Wild Spain Part 1

Wild Spain.

by Abel Chapman and Walter J. Buck.

PREFACE.

In "WILD SPAIN" we endeavour to describe a little-known land from a point of view hitherto almost unoccupied--that of the sportsman-naturalist. Many books have been written on Spain--some very good ones: but recent volumes chiefly confine themselves to the history, antiquities, architecture, &c., of the country, with their authors'

impressions of the Spanish people. Such subjects find no place--save incidentally--in the present work, which systematically avoids the beaten track and essays to depict some of the unknown and more remote regions.

During more than twenty years the authors have undertaken sporting expeditions into various parts of Spain--chiefly in Andalucia, but including, at one time or another, nearly all the western provinces from the Mediterranean to Biscay. A love of wild sport has been, perhaps, the leading motive; but the study of natural history has hardly been of secondary importance. In pursuit of these twin objects we have spared neither time nor trouble, spending weeks--sometimes months--at a time, in the sierras and wildernesses of Spain, bivouacing wherever night overtook us, or the chances of sport might dictate, and camping-out on the glorious snow-clad cordilleras.

Our subjects are the wild-life and _ferae naturae_ of the Peninsula--including in the latter expression, by a slight stretch of the term, the brigand and the gypsy, with remarks on agriculture as cognate and supplementary. As far as convenient, the sequence of chapters follows the change of the seasons, commencing with spring-time.

Hence the earlier part of the book is more concerned with natural history--though the pursuit of ibex and bustard may be followed in spring; while the latter half is more exclusively devoted to sport.

Long residence in Spain has afforded opportunities which are not available to the casual traveller. Especially is this the case with sport, of which we have, at times, enjoyed some of the best that Spain affords. But it should be remarked that many of the shooting campaigns herein described have been on private and preserved grounds; and, while we naturally select the more fortunate records, we pa.s.s over in silence many a blank day and fruitless effort. Nearly all ground on which _large_ game is found, is preserved, with the exception of remote parts of the sierras, where wild pig and roe may be shot, and those higher mountain-ranges which form the home of ibex and chamois; moreover, while indicating in general terms the distribution of the various games and other animals, we have in many instances avoided naming precise localities.

In describing a foreign land, it is impossible entirely to avoid the use of foreign terms for which, in many cases, no precise equivalents exist in English: but, to minimize this drawback, we append a glossary of all Spanish words used herein. Conversely, lest Spanish readers should misinterpret the t.i.tle of this book, we have added a translation in the terms ESPAnA AGRESTE.

The ill.u.s.trations consist of reproductions, either from photographs or from rough sketches in pen-and-ink and water-colours by the authors, whose only merit lies in their essaying to represent in their native haunts some of the least-known birds and beasts of Europe, several of which, it is probable, have never before been drawn from the life. If some of these sketches are not as satisfactory as we could have wished, the difficulties under which they were produced may serve as some excuse. At the last moment we have had some of them "translated" in London by Messrs. C. M. Sheldon and A. T. Elwes, and are also indebted to Miss M. E. Crawhall for several sepia-drawings made by her in Spain.

It had been our intention to append a list of the birds of Spain, with their Spanish names and short notes on each species; but this we find would exceed our limits, and moreover the blanks and "missing links"

still remain so numerous that we have abandoned--or at least deferred--that part of our programme. This may explain a certain want of continuity or coherence, in an ornithological sense.

We are indebted to Lord Lilford and to Messrs. J. C. Forster and Ralph W. Bankes for several valuable notes and a.s.sistance, also to Admiral Sir M. Culme-Seymour for photographs taken in "Wild Spain"; while we cannot sufficiently express our grat.i.tude to Mr. Howard Saunders, who has in the kindest manner gone through the proof-sheets, and whose long experience and intimate knowledge of Spain have been most generously placed within our reach. For any serious mistakes which may remain, the authors must be solely responsible.

_December 31st, 1892._

WILD SPAIN.

(ESPAnA AGRESTE.)

CHAPTER I.

AN OLD-WORLD CORNER OF EUROPE.

ANDALUCIA AND HER MOUNTAIN-BARRIERS.

Among European countries Spain stands unique in regard to the range of her natural and physical features. In no other land can there be found, within a similar area, such extremes of scene and climate as characterize the 400 by 400 miles of the Iberian Peninsula. Switzerland has alpine regions loftier and more imposing, Russia vaster steppes, and Norway more arctic scenery: but nowhere else in Europe do arctic and tropic so nearly meet as in Spain. Contrast, for example, the stern grandeur of the Sierra Nevada, wrapped in eternal snow, with the almost tropical luxuriance of the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es which lie at its feet.

