Unexplored Spain Part 1

Unexplored Spain.

by Abel Chapman and Walter J. Buck.

Preface

The undertaking of a sequel to _Wild Spain_, we are warned, is dangerous. The implication gratifies, but the forecast alarms not.

Admittedly, in the first instance, we occupied a virgin field, and naturally the almost boyish enthusiasm that characterised the earlier book--and probably a.s.sured its success--has in some degree abated. But it's not all gone yet; and any such lack is compensated by longer experience (an aggregate, between us, of eighty years) of a land we love, and the sounder appreciation that arises therefrom. Our own resources, moreover, have been supplemented and reinforced by friends in Spain who represent the fountain-heads of special knowledge in that country.

No foreigners could have enjoyed greater opportunity, and we have done our best to exploit the advantage--so far, at least, as steady plodding work will avail; for we have spent more than two years in a.n.a.lysing, checking and sorting, selecting and eliminating from voluminous notes acc.u.mulated during forty years. The concentrated result represents, we are convinced, an accurate--though not, of course, a complete--exposition of the wild-life of one of the wildest of European countries.

No, for this book and its thoroughness neither doubt nor fear intrudes; but we admit to being, in two respects, out of touch with modern treatment of natural-history subjects. Possibly we are wrong in both; but it has not yet been demonstrated, by Euclid or other, that a minority even of two is necessarily so? Nature it is nowadays customary to portray in somewhat lurid and sensational colours--presumably to humour a "popular taste." Reflection might suggest that nothing in Nature is, in fact, sensational, loud, or extravagant; but the lay public possess no such technical training as would enable them to discern the line where Nature stops and where fraud and "faking" begin.

At any rate we frequently read purring approval of what appears to us meretricious imposture, and see writers lauded as constellations whom we should condemn as charlatans. Beyond the Atlantic President Roosevelt (as he then was) went bald-headed for the "Nature-fakers," and in America the reader has been put upon his guard. If he still likes "sensations"--well, that's what he likes. But he buys such fiction forewarned.

In the ill.u.s.tration of wild-life our views are also, in some degree, divergent from current ideas. Animal-photography has developed with such giant strides and has taught us such valuable lessons (for which none are more grateful than the Authors), that there is danger of coming to regard it, not as a means to an end but as the actual end itself. While photography promises uses the value of which it would be difficult to exaggerate, yet it has defects and limitations which should not be ignored. First as regards animals in motion; the camera sees too quick--so infinitely quicker than the human eye that att.i.tudes and effects are portrayed which we do not, and cannot see. Witness a photograph of the finish for the Derby. Galloping horses do not figure so on the human retina--with all four legs jammed beneath the body like a dead beetle. No doubt the camera exhibits an unseen phase in the actual action and so reveals its process; but that phase is not what mortals see. Similarly with birds in flight, the human eye only catches the form during the instantaneous arrest of the wing at the end of each stroke--in many cases not even so much as that. But the camera snaps the whirling pinion at mid-stroke or at any intermediate point. The result is altogether admirable as an exposition of the mechanical processes of flight; but it fails as an ill.u.s.tration, inasmuch as it ill.u.s.trates a pose which Nature has expressly concealed from our view.

Secondly, in relation to still life. Here the camera is not only too quick, but too faithful. A tiny ruffled plume, a feather caught up by the breeze with the momentary shadow it casts, even an intrusive bough or blade of gra.s.s--all are reproduced with such rigid faithfulness and conspicuous effect that what are in fact merest minute details a.s.sume a wholly false proportion, mislead the eye, and disguise the whole picture. True, these things are actually there; but the human eye enjoys a faculty (which the camera does not) of selecting its objective and ignoring, or reducing to its correct relative value each extrinsic detail; of looking, as it were, through obstacles and concentrating its power upon the one main subject of study.

The portrayal of wildfowl presents a peculiar difficulty. This group differs in two essential characters from the rest of the bird-world.

Though clad in feathers, yet those feathers are not "feathery." Rather may they be described as a steely water-tight encas.e.m.e.nt, as distinct from the covering, say of game-birds as mackintosh differs from satin.

