At Lanjaron we breakfasted at the ancient fonda of San Rafael, where the bright and beautifully polished brass and copper cooking utensils hanging on the walls were a sight to make a careful housewife envious. We watched our breakfast cooked over the charcoal-fire, and learned a good deal thereby. We were delayed here a whole day by snow-storms. There is stabling under the fonda for 500 pack-animals, for Lanjaron in its "season" is an important place, frequented by invalids from far and near. Its mineral-springs are reputed efficacious: but the drainage arrangements are villainous in the extreme, and altogether it seemed a village to be avoided. Sad traces of the cholera were everywhere visible, many doors and lintels bearing the ominous sign: it was curious that in so few cases had it been erased.

Capileira is the highest hamlet in the sierra, and is celebrated for its hams, which are cured in the snow. Here we put up for the night, sleeping as best we could amidst fowls and fleas, after an amusing evening spent around the fire, where one pot cooked for forty people besides ourselves. The cold was intense, streams of fine snow whirling in at pleasure through the crazy shutters: so we were glad to go to bed—indeed I was chased thither by a hungry sow on the prowl, seeking something to eat, apparently in my portmanteau.

Heavy snow-falls that night and all next day prevented our advance: but at an early hour on the following morning we were under way—six of us—on mules, though I would have preferred to walk, the snow being so deep one could not see where the edges of the precipices were. No sooner had I mounted than the mule fell down, while crossing a hill-torrent, and I was glad to find the water no deeper. After climbing steadily upwards all the morning, the last two hours on foot, the snow knee-deep, we at length sighted the cairn on the height to which we were bound. Before nightfall we had reached the point, but few of the mules accomplished the last few hundred yards. After bravely trying again and again, the poor beasts sank exhausted in the snow, and we had to carry up the impedimenta ourselves in repeated journeys. The deep snow, the tremendous ascent, and impossibility of seeing a foothold made this porterage most laborious: but we had all safely stowed in our cave before sundown.

The overhanging rock, which for the next ten or twelve days was to serve as our abode, we found a mass of icicles. These we proceeded to clear away, and then by a good fire to melt our ice-enamelled rock-ceiling, fancying that the constant drip on our noses all night might be unpleasant. The altitude of our ledge above sea-level was about 8,500 feet, and our plateau of rest—our home, so to speak—measured just seven yards by two.

Although in going to our puestos during the day the snow was generally soft—the sun being very hot—yet in returning after dark we found the way most dangerous, traversing a sloping, slippery ice-surface like a huge glacier, where a slip or false step would send one down half a mile with nothing to clutch at or to save oneself. Such a slide meant death, for it could only terminate in an awful precipice or in one of those horrible holes with a raging torrent to receive one in its dark abyss, and convey the fragments beneath the snow—where to appear next? Each step had to be cut with a hatchet, or hollowed—the butt of a rifle is not intended for such work, but has had to perform it.

Every day here we saw goats on or about the snow-fields and towering rocks above our cave. They were of a light fawn colour, very shaggy in appearance, some males carrying magnificent long horns. One old ram seemed to be always on the watch, kneeling down on the very verge of a crag 500 or 600 yards above us, and which commanded a view for miles—miles, did we say? paltry words! From where that goat was, he could survey half-a-dozen provinces.

Life in a mountain-cave high above the level of perpetual snow—six men huddled together in the narrow space, two English and four Spaniards—has its weird and picturesque, but it has also its harder side. Yet those days and nights, passed amidst majestic scenes and strange wild beasts, have left nothing but pleasant memories, nor have their hardships deterred one of us from repeating the experiment. Probably both these campaigns were too early in the season (March and April).

The only birds seen in the high sierra were choughs and ravens: ring-ouzels a little lower down. There were plenty of trout, though small, in the hill-burns. On one occasion we witnessed an extraordinary circular rainbow across a deep gorge, with our own figures perfectly reflected in the centre on passing a given point.

