Dado en San Lucar de Barrameda el 17 de Enero de 1878.
El Decano,
(Signed) Carlos Fernandez Brescaglia.
El Secretario,
(Signed) Domingo L. de Villegas.
The insignia referred to represent a couple of stags' antlers, locked in mortal combat, with the legend:—
"Ab istis ventis liberet te Deus si maritus es."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
WINTER IN THE MARSHES.
Snipe-shooting.
Spanish, Agachona, agachadiza.
Portuguese, Narceja.
The Peninsula has always been famous for its snipe-shooting, but the sport differs in some ways from that practised on British marsh or moor. The snipe in Spain does not, as a rule, frequent rushes or other covert. The Spanish marshes in winter afford scant covert of any kind; hence the snipe is proportionately wilder. Rarely does the long-bill spring at close range: the bulk of the bag must be cut down at such distances that a snipe-shooter at home would very probably decline the offer—without thanks. But there are exceptions to this. In certain localities, particularly in Portugal, we have enjoyed excellent snipe-shooting on wide-spread expanses of rushy marsh and under home conditions. The rice-stubbles also, in districts where rice is grown, afford perhaps the finest snipe-shooting, often with abundant covert.
Many of the best snipe-grounds, however, may be described as inundated pastures. Here the summer-scorched herbage barely hides the naked earth—or rather fine mud, more slippery than ice. The ground here, however, is firm; the deep-mud bogs are quite another, but equally favourite resort. Before one's view there stretches away what appears to be a verdant meadow, dead level, and clad in rich green grass. Walk out on it, and you find it is bog, soft as pulp—millions of flat-topped, quivering tussocks, each separated by narrow intervals of squashy slime, knee-deep if you are lucky; the tussocks afford no foothold, the slime no stability—you cannot stand still, yet hardly dare advance. Before you, behind you, to the right and left, rise snipe in scores—in clouds: the air resounds with petulant, tantalizing cries. But you cannot steady yourself for an instant to shoot: to halt on hummock or balance on mire is equally impossible—not that it matters much, for hardly a snipe has sprung within fifty yards; the majority at over one hundred. At length one rises close at hand—a jack, probably—and in a supreme effort to avenge outraged dignity by his death, equilibrium is hopelessly lost, and the snipe-shooter slowly sinks to a sitting posture amidst mire and mud that reaches to his waistcoat-pockets.