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.
As a homogeneous mountain-system, Moréna thus covers a space equal to the whole of England south of the Thames, with a central northern projection which would embrace all the Midland Counties as far as Nottingham!
[In any survey of the Sierra Moréna, it is appropriate to include the adjoining Montes de Toledo. They, as just stated, form a north-trending pyramidal apex based on the main chain and presenting identical characteristics, both physical and faunal, though of lower general elevation. The Montes de Toledo, in short, are an intricate complication of low subrounded hills—rather than mountains—tacked on to the north of Moréna, all scrub-clad and inhabited by the same wild beasts. Toledan stags exhibit the same magnificent cornual development, and there is evidence of seasonal intermigration as between two adjacent regions only divided by the valley of the Guadiana—a shortage in one area being sometimes found to be compensated by a corresponding increase in the other. Roe-deer are more abundant in the lower range; but the sole clean-cut faunal distinction lies in the presence of wild fallow-deer in the Montes de Toledo—these animals being quite unknown in Moréna.[23]]
May we digress on a cognate subject? The Sierra Neváda, though so near (at one point the two ranges are merely separated by a narrow gap yclept Los Llanos de Jaén), yet presents totally divergent natural phenomena.
There are points in Moréna—say from the heights above Despeñaperros—whence the two systems can be surveyed at once. Behind you, on the north, roll away, ridge beyond ridge, the endless rounded skylines of Moréna—colossal yet never abrupt. In front, to the south—apparently within stone’s-throw—rise the stupendous snow-peaks of Neváda—jagged pinnacles piercing the heavens to nigh 12,000 feet.
These peaks may appear within stone’s-throw, or say an easy day’s ride, though that is an optical illusion. But narrow as it is, that gap of Jaén divides two mountain-regions utterly dissimilar in every attribute, whether as to the manner of their birth in remote ages and the landscapes they present to-day.
Faunal distinctions are also conspicuous. In Neváda there are found neither deer of any kind (whether red, roe, or fallow) nor wild-boar, whereas it forms the selected home of ibex and lammergeyer, both of which are conspicuous by their absence from Moréna, save for a single segregated colony of wild-goats near Fuen-Caliente.
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.