*  *  *  *  *

Now we have left the ice and snow and the ibex to wander in peace over their lonely domains. To-night we have dined at a table: there is a cheery fire in the rude little posada and merry voices, contrasting with the silence of our cave, where no one spoke above a whisper, and where no fire was permissible save once a day to heat the olla. Now all we need is a song from the Murillo-faced little girl who is fanning the charcoal-embers. "Sing us a couplet, Dolores, to welcome us back from the snows of Alpujarras!"

Dolores: With the greatest pleasure, Caballero, if José will play the guitar. No one plays like José, but he is tired, having travelled all day with his mules from Lanjaron.

José: No, señor, not tired, but I have no soul to-night to play. This morning they asked me to bring medicine from the town for Carmen: but when I reached the house she was dead. I find myself very sad.

Dolores: "Pero, si ya tiene su palma y su corona?" ...but as she already has her palm and her crown?

José: That is true! Bring the guitar and I will see if it will quit me of this tristeza!

A land without Trout labours, in our eyes, under grave physical disadvantages; its currency is, metaphorically, below par, its stocks at a discount. The absence of many modern luxuries in Spain—say, manhood suffrage, school-boards, and the like—we can survive; the absence of trout, never. Not even the presence on mountain, moor, or marsh, of such noble denizens as Spain can boast—the ibex, bustard, and boar, the lynx and lammergeyer—can wholly, from an angler's point of view, fill the void, or atone for the absence of sparkling streams and that gamest of fresh-water game, the trout. The reproach, however, does not apply; for, to her many sporting treasures, Spain can claim, in addition, this gem of the subaqueous world. No one, however, it should be added, who has other lands open to him, should ever go to Spain expressly for trout-fishing.

In the sluggish, mud-charged rivers of the corn-plains, and of the upland plateaux, the trout, of course, finds no place. The finned inhabitants of these regions, so far as our limited knowledge goes, are the shad (sábalo) and coarse fish, such as dace (lisa) and his congeners, with monster eels, crayfish, and the like. But as the rock-ramparts of the Castiles and Northern Estremadura are approached, our speckled friend again appears. Beneath the towering sierras of Gredos and Avila we have landed him while resting from the severer labours of ibex-hunting on the heights above.

These upland streams of Castile run crystal-clear, with alternate pools and rapids in charming sequence. Many closely resemble our moorland burns of Northumbria—even the familiar sandpiper, the white-chested dipper, and the carol of the sky-lark (a note unheard in Southern Spain), are there to heighten the similitude; but here, heather and bracken are replaced by bresos and piornales—shrubs whose English names (if they have any) we know not. The trout run smaller in inverse ratio of the altitude; in a stream at 8,000 feet the best averaged four to the pound; in another, barely below snow-level, six or eight would be required to complete that weight—small enough, but welcome as a change, both of sport and fare. Who, but an angler, though, can appreciate the heaven-sent joys of casting one's lines on "fresh streams and waters new"?

A large proportion of the adult male population of each riverside hamlet in Northern Spain are pescadores—professional fishermen: and all day long one sees them grovelling among the stones of the river-bed fixing those hateful funnel-nets that, at night, entrap the luckless trout as they wander over the shallows. But if they confined their operations to these, and to the infinite variety of nets of other shapes and forms that festoon the village street, things might not be so bad, nor the case of the trout so hopeless and desperate. They have far more deadly devices for massacre by wholesale. Into the throat of some lovely stream is tipped a barrow-load of quicklime: down goes the poisonous dose, dealing out death and destruction to every fish, great or small, in that stream: and, if that is not enough, or if the pool is long and sullen, he proceeds to blow up its uttermost depths with dynamite. And in the hot summer months, when the streams, at lowest summer-level, run almost dry, the heaviest trout are decimated by "tickling."

These methods prevail in every part of Spain and Portugal where trout or other edible fish exist. What chance have they to live?

