The industry of the peasantry of these wild regions of Nevada deserves a passing remark. As high as rye or other crops will grow, almost every foot of available ground is brought under cultivation. Precipitous, stony slopes are terraced with a perseverance that rivals, though on a smaller scale, the vineyards of Alto Douro, elsewhere described. Scanning the heights with a field-glass, one descries a man working on some jutting point or tiny patch of tillage so steep that a stone would hardly lie. All these folk, towards nightfall, betake themselves to the quaint but unsavoury hamlets that hang on some ridge of the sierra—and not the human folk only, but the pigs, the goats, and the donkeys forbye—each beast making straight for its own abode. Along each rock-paved street at dusk they come at a run, looking neither to right nor left till each beast bolts, without ceremony, into its own abode. Some five-and-twenty of the larger "domestic" animals (I take no count of dogs, hens, or the like) shared with me and sundry natives our scanty lodgment, whence at earliest dawn the braying of asses, cock-crowing, and porcine squalls, drove us betimes of a morning.
In one hill-village, there being no posada, we put up in the outhouse of a mill: but, amidst sacks of grain and malodorous mules, we passed a lively evening, for one by one the serranos dropped in to chat with the "Ingléses"; the wine-skin was replenished, and Manuel struck up some snatches of "Don Rodrigo de Bivar" and songs of the ancient chivalry. Maiden figures soon flitted in the darkness outside, and coyly accepting an invitation to enter, our barn resounded with the music of castanet and guitar, while lissom forms and light fandango graced its erewhiles unlovely floor.
Next morning our guide, Manolo Osorio Garcia, was drunk—a most unusual thing in Spain! We left him to sleep off his borachera, and were glad to get rid of him, for—again, most unusual—he was constantly pestering not only for wine, but for boots, gunpowder, and other things—requests that, when luggage is reduced to a minimum, cannot be conveniently complied with.
Despite their industry there is, nevertheless, woful poverty amid the peasants of Nevada. Whole tribes live in caves and excavations in the mountain-sides—filthy holes, shared, of course, by the beasts, and devoid of the remotest approach to comfort or decency. Even in the larger villages the ordinary sanitary precautions are utterly neglected, disease is frequent, and death sweeps in broad swathes. Early one morning Manuel came in to tell us that in the hamlet, at which we had arrived the previous night, "the people were dying by dozens each day of small-pox, that ten children had already succumbed that morning, and that he was very ill himself." We accordingly left at once, meeting in the pass above the village a drove of several hundred black pigs. Our horses planted their feet firmly on the rocks, and for some minutes we stood encompassed in a torrent of swine, which raced and jostled beneath us.
In Spain the Gypaëtus is yearly decreasing in numbers. A decade ago they were fairly numerous in the vast area of rock mountains which stretches between Granada and Jaen. To-day a week may be spent in that district without so much as even a distant view of this grand bird. The reason is unquestionably the use of poison (veneno), which is laid out broadcast by the goatherds for the special benefit of wolves, but which is equally fatal to the Lammergeyer.
Wolves, by the way, during the severe winter of 1890-1, were particularly numerous and destructive in the Sierra Nevada, descending to lower levels than usual, demolishing whole flocks, and even attacking human beings when found alone. In one instance all that could be found of a poor goatherd, who had been missing for some weeks, was his boots!
This brings us again to the question of the habits of the Gypaëtus, and especially of its food. Some naturalists seem inclined to hold that the bird is only a vulture, subsisting on carrion, and fearing to attack any living prey. The goatherds of Nevada, however (rightly or wrongly), do not share this view. One kindly old hill-farmer, at whose lonely cottage we spent a couple of nights, assured us that the "quebrantones," as he called them, were as destructive to his new-born kids in spring-time as the wolves themselves, and added that he laid out the veneno in special spots for each of his enemies. Only three days before, he asserted with vehement emphasis, he had witnessed a Lammergeyer strike down a week-old kid, its mate meanwhile driving off the dam. So intent was the bird on demolishing its victim that the farmer approached within a few yards and threw his stick at it as it rose. The kid, however, was dead. He insisted that the robber was no Golden Eagle (which he knew well), but "de los Barbudos malditos!"—one of those accursed bearded fellows!
Again, on a single majada, or goat-breeding establishment, in Estremadura, we were told that forty odd kids had been killed that spring by one pair of Lammergeyers before the enraged tenant was able to shoot them. We saw one of the birds—a superb adult Gypaëtus.
Here also is the evidence of the veteran cazador, Manuel de la Torre, a man of keen observation and intelligence, and the best field-naturalist we have met in Spain: "The Lammergeyer seeks far and wide for prey, preferring bones to anything else, but also eating carrion on necessity; and in spring, when it has young, kills many young sheep and goats, both wild and tame. I have seen it take snakes and other reptiles, and the largest and finest I ever shot (now in Madrid Museum) was in the act of eating a rabbit I had just seen it kill. This was in the Pardo. A dead hare or rabbit is the best bait to attract the Gypaëtus to the gun; it regularly hunts both. The Neophron I have never seen take any living thing; it only eats carrion, garbage, and offal, but I have found dead snakes in its nests. The Gypaëtus, like the vultures and some eagles, feed their young for some months on half-digested food, disgorged from their own crops." This is the evidence of one who has seen more of the Lammergeyer than any other living naturalist, and it is for this reason that, contrary to our practice, we have accepted what may be called hearsay evidence.