Towards the end of January we set out for a fortnight's exploration of the mountains beyond Tempul and Algar, a forty-mile ride to the eastward of Jerez. Bitter was the cold as we rode off in the darkness at 5 A.M., only two stars shining in the eastern firmament; truly the word recréo, as Blas explained to the sentry on duty at the old Moorish gateway, that we were only bound on pleasure, sounded almost satirical—as some one has said, life would be endurable but for its pleasures. By dawn we were crossing the hungry gravel-ridges beyond Cuartillos, and watched the sun rise from behind the stony pile of San Christobal, bathing the distant mountains, whither we were bound, in glorious golden glow.
Crossing the Guadalete by the ford of Barca Florida, our route led through leagues of lovely park-like land—here straggling natural woods or ferny glades, anon opening out upon stretches of heath and palmetto. The track, where one existed, a typical Spanish by-way, shut in between vertical banks of slippery white marl, that barely left room for the laden mule; its narrow bed was a turgid mud-hole, honeycombed with the footprints of beasts that had gone before. Where the heath was more open we could take an independent course; but the scrub, as a rule, was impenetrable, and left no alternative but to go on plunging through the clinging mud. At noon we outspanned for almuerzo beneath a cork-oak, the weather and the scene alike lovely beyond words. The evergreen woods swarmed with life; over the green expanse of palmetto hovered hen-harriers: a pair of kites swept over the wooded slopes of Berlanger, grey shrikes sat perched on dead boughs; chats, larks, buntings, and goldfinches swarmed, and all the usual Spanish birds, to wit, bustards great and small, cranes, storks, peewits, red-legs, kestrels, &c., were observed during the day's ride.
Later in the afternoon we were fairly among the outspurs of the sierra, and overhead, on heavy wing, soared the vultures. What a curious commentary on the state of a country are such hordes of huge carrion-feeders, and how eloquently does their presence attest a backward and listless condition in the lands they inhabit! In Spain, it is true, vultures serve a useful office as scavengers; yet in modern Europe they surely seem an anachronism. No doubt it is due as much to the physical conditions, to the desert character and semi-tropical climate of this wild land, as to the apathy of the Spanish people, that they exist in such numbers. Among nations more keenly imbued with commercial instincts, the flock-master takes care that his stock shall support themselves in order to support him. The daily, hourly losses which are implied in the supplementary support of hordes of huge flesh-eating birds, each as heavy as a Spanish sheep and voracious as a hyena, would simply put him out of the market, and eventually land him in bankruptcy. But Spain cares nothing for modern ideas, and disdains to put herself about in the universal race for wealth. There is dignity in her attitude, but there is at least a suspicion of lassitude. Where Nature is prodigal, man becomes proportionately apathetic. Here her gifts more than suffice for simple tastes and day-to-day requirements, and the rural Andaluz seeks no more.
In agriculture, stock-raising, and other pastoral pursuits, the rudiments of modern system—drainage, irrigation, and the like—are ignored. In the burning heats of summer, when every green thing is scorched to death, the cattle die by hundreds from thirst and want of pasturage; in winter, when plains are flooded, and valleys water-logged, the death-rate from cold, want, and disease is hardly less heavy than that of summer. Small wonder the great bare-necked scavengers of Nature increase and flourish.
Passing beneath the twin crags of Las Dos Hermanas, we struck the course of the Majaceite, whose rushing stream, embowered amidst magnificent oleanders, looked more like trout than anything we had then seen in these sierras. Among the mountain streams above Alcalá de los Gazules and in the Sierra de la Jarda we have observed its darting form, and further south some large trout have more recently been captured.
It was necessary to ford the Majaceite, which, in its swollen state and opaque current, was one of those things that bring one's heart into one's mouth; the bottom, however, proved sound: we plunged through all right, and after some stiffish mountain-riding reached the pueblocito of Algar just as the setting sun was bathing the wild serrania in softest purples and gold.
The posada was a typical Spanish village inn. Our horses we had ourselves to see quartered in the stable, which occupied one side of the courtyard, while our dinner was being made ready in a small whitewashed room adjoining. The sleeping-quarters above consisted of a single small attic, absolutely devoid of furniture or of contents beyond a pile of sacks containing corn, or "paja" (chaff), in one corner, and our own belongings, including saddles, mule-pack, &c., &c., which lay littered all over the floor. Three trestle-beds ("catres") were produced, and in deference to the idiosyncrasies of the extranjero, a tiny wash-basin was placed on the window-sill—not that there was any window, beyond a folding wooden shutter. Dinner consisted of an olla, in which small morsels of pork could be hunted up amidst the recesses of a steaming mass of garbanzos (chick-pea), by no means bad, though we were too hungry to be fastidious.
A small crowd of idlers, as usual, hung about the open courtyard of the posada, watching for "any new thing," and speculating on our objects in coming. I overheard the word minerál, and remembering that I had been amusing myself in sifting some of the sands of the Majaceite, thought it best to dispel any false impressions by inviting the bystanders to share a boracha of the rough wine of local growth, and the usual cigarette. It is always best to have some definite object, so I told my guests that I had come to the sierra to shoot the quebranta-huesos, literally, "bone-smasher." They stared and mumbled over the name; had never heard of such a thing; the first man one meets probably never has; but there was in the village a goatherd, muy inteligente en pajaros, "who knew all about birds." I sent for this worthy, Francisco Garcia de Conde by name, a light-built, wiry mountaineer. Francisco's ornithological repute was easily acquired, for among the blind a one-eyed man is king; but he certainly did know the Lammergeyer, and his description of its habits and appearance passed the evening away pleasantly enough. The quebranta-huesos he described as a fierce and solitary bird—never seen more than two together, and discriminated it from the vultures as being muy dañino—very destructive to goats, kids, and other hill-stock, which it seizes and kills on the spot, or hurls over the ledge of some precipice. He well described their habit of engaging in aërial combat—"siempre se ponen peleando en el ayre"—and their loud wild "pwing! pwing!" resounding through the mountain solitudes. Of their actual nesting-places, however (which I was most anxious to discover), he knew nothing, beyond positively stating (and in this he was corroborated by other hill-men) that they bred exclusively in the loftier sierras beyond Ronda. We had ourselves spent some time traversing those very sierras without seeing anything of this bird; but should add, were not at that time specially in search of it. Their eyries, Francisco asserted, were only to be found in the region of "living rocks" (piedras vivas), which form the loftiest peaks. In this, however, as will appear in the next chapter, our friend Francisco was mistaken.