Another drawback—which, though common to most lands, is specially pronounced in metalliferous Spain—lies in the noxious effusions from mines, which are freely discharged, for private profit, into public waters. This evil was forcibly brought home by our first day's experience in Cantabria. Hour after hour we had plied most lovely water without success—fly, worm, and phantom alike failed to elicit a single response. On returning with empty creel to the posada, to us our host, "Hombre, have you been fishing the Tesarco? Que disparate! there is a copper-mine two leagues further up: there have been no fish in that river for years." Considering that we had employed a local guide, furnished by the said host, the occasion appeared to justify a protest of not unmeasured wrath. But there is no use losing one's temper in Spain: no quality there so valuable as patience: and the reward of a modicum of reasoned restraint was that the rough, but kind-hearted Asturian insisted next morning on accompanying us himself to another river, seven miles away, where we enjoyed, for Spain, excellent sport.

Santandér (Provincia).

While fishing in the Reinosa district, we were told by our host that there lived some few leagues away un Inglés muy aficionado—a fishing enthusiast. Thither we moved our quarters: our new-made friend was one of those Anglo-Saxon Crusoes whom one meets with, self-buried, for one reason or another, in the recesses of wild lands, where sport or solitude may be enjoyed in degrees not possible at home. Retired from a public service through an infirmity begotten by the incidence of his duties, he was spending the prime of life in this remote spot, satisfied with an environment of Nature's purest scenes and with a modicum of sport to reconcile him to exile. A type of the British sportsman abroad was X., keen almost to a fault, little apt to measure success solely by results, a hard day's work was not deemed ill-rewarded by a brace or two of red-legs, or half a dozen quail, while for the chance of a boar he would walk well-nigh half the night, to reach by dawn the point where the retreat of some old tusker, which was ravaging the peasants' crops, might perchance be cut off.

The trout here were white, or silvery in colour, more like salmon-smolts—none of the deep greens, violets and gold of our home fish—and rose extremely shy, coming so short that hardly one in three gave a chance of getting fast. It was not that they rolled over the flies, or merely "flicked" at them—they simply came so short that, unless self-hooked, they were gone almost ere they had come. A dozen trout was the result of this day, yet our companion told us he had not, during two years, made a better basket. Oh, tantalizing streams and provoking troutlets of Biscaya!

In every hamlet hung fishing-nets: every day we saw the "fishermen" fixing them, and heard of two-pounders. Yet to us, striving with all the skill we possess, appeared none of these leviathans. Nothing we could do availed to cajole them—that is, assuming their existence. A basket of one to two dozen trout daily, including sundry half-pounders, appeared to be the measure of the river's capacity, or of our skill.

Our best basket in this Province of Santandér was twenty-eight trout, weighing eight and a half pounds, and the best fish a fine trout of just over the pound. Him we killed in a deep pool so embedded amidst crags and so difficult of access, that it may be doubted whether feathered fly had ever before flown over its virgin depths. Our friend rose boldly to a small "red palmer": and within a few minutes two more, of hardly inferior weight, had joined him in the basket.

The wide pastoral province of Leon, with its unexplored wilds of the Vierzo and the Maragateria, and many another savage region bordering on the southern slopes of the Galician and Cantabrian highlands, is practically a terra incognita to British sportsman and naturalist. Well would Leon repay either of these for the enterprise expended on its exploration. Mountain and plain afford shelter for game—large and small—of all the kinds native to Spain; while the rivers flowing southwards from the Asturian ranges probably afford as good trout-fishing as any in the Peninsula.

Our own experiences in Leon were limited, as regards its trouting capacities, to a mere flying visit, when we alighted one morning in mid-May, at a wayside station in North Leon, tempted to break a monotonous journey by the trout-like appearance of a stream that, for some distance, had run more or less parallel with the railway.

The country immediately adjacent was not attractive; flat, tawny, and arid, with few trees and very partial cultivation. On either bank, at a mile or two's distance, rose ranges of low broken hills, gradually increasing in height as they closed in upon the river. Here and there stood scattered hamlets, all built of the yellowish sun-baked brick characteristic of Leon; the houses huddled together, and usually enclosed by the remnants of a former wall or fortification.

For a long time this likely water produced actually nothing, and we began to fear that our venture in stopping at this outlandish spot was a failure. But as the shadows lengthened and the sun left the water, there came a change. The long-expected and welcome sensation of a determined "rise" was followed by another and another in quick succession; and in the last hour of the day we landed nineteen trout, weighing between seven and eight pounds, of which aggregate the three largest accounted for one-third.

