An awkward situation is a subrounded wall of rough granulated granite blocking our course and traversed obliquely by an up-trending fissure barely the breadth of hempen soles, its inclination outward, and the "tread" carpeted with slippery wet moss still half frozen. It is seldom what one can _see_ that gives pause, but the fear of the unseen. Here we hesitate by reason of the uncertainty of what may confront beyond that grim curve. The fissure might cease; to turn back would clearly be impossible. Impatient of delay our crag-born guide--a _h.o.m.o rupestris_, prehensile of foot--seized the gun, and with a muttered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n that might have included scorn, in three strides had skipt around the dreaded corner--of course we followed.

Snow-slopes tipped at steep angles never inspire confidence in the unaxed climber, especially when the surface is half melted, revealing green ice beneath, and when the disappearing curve conceals from view what dangers may lurk below. Again a suddenly interrupted ledge--say where some great block has become disintegrated from the hanging face--necessitates a sort of nervy jump quite calculated to shorten one's days, even if it does not precipitately terminate them.

The ibex is always nocturnal. On the great cordilleras it spends its day asleep on some rock-ledge isolated amidst snow-fields, its security doubly a.s.sured by sentinels, whenever such are deemed necessary: or, lower down, in the caves of a sheer precipice. Only after sun-down do the ibex descend, and never, even then, so far as timber-line. On these loftier sierras their home by day is confined to rock and snow; by night to that zone of moss, heath, and alpine vegetation that intervenes between the snow-line and topmost levels of scrub and conifer.

Such are the ibex of the loftier ranges--Gredos and Nevada. But in the south, wild-goats are found on mountains of inferior elevation, 4000 to 6000 feet, many of which are jungled--some even forested--to their summits, and there they cannot disdain the shelter of the scrub. We have hunted them (within sight of the Mediterranean) in ground that appeared more suitable to roe-deer, and have seen the "rootings" of wild-pig within the ibex-holding area.

In such situations the wild-goats take quite kindly to the scrub, forming regular "lairs" wherein they lie-up as close as hares or roe.

Amidst the brushwood that clothes the highland--heaths and broom, genista, rhododendron, lentiscus, and a hundred other shrubs--they rest by day and browse by night without having to descend or shift their quarters at all. On these lower hills the ibex owe their safety, and survival, to the vast area of covert, and, in less degree, to their comparatively small numbers. So few are they and so big their home, they are considered "not worth hunting."

During summer the ibex feed on the mountain-gra.s.ses, rush, and flowering shrubs which at that season adorn the alpine solitudes; later, on the berries and wild-fruits of the hill. By autumn they attain their highest condition--the beards of the rams fully developed and their brown pelts glossy and almost uniform in colour. At this period (September to October) the rutting season occurs and fighting takes place--the champions rearing on hind-legs for a charge, and the crash of opposing horns resounds across the corries of the sierra. Even in spring memories of the combative instinct survive, for we have watched, in April, a pair of veterans sparring at each other for half an hour.

The young are born in April and soon follow their dams--graceful creatures with unduly large hind-legs, like brown lambs. One is the usual number, though two are not infrequent. The kid remains with its dam upwards of a year--that is, till after a second family has been born.

At that season (April to May) the ibex are changing their coats. The males lose the flowing beard and a.s.sume a h.o.a.ry piebald colour, contrasting with the dark of legs and quarters. The muzzle is warm cream colour and the lower leg (below knee) prettily marked with black and white. On the knee is a callosity, or round patch of bare hardened skin.

The horns of yearling males are thicker and heavier than those of adult females.

Though the hill-shepherds in summer drive out their herds of goats to pasture on the higher sierra, where they may come in contact with their wild congeners, yet no interbreeding has ever been known; nor can the wild ibex be domesticated. Wild kids that are captured invariably die before attaining maturity. The horns of the herdsmen's goats differ in type from those of the ibex, which can never have been the progenitor of the race of goats now domesticated in Spain.

Though the personal aroma of an ibex-ram is strong--rather more offensive than that of a vulture--yet no trace of this remains after cooking. The flesh is brown and tough, but devoid of any special flavour or individuality--that is, when subjected to the rude cookery of the camp.

CHAPTER XIV

SIERRA MOReNA

IBEX

The tourist speeding along the Andalucian railways and surveying from his carriage-window the olive-clad and altogether mild-looking slopes of the Sierra Morena, will form no adequate, much less a romantic, conception of that great mountain-system of which he sees but the southern fringe. Yet, in fact, the train hurries him past within a few leagues of perhaps the finest big-game country in Spain--of mountain-solitudes and a thousand jungled corries, wherein lurk fierce wolves and giant boars, together with one of the grandest races of red deer yet extant in Europe.

