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!
Next morning the snow prevented our leaving: and the day after, while riding away, we met some of the villagers carrying poor Carmen to the burial-ground on the mountain-side. The body, plainly robed in white, was borne on an open bier, the hands crossed and head supported on pillows, thus allowing the long unfettered hair to hang down loose below. It was an impressive and a picturesque scene; and as I rode on, the rejoinder of Dolores came to my mind—"Ya tiene su palma y su corona."
CHAPTER XIV.
TROUT AND TROUTING IN SPAIN.
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.
Subject to the provisoes that follow (fairly extensive ones, too), trout may be said to exist sporadically all over the Iberian Peninsula; but, in the south, they are limited to the alpine streams of the sierras, and seldom descend below the 2,000 feet level. Troutlets abound in the mountain-torrents of the loftiest southern sierras (Nevada, Morena, Ronda, and all their infinite ramifications), the larger fish seeking rather lower levels and deeper pools. Three-pounders grace the classic streams of Genil and Darro, and deserve attention from angling visitors to the famed Moorish fortress of Boabdil and his dark-eyed houris. The Guadiarro, also, and some others of the Mediterranean rivers, afford shelter, in their middle and upper waters, to Salmo fario.
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.