Unexplored Spain

On examination blood was found at once, and on both sides—that is, the bullet had passed right through.

In the fog I had under-estimated the distance and the hit was low and too far back. With two trackers I followed the spoor while daylight served and through places that any words of mine must fail to describe; but from the first the head-keeper had foretold the result: “Eso no se cobra—va léjos”—“that stag you will not recover; he goes far, but wherever he stops, he dies. See here! the dogs have run his spoor all along, but have not yet brought him to bay.”

The indications left by the stag on brushwood and rock conveyed to the trackers’ practised eyes, as clear as words, the precise position of the wound; and, as foretold, those coveted antlers were lost, to perish uselessly.

The pack of Mezquitillas was on this occasion reinforced by those of the Duke of Medinaceli and of the Marquis of Viana—bringing the total up to seventy hounds. Thus, in Spain, do the Grandees of a big land, when guests at a montería, bring with them their huntsmen, kennelmen, and their packs of hounds—a system that breathes a comforting sense of space.

Next day being hopelessly wet, I took opportunity of measuring three of the trophies which adorn the hall at Mezquitillas:—

The clean weight of these, the largest stags, is usually between 11½ and 12 arrobas, or 287 to 300 lbs. English. One exceptionally heavy stag killed by our host’s son, Juan Calvo, Junr., and which had received some injury in the testes, resulting in a malformation of the horn, weighed no less than 16½ arrobas, or 412 lbs. English.

Full-grown wild-boars at Mezquitillas average about 7 arrobas, or 175 lbs., clean—one specially big boar reached 8 arrobas, or 200 lbs. Wolves, though abundant, are but rarely shot in monterías for the reasons already given. During the period covered by these notes only two were killed in monterías—one by Sr. Calvo, Junr., the other by Colonel Barrera. Wild-pigs breed as a rule in March, and to some extent gregatim, or in little colonies, which is supposed to be as a protection against the wolves; the lair (cama) being a regular nest made among thick scrub, and roofed over by the foliage. Lynxes, like wolves, are rarely seen. This year, four (a female, with three full-grown cubs) were held-up by the dogs, and all killed in one thicket.

Mongoose and genets are numerous on these brush-clad hills, and martens (Mustela foina) breed in the crags.

Stags roar from mid-September, chiefly by night. Their summer coat is darker rather than redder than that of winter.

Farther east in Moréna, near Fuen-Caliente, already mentioned, very fine heads are also obtained. The same systems prevail, and the following measurements have been given us by the Marquéz del Mérito, taken from two stags shot at Risquillo in his forests of the Sierra Quintána, season 1906-7.

No. 1 carried 7 + 7 = 14 points, and weighed 224 lbs. clean.

Both are shown in photos annexed.

In the extreme east of the Sierra Moréna another culminating point of excellence appears to be attained—at Valdelagrana and Zamujar in the neighbourhood of Jäen—at least it is from that region that two of the largest examples came that we have yet seen in Spain. Both the magnificent heads below described were carefully measured by ourselves:—

No. 1 was shot at Valdelagrana, Jäen, by Sr. D. Enrique Parladé, has five on each top, all strong points, brow-antler 14¼ inches. Both horns precisely equal, 40⅝ inches.

No. 2 shot at El Zamujar, Jäen, by the Marquéz de Alvéntos, the whole head massive and rugged, and all the sixteen points well developed.

The only Spanish stag within our knowledge which exceeds these dimensions was shot at Ballasteros in the Montes de Toledo by Sr. D. I. L. de Ybarra, the measurements of which, though not taken by ourselves, we accept without reserve as follows:—Length, 41 inches; breadth, 36½ inches; circumference below corona, 8¼ inches. (See photo.)

A COUNTRY better adapted by nature for the success of the enterprising bandit cannot be conceived. The vast despoblados = uninhabited wastes, with scant villages far isolated and lonely mountain-tracts where a single desperado commands the way and can hold-up a score of passers-by, all lend themselves admirably to this peculiar form of industry. And up to quite recent years these natural advantages were exploited to the full. Riding through the sierras, one notes rude crosses and epitaphs inscribed on rocks recording the death of this or that wayfarer. Now travellers, as a rule, do not die natural deaths by the wayside; and an inspection of these silent memorials indicates that each occupies a site eminently adapted for a quiet murder. Fortunately, during the last year or two, the extension of the telegraph and linking-up of remote hamlets has aided authority practically to extinguish brigandage on the grander scale. Spain to-day can no longer claim a single artist of the Jack Sheppard or Dick Turpin type; not one heroic murderer such as José Maria (whose safe-conduct was more effective than that of his king), Vizco el Borje, Agua-Dulce, and other ladrones en grande whose life-histories will be found outlined in Wild Spain.