Each plume possesses a compactness of web and firmness of texture that combine to produce a rigidity, and this, it so happens, both in form and colour. For in this group the colours, too, or patterns of colour, are clean-cut, the contrasts strong and sharply defined. The plumage of wild-fowl, in short, is characterised by lack of subdued tints and half-tones. That is its beauty and its glory; but the fact presents a stumbling-block to treatment, especially in colour.

The difficulty follows consequentially. Subjects of such character and crude coloration defy accustomed methods. That is not the fault of the artist; rather it reveals the limitations of Art. Just as in landscape distance ever demands an "atmosphere" more or less obliterative of distinctive detail afar (though such detail may be visible to non-artistic eyesight miles away), so in birds of sharply contrasted colouring the needed effect can only (it would appear) be attained by processes of softening which are not, in fact, correct, and which ruin the real picture as designed by Nature.

No wild bird (and wildfowl least of all) can be portrayed from captive specimens--still less from bedraggled corpses selected in Leadenhall market. In the latter every essential feature has disappeared. The ruffled remains resemble the beauty of their originals only as a dish-clout may recall some previous existence as a damask serviette.

Living captives at least give form; but that is all. The loss of freedom, with all its contingent perils, involves the loss of character, the pride of life, and of independence. Once remove the first essential element--the sense of instant danger, with all that the stress and exigencies of wild-life import--and with these there vanish vigilance, carriage, sprightliness, dignity, sometimes even self-respect.

Not a man who has watched and studied wild beasts and wild birds in their native haunts, glorified and enn.o.bled by self-conscious apt.i.tude to prevail in the ceaseless "struggle for existence," but instantly recognises with a pang the different demeanour of the same creatures in captivity, albeit carefully tended in the best zoological gardens of the world.

To Mr. Joseph Crawhall (cousin of one author) we and our readers are indebted for a series of drawings that speak for themselves.

Further, we desire most heartily to thank H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans for notes and photographs ill.u.s.trative both of Baetican scenery and of the wild camels of the marisma; also the many Spanish and Anglo-Spanish friends whose a.s.sistance is specifically acknowledged, _pa.s.sim_, in the text.

Should some slight slip or repet.i.tion have escaped the final revision, may we crave indulgence of critics? 'Tis not care that lacks, but sheer mnemonics. In a work of (we are told) 150,000 words the ma.s.s of ma.n.u.script appals, and to detect every single error may well prove beyond our power. We have lost, moreover, that guiding eye and pilot-like touch on the helm that helped to steer our earlier venture through the shoals and seething whirlpools that ever beset voyages into the unknown.

A. C.

W. J. B.

BRITISH VICE-CONSULATE, JEREZ, _December 1910_.

CHAPTER I

UNEXPLORED SPAIN

INTRODUCTORY

The Spain that we love and of which we write is not the Spain of tourist or globe-trotter. These hold main routes, the highways from city to city; few so much as venture upon the bye-ways. Our Spain begins where bye-ways end. We write of her pathless solitudes, of desolate steppe and prairie, of marsh and mountain-land--of her majestic sierras, some well-nigh inaccessible, and, in many an instance, untrodden by British foot save our own. Lonely scenes these, yet glorified by primeval beauty and wealth of wild-life. As naturalists--that is, merely as born lovers of all that is wild, and big, and pristine--we thank the guiding destiny that early directed our steps towards a land that is probably the wildest and certainly the least known of all in Europe--a land worthy of better cicerones than ourselves.

Do not let us appear to disparage the other Spain. The tourist enjoys another land overflowing with historic and artistic interest--with memorials of mediaeval romance, and of stirring times when wave after wave of successive conquest swept the Peninsula. Such subjects, however, fall wholly outside the province of this book: nor do they lack historians a thousand-fold better qualified to tell their tale.

The first cause that differentiates Spain from other European countries of equal area is her high general elevation. This fact must jump to the eye of every observant traveller who books his seat by the Sud-express to the Mediterranean. Better still, for our purpose, let him commence his journey, say at the Tweed. From Berwick southwards through the heart of England to London: from London to Paris, and right across France--all the way he traverses low-lying levels; fat pastures, fertile and tilled to the last acre. His aneroid tells him he has seldom risen above sea-level by more than a few hundred feet; and never once has his train pa.s.sed through mountains--hardly even through hills; he can scarce be said to have had a real mountain within the range of his vision in all these 1200 miles.