Nor is any European country so largely abandoned to nature: nature in wildest primeval garb, untouched by man, untamed and glorious in pristine savagery. The immense extent of rugged sierras which intersect the Peninsula partly explains this; but a certain sense of insecurity and a hatred of rural life inherent in the Spanish breast are still more potent factors. The Spanish people, rich and poor, congregate in town or village, and vast stretches of the "campo," as they call it, are thus left uninhabited, _despoblados_--relinquished to natural conditions, to the wild beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Perhaps in this respect the semi-savage regions of the far East, the provinces of the Balkans and of cla.s.sic Olympus, most nearly approach, though they cannot rival, the splendid abandonment of rural Spain. And as a nation, the Spanish people vary _inter se_ in almost the same degree. It is, in fact, that characteristic of Iberia which is reflected in the picturesque diversity of the Iberians.

One cause which tends to explain these divergences, racial and physical, is the exceptionally high mean elevation of the Peninsula above sea-level. Spain is a highland plateau; a huge table-mountain, intersected by ranges of still loftier mountains, but devoid of low-land over a large proportion of its area, save in certain river-valleys and in the comparatively narrow strips of land, or alluvial belts, that adjoin the sea-board--chiefly in its southernmost province, Andalucia.

Few nations live at so great an average elevation. The cities of London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, all the Scandinavian capitals, and even Lisbon, stand at, or a little above, sea-level; Vienna, Moscow, and Dresden have elevations of only a few hundred feet; but Madrid is perched at 2,384 feet, with the snow-fields of Guadarrama overlooking the Puerta del Sol, while a large area of Central Spain, comprising the Castiles, Aragon and Navarre, is of even greater alt.i.tude. Thus Burgos stands at 2,873 feet; Segovia, 2,299; Granada, 2,681; and the Escorial at 3,686 feet.

These central table-lands, exposed to a tropical sun, become torrid, tawny deserts in summer; in winter--owing rather to rarefied air than to very low temperatures--they are subject to a severity of cold unknown in our more temperate clime, and to biting blasts from the Alpujarras, the Guadarrama, and other mountain ranges which intersect the uplands, and on which snow lies throughout the year, contrasting strangely in the dog-days with the pitiless heat of summer and the intensity of the azure background.

Of different type is the mountain region of the north--the Cantabrian Highlands bordering on Biscay, the Basque Provinces, Galicia and the Asturias, offshoots of the Pyrenean system. There the country is almost Scandinavian in type, with deeply rifted valleys, rapid salmon-rivers, and rushing mountain-torrents abounding in trout; and an alpine fauna including the chamois and bear, ptarmigan, hazel-grouse, and capercaillie. That is a land of rock, snow, and mist-wreath, of birch and pine-forest: abrupt and untilled, wind-swept and wet as a West Highland moor, the very ant.i.thesis of the smiling province which most concerns us now--Andalucia. This, more African than Africa, in spring, autumn and winter is a paradise, the _huerta_ of Europe, low-lying and protected by the sierras of Nevada and Morena from the deadly breath of the central plateau; but in the four summer months an _infierno_, where every green thing is burnt up by a fiery sun, where shade is not, and where life is only endurable by discarding European habits and adopting those of Moorish or Oriental races.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ANDALUZ.]

Naturally such contrasts of climate and country re-act upon the character of the denizens--be they human or _ferae naturae_--of a land which includes within its boundaries nearly all the physical conditions of Europe and Northern Africa. But it is the peculiar mental cast and temperament of the Spanish race, as much as the physical causes alluded to, that have developed those clean-cut differences that to-day distinguish the various Iberian provinces. It is the self-sufficiency, the "provincialism," and careless unthinking disposition of the individual, as much as mountain-barriers, that have separated adjacent provinces as effectually as broad oceans.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GRANADINO.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BASQUE PEASANT.]