Neither for robber-chieftains of the first water, such as these, nor for brigandage as a scientific business, is there any longer opportunity in modern Spain, any more than for a Robin Hood at home. Lesser lights of the road, footpads and casual sequestradores, will survive for a further space in the wilder region; but the real romance of the industry ceased with the new century.

Pernales now formed a fresh partnership with a desperado of similar calibre to himself, a soulless brute, known as the Niño de Arahál, whose acquaintance he had made at a village of that name. This pair, along with a gang of ruffians who acclaimed them as chiefs, were destined to achieve some of the worst deeds of violence in the whole annals of Spanish Bandolerismo. For two years they held half Andalucia in awe, terrorised by the ferocity of their methods and merciless disregard of life. None dared denounce them or impart to authority a word of information as to their whereabouts, even though it were known for certain—such was the dread of vengeance.

For eight days the bandits lay low. Then Pernales presented himself at a farm in Ecija with a demand for £40, or in default the destruction of the live-stock. The bailiff (no farmer lives on his farm) despatched a messenger on his fleetest horse to bring in the ransom. As by the stipulated hour he had not returned, Pernales shot eight valuable mules! Riding thence to La Coronela, a farm belonging to Antonio Fuentes, the bull-fighter, a similar message was despatched. Pending its reply our outlaws feasted on the best; but instead of bank-notes, a force of Civil Guards appeared on the scene. That made no difference. The terrified farm-hands swore that the bandits had ridden off in a given direction, and while the misled police hurried away on a wild-goose chase, our heroes finished their feast, and late at night (having loaded up everything portable of value) departed for their lair in the sierra.

Riding along the bye-ways of Marchena, disguised as rustic travellers, on June 2 they demanded at a remote farm a night’s food and lodging. Half-concealed knives and revolvers proved strong arguments in favour of obedience, and, despite suspicion and dislike, the bailiff acceded. This time the Civil Guard were on the track. At midnight they silently surrounded the house, communicated with the watchful bailiff, and ordered all doors to be locked. The turning of a heavy key, however, reached Pernales’ ear. In a moment the miscreants were on the alert. While one saddled-up the horses, the other unloosed a young farm mule, boldly led him across the courtyard to the one open doorway, and, administering some hearty lashes to the animal’s ribs, set him off in full gallop into the outer darkness. The police, seeing what they concluded was an attempted escape, first opened fire, then started helter-skelter in pursuit of a riderless mule! The robbers meanwhile rode away at leisure.

Five days later, on June 7, both bandits attacked a venta, or country inn, near Los Santos, in Villafranca de los Barrios, carrying off £200 in cash, six mules, with other valuables, and leaving the owner for dead. This particular crime, for some reason or other, was more noised abroad than dozens of others equally atrocious, and orders were now issued jointly both by the Ministro de Gobernacion, the Captain-General of the district, and the Colonels commanding the Civil Guard throughout the whole of the harassed regions, that at all hazards the murderous pair must be taken at once, dead or alive. This peremptory mandate evolved unusual activities; the whole of the western sierra was reported blockaded. Pernales, nevertheless, receiving warning through innumerable spies of the police plans, succeeded in escaping from the province of Seville into that of Córdoba, where the pair pursued their career of crime, though now under conditions of increased hazard and difficulty. Sometimes for days together they lay low or contented themselves with petty felonies.

Caciquismo

Not a foreign student of the problems of social life in Spain with its conditions but has been brought to a full stop in the effort to diagnose or describe the secret sinister influence of Caciquismo. Our Spanish friends—detesting and despising the thing equally with ourselves—tell us that no foreigner has yet realised either its nature or its scope. Certainly we make no such pretension, nor attempt to describe the thing itself—a thing scarce intelligible to Saxon lines of thought, a baneful influence devised to retard the advance of modern ideas of freedom and justice, to benumb all moral yearnings for truth and honesty in public affairs and civil government. Caciquismo may roughly be defined as the negation and antithesis of patriotism; it sets the personal influence of one before the interest of all, sacrificing whole districts to the caprice of some soul-warped tyrant with no eyes to see.