True, the Sierra Morena lacks both the alt.i.tudes and the stupendous rock-ridges that characterise all other Spanish sierras--from Nevada and Gredos 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 Morena, the name "Sierra" would not have applied. It is, moreover, a unilateral range--a b.u.t.tress, 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 Morena, 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 h.o.m.ogeneous mountain-system, Morena thus covers a s.p.a.ce 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 Morena, 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 Morena, 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 Morena.[23]]

May we digress on a cognate subject? The Sierra Nevada, though so near (at one point the two ranges are merely separated by a narrow gap yclept Los Llanos de Jaen), yet presents totally divergent natural phenomena.

There are points in Morena--say from the heights above Despenaperros--whence the two systems can be surveyed at once. Behind you, on the north, roll away, ridge beyond ridge, the endless rounded skylines of Morena--colossal yet never abrupt. In front, to the south--apparently within stone's-throw--rise the stupendous snow-peaks of Nevada--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 Jaen 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 Nevada 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 Morena, save for a single segregated colony of wild-goats near Fuen-Caliente.

Although the Sierra Morena partakes rather of ma.s.sive than of abrupt character, yet there occur at a couple of points outcrops of naked rock of real grandeur. Such, for example, is Despenaperros, through whose gorges the Andalucian railway threads a semi-subterranean course. The very name Despenaperros 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 Despenaperros.

These rock-formations are superbly abrupt. Great detached crags, ma.s.sive and moss-marbled, jut perpendicular from ragged steeps, or vast monoliths protrude, each in rectilineal outline so exact that one wonders if these are truly of nature's handiwork, and not some fabled fortalice of old-time Goth or Moor. Despite its striking contour, however, its crags and precipices are too scattered and detached (with traversable intervals between) to attract such a rock-lover as the ibex, and no wild-goat has ever occupied the gorges of Despenaperros.

A similar rock-region, but more extensive and continuous, is found near Fuen-Caliente--by name the Sierra Quintana. This range, though its elevations barely exceed 7000 feet, forms the only spot in the Sierra Morena at which the Spanish ibex retains a foothold.

Thereat the writer in 1901 endured one of those evil experiences which from time to time befall those who seek hunting-grounds in the wilder corners of the earth. It was in mid-February that, forced by bitter extremity of weather, we fain sought refuge in the hamlet of Fuen-Caliente clinging at 5700 feet on the steep of the sierra, as crag-martins fix their clay-built nests on some rock-face. Fuen-Caliente dates back to Roman days. Warm springs, as its name implies, here burst from riven rock, and stone baths, built by no modern hand, attest a bygone enterprise. To this day, we are told, the baths of Fuen-Caliente attract summer-visitors; we trust their health benefits thereby. Surely some counter-irritation is needed to balance the perils of a sojourn within that unsavoury eyrie. We write feelingly, even after all these years, and after suffering a.s.sorted tribulations in many a rough spot--Fuen-Caliente is bad to beat.

Having tents and full camp-outfit, we had thought to live independent of the village _posada_. One night, however, as we climbed the rising ground that leads to the higher sierra there burst in our faces an easterly gale (_levante_), with driving snow-storms that even a mule could not withstand. Nothing remained but to seek shelter in the village below.

Here my bedroom measured twelve feet by four, with a door at each end.

The door proper was reached by a vertical ladder; the second might perhaps be differentiated as a window, but could only be distinguished as such by its smaller size--both being made of solid wood. Thus, were the window open, snow swirled through as freely as on the open sierra; if shut, we lived in darkness dimly relieved by the flicker of a _mariposa_, that is, a cotton-wick reposing in a saucer of olive-oil.

Under such conditions, with other nameless horrors, we pa.s.sed three days and nights while gales blew and snow swirled by incessant.

On the fourth morning the wind fell, and snow had given place to fine rain. These _levantes_ usually last either three or nine days; so, thinking this one had blown itself out, we packed the kit and set out in renewed search of ibex, Caraballo, with accustomed forethought, buying a bunch of live chickens, which hung by their legs from the after-pannier of the mule. On the limited area of Quintana, ibex offer the best chance of stalking.