Fully half the trout killed on this and succeeding days rose to a small orange hackle; a bracken-clock, or "coch-y-bondu," as we believe is the proper name, being the next favourite. Winged flies should be small, and of bright colours, and, in the clear waters of Spain, only the finest gut should be used.

Further west, in the Astorga and Ponferrada districts, are probably the best streams of Leon; but these we have not had time to visit.

The Asturias.—This province is to Spain what the Scotch Highlands are to England—a

The extremely abrupt and rugged nature of the river-valleys is, in some sense, a serious drawback to the angler. Many a lovely pool or stretch of perfect trouting-water are absolutely inaccessible—cut off for ever in the depths of some precipitous defile. Broken boulders often impend the river's course for miles, and hopelessly obstruct descent. In other places the water-side can at length be reached after perilous scrambles along rock-ledges, threading the rod through a maze of birch and alder branches. And one picks a precarious path downwards with the knowledge that, even when reached, the range of fishable water will be limited, and the return journey almost worse than the descent.

These hardly-gained pools are, however, worth the trouble of trying. For, in proportion to their difficulty of access, so are they neglected by the native pescador, with all his poaching paraphernalia and hateful engines of destruction.

Our first essay proved blank; the season (May) was, perhaps, too early, and only a few silvery troutlets rewarded a long day's work. This was a small stream, overhung with magnificent chestnuts; but a neighbouring and larger river afforded, for Spain, fair sport. The first series of pools yielded a dozen trout, averaging half a pound. Then came the usual scramble to reach the next fishable bit. While climbing out, over a chaos of tumbled boulders, we almost stepped on a big Marten (Mustela martes, Linn.), which bounded from under foot, up the rocks; then turned, and stood chattering savagely at the intruder, her yellow chest not twenty yards away. Probably she had her brood hidden in some crevice, but we could see nothing of them.

In the same pool we killed two more—a half-pounder, with a smaller fish on the same cast; while the three lower pools yielded nine trout, three averaging a pound apiece, two of three-quarters, and four of minor dimensions—making a total for the day of forty-four trout.

This last short hour's work had realized some ten pounds' weight of fish—the best sport with the trout-rod the writer ever enjoyed in Spain.

The Game-birds of the Asturias.—It may be appropriate, before leaving this northern province, to add a few lines on its game-birds, which differ greatly from those of the south of Spain.

First comes the Capercaillie, which is spread along the whole Cantabrian range, though in no great numbers, and rarely seen in spring, when they lie extremely close in the densest thickets of the forests. We only raised three or four during many long rambles through the Asturian forests in search of Bruin. The Asturian name is "el Faisan."

Ptarmigan are found in the Pyrenees, but do not seem to extend further west than the province of Navarre. Manuel de la Torre assured us that there was, in the Asturias, a Perdiz grisa which lived exclusively in the woods, a tame bird, lying very close, and in autumn flying in bands. Could this be the Hazel-grouse? According to Arévalo, that species is only found in the Pyrenees.

Our familiar Grey Partridge (a bird entirely unknown in the south) we also met with both in the Pyrenees and the Asturias, where it is not uncommon; but is said not to pass southward of the great cordillera of Leon. In this country, the Grey Partridge is confined to the higher regions of the sierras, only coming down with the snow to the faldas, or foothills, in winter, and is never found on the plains as at home.

I.—Forest and Plain.

With her vast expanses of sierra and lonely scrub-clad wastes, scarcely inhabited save by ill-tended herds of cattle or goats, but abounding in wild-life—furred, feathered, and scaled—Spain affords conditions peculiarly favourable to raptorial animals. Of the eagle-tribe some eight or nine species are recognized as belonging to the Spanish avi-fauna—some peculiar to the mountain-region, others to the steppe and prairie, as we now proceed to explain. We have ourselves shot all the different kinds of eagle, save two, which are comparatively scarce and irregular stragglers to the Peninsula—namely, Haliæetus albicilla and Aq. nævia.

