Unexplored Spain Part 40

Ten foxes (_Vulpes melanogaster_)--six males weighing 13-3/4, 14, 15 16-1/2, 16-1/2, 17 lbs.; four females weighing 11, 11-3/4, 13-1/2, 14 lbs.

Besides "small deer," such as rats and mice, voles, moles, and dormice, to say nothing of a whole red-stag and a whole wild-boar!

[POSTSCRIPT]

_March 2, 1907._--_Chillando_ this evening at the Oyillos del Tio Juan Roque, a big grey sow with numerous progeny came trotting up to within a few yards--whether to devour the supposed rabbit or merely from curiosity was not apparent. On realising the situation, she turned and dashed off with an indignant snort, followed by her striped brood, but did not go far before stopping (like Lot's wife) to listen and look back.

Later, at the Sabinal, just upon dusk, a fox appeared about 120 yards away, down-wind. Though quite aware of our presence, both by scent and sight, he deliberately sat down on his haunches to watch; but no charm of the _chillar_ would induce a nearer approach, and a rifle-ball whistling within an inch or two of his ears broke the spell.

On May 16, 1910, a mongoose responded with unusual alacrity to the first "call," running up within twenty yards. This was an adult male and weighed 8-1/2 lbs.

We have endeavoured to rear some of these animals in captivity. The young wild-cats are by far the most intractable--perfect fiends of savage fury, quite unamenable to civilisation. The lynx at least affects a measure of subjection, but remains always unreliable and treacherous in spirit. The story of how one of our tame lynxes attacked and nearly killed a poor _lavandera_ is told in _Wild Spain_, p. 447.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

OUR "HOME-MOUNTAINS"

THE SERRANiA DE RONDA

I. SAN CRISTOBAL AND THE _PINSaPO_ REGION

This mountain-system may be regarded as an outlying eastern extension of the Sierra Nevada. Except at the "Ultimo Suspiro del Moro" there is no actual break, and both in physical features and in fauna the two ranges coincide, while differing essentially from the Sierra Morena, their immediate neighbour on the north. The Serrania de Ronda, nevertheless, displays distinctive characters which ent.i.tle it to a place in this book; it forms, moreover, our "Home-mountains," lying within a thirty-mile ride eastward of Jerez.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PINSaPO PINE]

The outstanding feature is the _ma.s.sif_--or, in Spanish, _Nucleo Central_--of San Cristobal, which rises to 5800 feet, and stands head and shoulders above its surrounding satellites, an imposing pile of cold grey rock and perpendicular precipice.[57]

Nestling beneath its western bastions lies the Moorish hamlet of Benamahoma, whence, housed in friendly quarters, we have oft explored this hill. The route to the summit (which may almost be reached on donkey-back) is by the southern face; for summits, however, merely as such, we have no sort of affection, and never expend one ounce of energy in gaining them, unless they chance to aid a main objective. As to "views," we are sure to enjoy these from other points quite as effective.

New-fallen snow powdered the ground and mantled the surrounding peaks as we rode out of Benamahoma on March 20. But the sun shone bright, and from a poplar softly warbled a rock-bunting--with pearl-grey head, triple banded. Serins and kitty-wrens sang from the wooded slopes, and we observed long-tailed t.i.ts, with cirl-buntings and woodlarks. A grey wagtail by the burnside was already acquiring the black throat of spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROCK-BUNTING (_Emberiza cia_)]

The tortuous track writhes upwards through sporadic cultivation--the angles at which these hill-men can work a plough amaze, beans and _garbanzos_ grow on slopes where no ordinary biped could maintain a foothold. The industry of mountaineers (here as elsewhere in Spain) is remarkable. Each tillable patch, however small or abrupt, is reduced to service, its million stones removed and utilised to form the foundation for a tiny era, or threshing-floor (like a shelf on the hillside), whereon the hard-won crop is threshed with flails. Higher out on the hills rude stone sheilings are erected to serve as shelters during seed-time and harvest. Not even the hardy Norseman puts up a tougher tussle with nature to wrest her fruits from the earth.

Presently one enters forests of oak and ilex with strange misshapen trunks, stunted and hollow, but decorated with prehensile convolvulus and mistletoe--many three-fourths dead, mere sh.e.l.ls with cavernous interior, sheltering tufts of ferns. Here, instead of destroying the whole tree, charcoal-burners pollard and lop; huge lateral limbs are amputated as they grow, and the result, during centuries, produces these monstrosities, rarely exceeding twenty feet in height and surmounted by a delicate superstructure of branches totally disproportionate. No more fantastic forms can be conceived than these bloated boles, wrestling, as it were, with death, yet still able to transmit life to the superstruction above. They recall the Baobab trees of Central Africa. In neither case is the effect absolutely displeasing, albeit grotesque.

