Llanos del Peco.

These positions extend for over a league in length (there are twelve guns), occupying the crests and “passes” of a lofty ridge whence one enjoys a bird’s-eye view of a world of wild mountain-land.

Already within a few minutes one had become aware, by a far-distant shot, and by the echoing note of the bugle faintly borne on a gentle northerly breeze, that the beat had begun. At dawn that morning the four huntsmen, each with his pack, had left the lodge, and are now encircling some seven or eight miles of covert on our front, two-thirds of which lay beneath my gaze.

For five hours I occupied that puesto sitting between convenient rocks, and hardly a measurable spell of the five hours but I was held alert, either by the actual sight of game afoot—far distant, it is true—or by the shots and bugle-calls of the hunters and the music of their packs—all signs of game on the move.

I had fired both barrels, necessarily with but an apology for an aim and the second purely “at a venture.” Three minutes later resounded the tinkling cencerros (bells) of the podencos, and when two of these hounds had followed the spoor ahead, all mute, then I knew that both bullets had spent their force on useless scrub.

The two packs employed to-day numbered forty—twenty-four big and sixteen small podencos, all yellow and white, the larger having a cross of mastiff. That evening two of the best in the pack were missing—“Capitan,” killed by a boar in the mancha; the other returned during the night, fearfully wounded, one foreleg almost severed.

The next day’s operations precisely reversed those of to-day, the guns being placed along the depths of a valley, while the beaters brought down the whole mountain-slopes above. Thus each post, though it commanded a “pass,” gave no such wonderful view beyond as had been the feature of yesterday’s montería. It will, in fact, be obvious that in a big mountain-land no two beats are ever alike nor the conditions equal. Every day presents fresh problems. That is one of the charms.

To-day, several stags and a pig were killed, besides one roe-deer and an enormous wild-cat that scaled 7¾ kilos (over 17 lbs.).