Now he crosses the Bida.s.soa ... the whole world changes! At once his train plunges into interminable Pyrenees, and ere it clears these, he has ascended to a permanent highland level--a tawny treeless steppe that averages 2000-feet alt.i.tude, and sometimes approaches 3000, traversed by range after range of rugged mountains that arise all around him to four, five, or six thousand feet. Railways, moreover, avoid mountains (so far as they can). Our traveller, therefore, must bear in mind that what he actually sees is but the mildest and tamest version of Spanish sierras.

There are bits here and there that he may have thought anything but tame--only tame by comparison with those grander scenes to which we propose guiding him.

For the next 500 miles he never quits that austere highland alt.i.tude nor ever quite loses sight of jagged peaks that pierce the skies--peaks of that h.o.a.ry cinder-grey that shows up almost white against an azure background. Never does he descend till, after leaving behind him three kingdoms--Arragon, Navarre, and Castile--his train plunges through the Sierra Morena, down the gorges of Despenaperros, and at length on the third day enters upon the smiling lowlands of Andalucia. Here the aneroid rises once more to rational readings, and fertile _vegas_ spread away to the horizon. But our traveller is not even now quite clear of mountains. Whether he be booked to Malaga or to Algeciras, he will presently find himself enveloped once more amidst some fairly stupendous rocks--the Gaetanes or Serrania de Ronda respectively.

Spain is, in fact, largely an elevated table-land, 400 miles square, and traversed by four main mountain-ranges, all (like her great rivers) running east and west. The only considerable areas of lowland are found in Andalucia and Valencia.

Naturally such physical features result in marked variations of climate and scene, which in turn react upon their productions and denizens, whether human or of savage breed. We take three examples.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE

LAMMERGEYER (_Gypaetus barbatus_)

Whose home is in the wildest Sierras--a weird dragon-like bird-form; expanse, 9 feet.

[Formerly reputed to carry off _babies_ to its eyrie.]]

The central table-lands, subject all summer to solar rays that burn, in winter shelterless from biting blasts off snow-clad sierras, present precisely that landscape of desperate desolation that always results from a maximum of sunshine combined with a minimum of rainfall. A desiccated downland, khaki-colour or calcareous by turn, but bare (save for a few weeks in spring) of green thing, naked of bush or shrub, innocent even of gra.s.s. Not a tree grows so far as eye can reach, not a watercourse but is stone-dry and leaves the impress that it has been so since time began. Oh, it is an unlovely landscape, that central plateau.

'Twere ungrateful, nevertheless (and unjust too), to forget that here we are journeying in a glory of atmosphere, brilliant in aggressive radiance that annihilates distance and revels in s.p.a.ce. Though patches of vine-growth be lost in the monotony of tawny expanse, mud-built hamlet and village church indistinguishable amidst a universal khaki, yet this is, in truth, a kingdom of the sun. The great bustard maintains a foothold on these arid uplands, but the fauna is best exemplified by the desert-loving sand-grouse (_Pterocles arenarius_).

Precisely the reverse of all this is Cantabria--the Basque provinces of the north, with Galicia and the Asturias. There, bordering on the Biscayan Sea, you find a region absolutely Scandinavian in type--pinnacled peaks, precipitous beyond all rivals even in Spain, with deep-rifted valleys between, rushing salmon-rivers and mountain-torrents abounding in trout. Here the fauna is alpine, if not subarctic, and includes the brown bear and chamois, the ptarmigan, hazel-grouse, and capercaillie.