Both may be described as deformed rather than disfigured.

On rounding the northern shoulder of the mountain, suddenly the whole scene changes. Instead of limb-lopped trunks, one is faced by the dark foliage of the pinsapo pine--a forest monarch whose stately growth strikes one's eye as something conspicuously new. And new indeed it is.

For the range of this great Spanish pine (_Abies pinsapo_) is limited not merely to Spain, but actually to this one mountain-range, the Serrania de Ronda--there may exist more remarkable examples of a restricted distribution, but none certainly that we have come across.

The pinsapo, moreover, affects even here but three spots: first, San Cristobal itself; secondly, the Sierra de las Nieves, a mountain plainly visible some thirty miles to the eastward (all its northern corries darkened by pinsapos); and, lastly, the Sierra Bermeja on the Mediterranean, distant thirty to thirty-five miles S.S.E. On each of the three the pinsapo grows in forests; on adjacent hills we have observed one or two scattered groups--otherwise this pine is found nowhere else on earth.

A curious character of the pinsapo is that it only grows on the northern faces of the hills.

The tree possesses remarkable personality. Though one sees a chance specimen grow up straight as a spruce, yet its normal tendency is to "flatten out" on top, whence three, four, even a dozen independent "leaders" spring away, each with equal vigour, and finally form as many distinct vertical trunks, say six or eight separate pines all arising from a common base.

To see the pinsapo in its pristine majesty and ma.s.siveness, one must ascend beyond the range of charcoal-burners; up there flourish gigantic specimens, some of which we measured (by rough pacing) to encompa.s.s ten to fifteen yards of base. These trees grow from screes of broken rock--great blocks of white dolomite; but the deep-searching tap-roots penetrate to black alluvia beneath. Other huge pines found roothold in walls of living rock. The three sketches, made from individual trees (presumed for the purpose to be divested of foliage), ill.u.s.trate the singular multiple growth described.

The foliage of the pinsapo differs from ordinary pine-needles, being rather a series of stiff outstanding spines a.n.a.logous to those of the Araucaria. They display a crimson efflorescence in March, developing into cl.u.s.ters of red cones by April, and ripening in August to September.[58]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PINSaPO PINES (_Abies pinsapo_)

Diagram to show trunk-plan, divested of foliage. Girth at base 30 to 45 feet.]

The pinsapo-forests are subject to terrible destruction alike by hatchet and fire, tempest and avalanche. Forest-fires sweep whole glens; while rock-slides overwhelm and uproot even the biggest trees by scores. Few scenes that we have witnessed are more eloquent of nature's violence than these traces of an avalanche. Mammoth skeletons, weird and weather-blanched, protrude by the hundred from chaotic rock-ruin--some still upright, others overthrown or half submerged in debris, yet stretching great white arms heavenward, as though in agonised appeal.

The distant roar of an avalanche is a not infrequent sound throughout the mountain-land.

The pinsapo-forests of San Cristobal present one of the most striking mountain-landscapes in Andalucia. For some three miles they cover in a semicircle the whole scooped-out amphitheatre of the mountain-side.

Their dark-green ma.s.ses, contrasted against the white rocks on which they grow--and in winter with yet whiter snow--cl.u.s.ter upwards, tier above tier, from below the 3000-feet level away to the extreme summit of the knife-edged ridge above, say 5500 feet. Would that we could depict the beauty of the scene.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSSBILL

Wrestling with pine-cone.]

Through these dark forests a track winds, and here again the evident industry of the mountaineers surprised. At intervals along this pathway lay great baulks of pine-timber (sleepers, planks, and poles), dressed and piled ready for transport. That such loads could be carried hence on donkey-back, or, were such possible, that the labour could be repaid, appeared incredible--so distant are markets and so heavy the cargo.[59]

We had hoped to find in these forests a home of the Spanish crossbill, but not a sign of it rewarded our search. To avail the ripe fruit, the crossbill would need to nest in autumn, and that (wide as is the lat.i.tude of its breeding-season) is too much even for the _Pico-tuerto_.