A magnificent pair they were: their sable-black plumage glossy with purplish iridescent sheen and with snow-white shoulders. On the occiput a patch of pale gold, the crown being black. The feet and cere of this species are pale lemon-yellow; the irides golden, finely reticulated with hazel.

This eyry contained two eaglets, clad in white down. We have since had many opportunities of observing the breeding habits of this species on the wooded plains of Andalucia and Estremadura. The eggs, usually three in number, are mostly white, more or less splashed or spotted with faint evanescent reddish or brown shades, and are laid about the middle of March. The nests of the Imperial Eagle are about four feet across, and invariably placed on the extreme summit of a tall tree—cork-oak or pine—all projecting twigs being broken off so as to offer no obstruction to the sitting bird's view. The nests are flat, lined with fresh twigs and green pine-needles, and all around and beneath lie strewn the skulls of hares and rabbits—a perfect Golgotha. We have also seen the remains of Partridge, Stone-Curlew, Mallard, and wildfowl, but never those of reptiles. These large nests are most difficult to get into; their position affording no hand-hold above, and from the extent to which they overhang, access can only be obtained by a manœuvre analogous to scaling the futtock-shrouds of an old line-of-battle ship.

What all these large tawny eagles are is not quite clear; or rather, their precise specific status is not yet settled. Several experienced ornithologists scattered throughout the world—Hume, Brooks and Anderson in India, Cullen in Turkey, Saunders, Irby and Lord Lilford in Spain—have studied these birds, but hitherto the investigations of these accomplished naturalists have resulted in qualified, and sometimes clashing opinions. Extreme difficulties beset the study of the eagle-tribe, for the living subjects refuse to be studied, and resent one's most remote propinquity. To go out eagle-shooting is to court failure. Then, owing to their prolonged adolescence and slow changes of plumage, a single eagle may pass through several distinct phases, each more pronounced than those which divide species from species: added to which is the further fact that while the genus contains several well-defined types, yet its minor forms intergrade with perplexing persistency. Without venturing on any dogmatic opinions, we will relate, as a small contribution towards their natural history, such facts as have come under our notice during many years' observation of the Spanish eagles.

During the winter months in Andalucia one sees many of these tawny-coloured eagles, the majority pale in hue—"washed-out" as Griffon Vultures—(undoubtedly young Imperials)—but there are others, less numerous, of a rich bright chestnut, and some of these, we think, may belong to a different species.

In April, 1883, the writer found a nest of one of these large tawny eagles in the distant Corral de la Cita. It was placed on the summit of a stone-pine, almost covering the broad, bushy top, and we had an excellent view of the old bird, as she rose from the nest about 100 yards away:—de las coloradas, == "one of the tawny kind!" as my companion remarked. The place was remote, and night too near to allow of our then awaiting her return (though we should have done so at any cost), so, after taking the two eggs (large dusky white, quite spotless), substituting for them a couple of hard-boiled hen's eggs, and setting a circular steel-trap in the nest, we left it. On returning next morning there was no sign of the eagle at the nest. After walking all round, shouting out, and going up an adjacent sand-ridge which all but overlooked it, we were satisfied she was not there, especially as the night before she had risen rather wild. Accordingly we prepared to ascend; but whilst throwing the rope over the lowest branches, a great shadow suddenly glided across the sand beside me, and on looking up, there was the great chestnut-coloured eagle slowly flapping from her nest within fifteen or twenty yards overhead. Before I could drop the rope and run to my gun, the chance was gone; unluckily, however, the shot took some effect, and though it failed to stop the eagle, she went away badly struck, with one leg hanging down, and never returned. Thus, by bad luck, an opportunity of settling a doubtful point was thrown away.

As already mentioned, we have observed these rich-coloured tawny eagles on many occasions during the winter months. The forest-guards distinguish them from the young Imperial Eagles, saying they were most numerous in winter. Casual observation is not, of course, of much value on fine points, and we give their opinion for what it may be worth. The late Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria also appears to have found a tawny eagle nesting in Andalucia ("Sport and Ornithology," p. 491), but did not secure the birds.