Cantabria is a region of rock, snow, and mist-wraith; of birch and pine-forest--the very ant.i.thesis of the third region, that next concerns us, the smiling plains of Andalucia and Valencia nestling on Mediterranean sh.o.r.e. Here for eight months out of the twelve one lives in a paradise; but the summer is African in its burden of heat and discomfort. Every green thing outside the vineyard and irrigated garden is burnt up by a fiery sun, a sun that changes not, but, day following day, grips the land in a blistering embrace. Climatic conditions such as these reacting on a race already infused with Arab blood naturally conduce to Oriental modes of life. Yet even here we have examples of the curious contradictions that characterise this _pays de l'imprevu_. Thus within sight of one another, there flourish on the _vega_ below the date-palm and sugar-cane, while the ice-defying edelweiss embellishes the snows above--arctic and tropic in one.

Such extremes of climate react, as suggested, upon the character of the human inhabitants of a land which includes within its boundaries nearly all the physical conditions of Europe and North Africa. From the north, as might be expected, comes the worker--the st.u.r.dy laborious Galician, disdained and despised by his Andalucian brother, regarded as lacking in dignity--the very name _Gallego_ is a term of reproach. But he is a happy and contented hewer of wood and drawer of water, that Gallego: throughout Spain he carries the baskets, bears the burdens, cleans the floors; and finally returns, a rich man, to his barren hills of Galicia.

The Andalucian will condescend to tend your cattle or garden, to drive your horses or ponies: and such offices he will perform well; but anything menial, or what he might regard as derogatory, he prefers--instinctively, not offensively--to leave to the Galician. From Castile and Navarre comes a different caste, stately and aristocratic by nature, yet with fiery temperament concealed beneath subdued exterior--honestly, we prefer both the preceding exemplars. The Catalan comes next, pushing and effervescent, all for his own little corner, his factories and his trade--impregnated, every man, with a sort of cinematograph of advanced views on social and political questions of the day--borrowed mostly from his up-to-date neighbours beyond the Pyrenees, yet grafted on to old-world _fueros_, or franchises, that date back to the times of the Counts of Barcelona.[1] Perhaps the most perfect example of contemporary natural n.o.bility is afforded by the peasant-proprietor of pastoral Leon; then there is the Basque of Biscay, Tartar-sprung or Turanian, Finnic, or surviving aboriginal--let philologists decide. Among Spain's manifold human types, we suggest to ethnologists (and suggested before, twenty years ago) the study of a surviving remnant that still clings secreted, lonely as lepers, in the far-away mountains of Northern Estremadura--the Hurdes. These wild tribes of unknown origin (presumed to be Gothic) live apart from Spain, four thousand of them, a root-grubbing race of _h.o.m.o sylvestris_, squatted in a land without written history or record, where all is traditional even to the holding of the soil. Not a t.i.tle-deed or other doc.u.ment exists; yet this is a region of considerable extent--say fifty miles by thirty. A recent pilgrimage to these forgotten glens enables us to give, in another chapter, some contemporary facts about "Las Hurdes."

Throughout Spain the people of the "lower orders"--the peasantry--strike those who leave the beaten tracks by their independence and manly bearing. North or south, east or west, an infinite variety of races differing in habit and character, even in tongue, yet all agreeing in their solid manliness, in straight-forward honesty, in what the Romans ent.i.tled _virtus_--fine types save where contaminated by _empleomania_, call that "officialdom" (one of the twin curses of Spain). Largely there exists here ground-work for the rebuilding of Spanish greatness--such a land awaits but the wand of a magician to recall its people to front rank. Neither by despotic methods nor by the power that is only demonstrated by violence will the change be brought about, but by the enlightenment that has learnt to leave unimitated the follies of the past, and unused the forces of coercion.

Such a leader, we believe, to-day wields that wand. May he be spared to restore the destinies of his country.

It was in Spain, remember, that, more than 2000 years ago, the fate of Carthage and, later, that of Rome was decided. To the latter Imperial city Spain had given poets, philosophers, and emperors. It was in Spain that there dawned the earlier glimmerings of popular liberties, as such are now understood. Self-government with munic.i.p.al rights were recognised by the Cortes of Leon previous to our Magna Charta.

Individual guarantees, freedom of person and contract, and the inviolability of the home were granted by the Cortes of Zaragoza in 1348--more than three centuries before our Habeas Corpus was signed in 1679. A land with such traditions and achievements, with its twenty millions of inhabitants, cannot long be held back outside the trend of liberal expansion.