IMMEDIATELY to the north of our “Home-Province” of Andalucia, but separated therefrom by the Sierra Moréna, stretch away the uplands of La Mancha—the country of Don Quixote. The north-bound traveller, ascending through the rock-gorges of Despeñaperros, thereat quits the mountains and enters on the Manchegan plateau. A more dreary waste, ugly and desolate, can scarce be imagined. Were testimony wanting to the compelling genius of Cervantes, in very truth La Mancha itself would yield it.

Farther north, where the Toledan mountains loom blue over the western horizon, La Mancha refuses to produce anything.

The unsympathetic earth, for 100 miles a sterile hungry crust, stony and sun-scorched, obtrudes an almost hideous nakedness, its dry bones declining to be clad, save in flints or fragments of lava and splintered granite. Wherever nature is a trifle less austere, a low growth of dwarf broom and helianthemum at least serves to vary the dreariness of dry prairie-grass. There, beneath the foothills of the wild Montes de Toledo, stretch whole regions where thorn-scrub and broken belts of open wood vividly recall the scenery of equatorial Africa—we might be traversing the “Athi Plains” instead of European lands. Evergreen oak and wild-olive replace mimosa and thorny acacia—one almost expects to see the towering heads of giraffes projecting above the grey-green bush. In both cases there is driven home that living sense of arid sterility, the same sense of desolation—nay, here even more so—since there is lacking that wondrous wild fauna of the other. No troops of graceful gazelles bound aside before one’s approach; no herds of zebra or antelope adorn the farther veld; no galloping files of shaggy gnus spurn the plain. A chance covey of redlegs, a hoopoe or two, the desert-loving wheatears—birds whose presence ever attests sterility—a company of azure-winged magpies chattering among the stunted ilex, or a woodchat—that is all one may see in a long day’s ride.

Alas, that to us is denied the synthetic sense! In vain we scan Manchegan thicket for compensating beauties, for the Naiads and Dryads with which Cervantes’ creative spirit peopled the wilderness; no vision of lovely Dorotheas laving ivory limbs of exquisite mould in sylvan fountain rewards our searching (but too prosaic) gaze—that may perhaps be explained by the contemporary absence of any such fountains. Nor have other lost or love-lorn maidens, Lucindas or Altisidoras from enchanted castle, aided us to add one element of romance to purely faunal studies. Castles, it is true, adorn the heights or crown a distant skyline; nor are Dulcineas of Toboso extinct or even in the posada at Daimiel, while excellent specimens graced the twilight paséo of Ciudad Real or reclined beneath the orange-groves of its alameda.

Isolated thus, a mere speck of water in the midst of the arid table-lands of central Spain, yet these lagoons of Daimiel constitute not only one of the chief wildfowl resorts of Spain, but possibly of all Europe. Upon these waters there occur from time to time every species of aquatic game that is known in this Peninsula, while in autumn the duck-tribe in countless hosts congregate in nearly all their European varieties. Those which are found in the greatest numbers include the mallard, pintail, shoveler, wigeon, gargany, common and marbled teal, ferruginous duck, tufted duck, pochard, and (in great abundance) the red-crested pochard or Pato colorado. Coots also frequent the lagoons, but in smaller numbers. There also appear at frequent intervals flamingoes and black geese (Ganzos negros), whose species we have not been able to identify, sand-grouse of both kinds, sea-gulls, duck-hawks, grebes, and occasionally some wandering cormorants. Herons and egrets in their different varieties haunt the shores and the shallows.

To claim for these far-inland lagoons a premier place among the great wildfowl resorts of Europe may seem extravagant—albeit confirmed by facts and figures that follow. But the lakes, be it remembered, are surrounded by that cultivation afore described—100 mile stubbles and so on. Another fact that well-nigh struck dumb the authors (long accustomed to study and preach the incredible mobility of bird-life) was that ducks shot at dawn at Daimiel are found to be cropful of rice. Now the nearest rice-grounds are at Valencia, distant 180 miles; hence these ducks, not as a migratory effort, but merely as incidental to each night’s food-supply, have sped at least 360 miles between dusk and dawn.

To the above description another Spanish friend, Don Isidoro Urzáiz, adds the following:—