It seems probable that a large tawny-coloured eagle—whether the African A. rapax, or otherwise—does breed in Southern Spain, though sporadically both as to time and place, the wooded districts around Córdova being the most likely locality.

So far, with slight modifications, we have left this chapter as written some little time ago; but, since then, we have had further eagle-experiences (in the spring of 1891), which throw some new light on the vexed questions referred to. For we have now placed beyond doubt the fact that the Spanish Imperial Eagle does breed in—what is considered to be—its "immature" dress; but which would probably be more correctly expressed by saying that individuals of this species never develope that black-and-white plumage which has hitherto been regarded as the invariable adult state.

A few days afterwards (March 4th), a second pair were discovered breeding on a big stone-pine in a different district. In this case the female was tawny, the male black. We watched the pair, with the glass, at moderate range, for half an hour, and Manuel de la Torre afterwards told us they had passed over his head within twenty yards, leaving no doubt as to their respective colours. There was thus no necessity to shoot them. As it is we fear we may be blamed, for to exterminate a species in order to clear up some obscure fact in its biology is to commit a crime under the guise of science; but we have not been guilty in this or any other instance of needless slaughter; and, in Spain, be it added, eagles are "vermin" upon whose heads a price is set. The few shot by us are now valuable and cherished specimens; otherwise they might, and probably would have, been uselessly destroyed, the beautiful birds left to rot where they fell.

In April we saw a third example in the hands of a naturalist at Malaga—a tawny female (without sign of white on shoulders), which we were told (and do not doubt) was shot from her nest in that province the preceding week.

In leaving the Imperial Eagle we annex weights and dimensions of five examples killed by us:—

Of the Booted Eagle (Aquila pennata) and the Serpent-Eagle (Circäetus gallicus), both of which are more or less numerous spring-migrants to Spain, we have treated elsewhere, and need only add that all our specimens of the Booted Eagle (both sexes) are of the pale variety with shaded brown back, a broad light bar across either wing, and white, streaked breast.

The Spotted Eagle (Aquila nævia) we have never personally met with: though Arévalo (Aves de España, p. 58) describes it as not uncommon, nesting in crevices of rocks among the wooded mountains, and frequenting the rice-swamps of Valencia.

The White-tailed Sea-Eagle (Haliæetus albicilla) according to Spanish authorities, is also found on passage and in winter. Manuel de la Torre gave us its name as "Aguila leona," but we have never seen it in Spain at any season.

The Black Vulture we have never found actually breeding in Andalucia, though it does do so: and we have observed single pairs, associated with Griffons, in the sierras in May and July. Its chief nesting stronghold is in the Castiles, where, in the Sierra de Gredos, we found an eyry with young in May. This nest was on a pine. In the south the Black Vulture is chiefly a winter bird.

The curious diversity of character displayed by the various raptores when captured, deserves a word of notice. At the end of May, after six or eight weeks' eagle-hunting, we had about a dozen large birds of prey which were kept in a disused room. There was a mighty commotion when any one entered—a couple of Serpent-Eagles ceaselessly flapped and scuffled, while Booted Eagles showed fight, and Marsh-Harriers, backing into convenient corners, stood facing one with outstretched wings, like snarling cats all teeth and claws, and shrieking defiance in wailing tones. The Kites, on the contrary, might all have been dead, so limp and lifeless they lay, flat on the floor, with gaping beak and protruding tongue. One winged Kite we kept alive in the grounds at Jerez for years, but though practically at liberty, he invariably feigned death or deadly sickness when approached. Five minutes afterwards, nevertheless, he was quite game to tackle one of our chickens! In the midst of the din and flutter sat the Imperial Eagle, silent, motionless, and unconcerned; perched on the carcase of a Flamingo, his flat shapely head turned slowly as the keen eye followed every movement of the intruder, whose presence he otherwise disdained. The Tawny Eagle (above mentioned) displayed in captivity even greater insouciance and a nobler demeanour than the Imperial, while both birds, heavy and massive as they looked, exhibited marvellous agility in pouncing upon the luckless rat who might presume to trespass upon their domain and attempt to steal their food.