The Riscos de Villarejo
Three hours later the mule-train overtook us, and we pursued the track upwards towards the Riscos de Villarejo till darkness obliged us to encamp. The jagged outline ahead, marking our destination, looked far away; we could go no nearer to-night, and outspanned on a tiny lawn on the mountain-slope. Once more we had left tree and shrub far below, but the dry piorno-scrub made fire enough to cook a frugal supper. The hunters, with their stew-pots balanced on stones, sat round us in a circle.
Next morning we were alert, as usual, before the dawn—called at 4 A.M.—and off again on another terrible climb towards the summits. It is no mild trudge through turnips this 1st of September, but one more effort to interview in his haunts the Spanish mountain-ram.
At 6000 feet we reached a point beyond which no domestic beast can go. Here, leaving our own men to encamp, the upward climb with the hunters begins. This day and each of the two following were devoted solely to stalking, each of us separately with his guide taking a diverging course along two of the lower ridges of the sierra. Two female ibex were descried in a position which might without difficulty have been stalked. These, however, we left in peace; though, as it proved, they were the only animals seen before we regained camp, an hour after dark, tired out and empty-handed once more. On the fourth day we drove this same rock-region, but without success, only two goats, both small males, being seen. The entire failure of this venture was a disappointment, as ibex were known to frequent these reefs. An explanation was suggested that a herd of domestic goats had approached too near their exclusive wild congeners, which had fled to a neighbouring mountain. That mountain, we arranged, should be explored at daylight on the morrow by two of our hunters. The cold at night in camp was intense, and our Andalucian retainers complained bitterly, although they kept an enormous fire going; yet during the day the heat had been excessive, and the sun burns terribly at these altitudes.
The following morning we tried a comprehensive drive encompassing two gorges composed of sublimely grand rocks. As I look over the edge of the black pinnacle that forms my post the sheer drop below is appalling, and above me tower similar masses in rugged and frowning splendour. But not a goat was seen till quite late in the afternoon, when two females slowly approaching were descried. For a mile we watched them, so deliberate was their progress, till they disappeared through the very “pass” where A. had shot his some five years before.
September 6.—Our scouts returned last night, having failed to locate ibex on the opposite mountain; so we made a final effort on the Riscos of Villarejo—again blank. Well! we have done our best for six days on those terrible rocks, on which we must now turn our backs for the present.
At the village of Arénas de San Pedro we bade good-bye to all our people; even their wives (clad in the same short skirts of greens and other brilliant hues we had noticed in ’91, for fashions change slowly in the sierra) came down from Guisando to say farewell to the Ingléses. Here Ramón brought in the head of Bertie’s ibex shot the week before; Ramón presented me with his powder-horn and bullet-pouch as a keepsake, and Juanito with a mountain-staff. Our visit had marked an epoch in the simple annals of the sierra and of its honest and primitive inhabitants.
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To-day we rejoice to add that, as already fully set forth at pp. 141-142, wild-goats may be counted in troops on the erewhiles ibex-denuded crags of Almanzór.