Mules are marvellous mountaineers. The places that animal surmounted to-day pa.s.sed belief. Two donkeys that belonged to the local hunters, Abad and Brijido, who accompanied us, soon got stuck, and had to be left below.

By three o'clock we, mule and all, had reached the highest ridge of Quintana, and encamped within a few hundred feet of its top-most _riscos_.

To set up a tent among rocks is never easy; even specially made iron tent-pegs find no hold, and guy-ropes have to be made fast, as securely as may be, to any projecting point.

Hardly had the sun gone down, than the easterly gale blew up again with redoubled force. All night it howled through our narrow gorge and around its pinnacled rock-minarets, with the result that at 11 P.M. the ill-secured guys gave way, and down came our tent with a crash. Two hours were spent (in drenching rain) remedying this; and when day broke, an icy _neblina_ (fog) enveloped the sierra, shutting out all view beyond a few yards. The cold was intense, and a little dam we had engineered the night before was frozen thick. The fog held all that day and the next. Nothing could be done, though we persisted in going out each day, as in duty bound, for a few hours' turn among the crags--how we prayed for _one_ hour's clear interval that might have given that glorious sight we sought! At dusk the second night snow fell heavily, and later on a thunderstorm added to our joys. Frequent and vivid flashes of lightning lit up the darkness, and caused the surviving chickens (which in common charity we had had tethered inside the tent) to crow so incessantly that sleep was impossible. Presently we noticed a sharp fall in temperature--the men had brought in a cube of ice, the solidified contents of one of our camp-buckets, which they proposed to melt at a little fire kept burning in the tent! But this was too much, even though it meant "no coffee for breakfast."

The frost and fog continuing, on the third morning the men proposed we should move lower down the hill, to some _cortijo_ they knew of, thereat to await milder weather.

By this time, however, the cold had penetrated deep into throat and chest, which felt raw and inflamed, leaving the writer almost speechless. We therefore decided to abandon the whole venture, and struck camp, still wrapt in that opaque shroud of driving sleet.

Crossing over the highest ridge of the sierra, between crags of which only the bases were visible, we descended on the south side; here we organised a "drive" amid the jungles that clothe the lower slopes. Two lynxes and three pigs were reported as seen by the beaters. Only one of the latter, however, came to the gun, and proved to be a sow, bigger by half than any wild-pig we had then seen in Spain. We regretted having no means of weighing this beast, which we estimated at well over 200 lbs.

clean. A remarkable cast antler picked up at this spot carried four points on the main beam, as well as four on top--length 34-1/8 inches, by 5-3/4 inches basal circ.u.mference.

The "defences" of the ibex in the Sierra Quintana lie among some fairly big crags forming the eastern and southern faces of the range. The shooting at that time was free; hence the goats were never left in peace by the mountaineers, who all carried guns, and used them whenever a chance presented itself. The result was that the few surviving goats had become severely nocturnal in habit, spending the entire day in caves and crevices in the faces of sheer and naked precipices.

Some of their eyries appeared absolutely inaccessible to any creature unendowed with wings. One cave, though it had no visible approach, was situate only some eight or ten feet above a ledge in the perpendicular rock-face. One morning at dawn two ibex having been seen to enter this cave, at once a couple of the wiry goat-herds thought to reach them from the ledge below, one lad actually climbing on to the other's shoulders as he stood on that narrow shelf. In its rush to escape, however, the leading ibex upset the precarious balance, and the poor lad was precipitated among the tumbled rocks in the abyss below.

Riding homewards through inhospitable brush-clad hills towards the railway (forty miles away), we put up one night at a village named, with unconscious irony, Cardena Real. In the small hours broke out another terrific disturbance--shrieks, squeals, barking--all the dogs gone mad.

The night was pitch-dark with rain falling in torrents; but next morning we ascertained that a pack of wolves had carried off the landlord's pigs from their stye, not fifteen yards away--indeed, three mangled porkers lay piled up against the wall of our hovel.

The contingency of pigs being worse off than ourselves had not previously occurred to us. Thus ended, in a cycle of catastrophe, our first wrestle with _Capra hispanica_ in Morena; but initial failure only served to stimulate further efforts later on. Winter, moreover, is no season for camping in these high sierras; May is more favourable, but the early autumn is best of all.

At this period (1901) the surviving ibex had fallen to a mere handful.

Fortunately here, as elsewhere in Spain, there was aroused, within the next five years, the tardy interest of Spanish landowners to save them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEADS OF SPANISH IBEX.