An interesting species found here in March was the cole-t.i.t (_Parus pinsapinensis?_), which climbed around us, swinging from twigs within a yard as we sat at lunch. Blackstarts abounded, also firecrests. The latter have a pretty habit of engaging in aerial struggle--whether for love or war--both falling locked together to earth, as blue-t.i.ts do. On one such occasion a male, ere taking wing, spread out his flaming crown fanlike, as it were a halo.

Beyond the pinsapo-forests succeeds a region of wiry esparto-gra.s.s, up which we climbed to yet more sterile zones above. Here cruel rocks are adorned with a dwarf sword-broom, steel-tipped, a th.o.r.n.y berberis, and vicious pin-cushion gorse that protects its newer growths (not that there is anything tender about it at any stage) by a delicate grey tracery that deceives a careless eye. For that subtle tracery is, in fact, the indurated malice of last year's spikey armour. No handhold does nature here vouchsafe.

Curiously, we noticed woodlarks up here, while blackstarts abounded as t.i.tlarks on a Northumbrian moor. In an ivy-clad gorge at 4200 feet we found two nearly completed nests in rock crevices: one occupied a vertical fissure that needed quite twelve inches of packed moss to provide a foundation, the cup-shaped nest being superimposed. But it was not till a month later (April 24) that these birds were laying in earnest.

At 5000 feet the "Piorno" (_Spartius scorpius_) began to grow, a red-stemmed shrub, known locally as _Leche-interna_, and on breaking it, the twigs are found to be filled with a milky fluid that justifies the name. The piorno we have never found growing except on the high tops of Gredos and other lofty sierras, where it forms a chief food of the Spanish ibex, its presence being, in fact, always a.s.sociated with that of the wild-goat. Alas! that here, on San Cristobal, that a.s.sociation has been severed--another instance of the heedless improvidence that marks the Spanish race. Fifteen years ago they destroyed the last ibex; fifteen years hence they will have destroyed the last pinsapo!

Once for brief moments a broad-horned head, peering over the topmost crags, lent joyous hope that after all an ibex or two might yet survive.

But the intruder proved to be one of the dark-brown rams of _Ovis bidens_ that, in semi-feral state, roam these peaks.

San Cristobal itself now holds no big game; though ibex are found but a few leagues to the eastward, and, we rejoice to add (on certain sierras where protection is afforded them), begin to increase. The Serrania de Ronda, like Nevada, of which it is an extension, has never held either boar or deer; both are too rocky and precipitous to shelter those animals, though both boar and roe are found in the lower hills towards Jerez.

Just below the highest peak, the c.u.mbre de San Cristobal, lies a curious little alpine meadow. It is only forty yards square, and while we rested, lunching, on unaccustomed level a golden eagle swept overhead, chased and hustled by a mob of choughs that colonise these crags. Ten minutes later a lammergeyer afforded a second glorious spectacle, speeding through s.p.a.ce on pinions rigidly motionless, but strongly reflexed, as is usual on a descending gradient. Only once, as far as eye could follow, was one great wing gently deflected, and that merely from the "wrist."

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAMMERGEYER OVERHEAD

Gliding high on down-grade with rigid reflexed wings, outer primaries in-drawn, fan-wise.]

On reaching a crest above, two lammergeyers appeared, the first carrying a long stick or thin bone athwart his beak; the second held a course direct to where L. sat on the ridge, coming so near that the rustle of huge wings sounded menacingly and the white head, golden breast, and h.o.a.ry shoulders showed clear as in a picture. We expected to find the eyrie somewhere hard by, but in this we were mistaken--once more. It was not on that hill, nor the next; but on a third![60]

We discovered the nest of our friends, the golden eagles. It was situate quite two miles away, in a vertical pulpit-shaped rock-stack, that stood forth in a terribly steep scree. From a cavern in the face of this (prettily overhung by a clump of red-berried mistletoe) flew the male eagle. From below, the eyrie was accessible to within a dozen feet; but that interval proved impa.s.sable. In the evening we returned with the rope, and having made this fast above, L. was about to ascend from below, when the man left in charge at the top (probably misunderstanding his instructions) let all go, and down came the rope clattering at our feet! It was too late to rectify the blunder that night, and a month elapsed ere we would revisit the spot. Then this curious result ensued.

The eagles, we found, had so bitterly resented the indignity of a rope having been (even momentarily) stretched athwart their portals that they had abandoned their stronghold, leaving two handsome eggs, partly incubated. Their eyrie was eight feet deep, its entrance partly overgrown with ivy and (as above mentioned) overhung by red-berried mistletoe growing on a wild-cherry--the nest built of sticks, lined with esparto, and adorned with green ivy-leaves and twigs of pinsapo.