Though springing from a common root, _i.e._, the blend of Roman and Phnician blood with the aboriginal tribes of Iberia, the vicissitudes of twelve centuries of history, with its successive foreign invasions and occupations, have materially modified the racial characteristics of the Spanish people. The Latin element still predominates, both in type and tongue: but Semitic, Aryan, and even Turanian strains are all present. The Spanish nation of to-day is composed rather of a congeries of heterogeneous peoples and provinces, once separate kingdoms, and still incapable of coherence or of fusion into a concrete whole, than of sections of a single race. Compare the st.u.r.dy and industrious, albeit somewhat phlegmatic, Galician, the happy despised bondsman, the hewer of wood and drawer of water of the Peninsula, with the gay and careless Andaluz who spurns and derides him: or the fiery temperament of aristocratic Castile and Navarre with the commercial instincts of Catalonia and the north-east. Probably the most perfect example of natural n.o.bility is afforded by the peasant proprietor of pastoral Leon; then there is a pelt-clad, root-grubbing _h.o.m.o sylvestris_ peculiar to Estremenian wilds, who awaits attention of ethnologists. There are the Basques of Biscay--Tartar-sprung or Turanian, Finnic or surviving aborigines, let philologists decide; at any rate, a race by themselves, distinct in dress and habit, in laws and language, from all the rest. Reserved, but courteous and reliable, the Basques are dangerously ready for their much-prized _fueros_ to plunge their country in civil war.[1] The differences which to-day distinguish these allied races are as deep and defined as those which stand between themselves and the foreigner of alien blood. But we are rambling, and must remember that in this chapter we only propose to deal with

ANDALUCIA.

Often and well as in bygone days this sunny province has been described, yet the modern life and nineteenth-century conditions of rural Andalucia are now comparatively unknown--have fallen into oblivion amid the more ambitious and eventful careers of other countries. And, indeed, there is needed the genius of a Cervantes or a Ford adequately to depict or portray the quaint and picturesque _ensemble_ of this old-world corner of Europe, so distinct from all the rest, and unchanged since the days of Don Quixote. Spain, the land of anomaly and paradox, is a complex theme not lightly to be understood or described by aliens, albeit possessed of that first qualification, the pa.s.sport to every Spanish heart--a sympathetic nature. Around the country and its people, around everything Spanish, there hangs, in our eyes, a grace and an infinite charm; but it is a subtle charm, hardly to be described or defined in words of ours.

The very inertia, the mediaeval conditions thinly veneered, which characterize modern Andalucia in an era of insensate haste and self-a.s.sertion, prove to some a solace and a fascination. There are not wanting minds which, amidst different environments, can enjoy and admire such primitive simplicity--stagnation, if you will--and find therein a grateful and refreshing change. In Southern Spain life is dreamed away in sunshine and in an atmosphere forgetful of the present, but redolent of the past. The modern Andaluz is content _de s'ecouter vivre_, while the ancient chivalry of his race and his land's romantic history is evidenced by crumbling castle on each towering height; by the palace-fortresses and magnificent ecclesiastical fabrics of the middle ages: while the abandoned aqueducts, disused highways and broken bridges of the Roman period, attest a bygone energy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate II. RELICS OF THE MOORS--RUINS OF THE WATCH-TOWER OF MeLGAREJO. Page 6.]

Andalucia is a land of vine-clad slopes and _olivares_; of boundless prairies and corn lands where rude old-world tillage leaves undisturbed the giant of European game-birds, the Great Bustard, pushed back by modern cultivation from northern fields; a land of vast trackless heaths aromatic of myrtle and mimosa, lentisk and palmetto, alternating with park-like self-sown woods of cork-oak and chestnut, ilex and wild olive, carpeted between in spring-time with wondrous wealth of flowers--lonely scenes, rarely traversed save by the muleteer. For Spain is a land where the mule and donkey still represent the chief means of transport--not yet, nor for many a year, to be displaced by steam and rail. Through every mountain-pa.s.s, along every glen of her sierras, across each scrub-clad plain and torrid _dehesa_, still file long teams of laden pack animals urged townwards by sullen muleteer: or, when returning to his _pueblo_ among the hills, himself and beasts in happier mood, and sitting sideways on the hind-most, he sings his songs of love and wrong, no tune or words of modern ring, but those in which the history of his race is told; now sinking to a dirge-like cadence, anon in high-pitched protests of defiance--songs that ever have been sung since the Arab held his sway over a proud but conquered people. Truly the _arriero_ is a type of rural Spain: his monotonous chant, and the gaudy trappings of his mule-team appearing and disappearing with every winding of the mountain-track, bespeak the spirit of the sierra. In all these and in a host of cognate scenes and sounds, in the grandeur of untamed nature, and in the freedom and inborn grace of a rarely favoured people, there springs a perennial charm to the traveller, a restful refreshing draught of _laissez faire_, and a glimpse into a long-past epoch that can hardly be enjoyed elsewhere in Europe. Here of old fierce fights were fought for this rich prize in soil and climate; its fabled fertility attracting hither in turn the legions of Rome, the Goths, and, last, the Moorish hordes, to conquer and to hold for seven hundred years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAIR SEVILLAnAS.]

The Province of Andalucia with its corn-plains and vineyards, orange and olive-groves, barren wastes and lonely _marismas_, covers a stretch of three hundred miles from east to west, and half that extent in depth; and is bounded--save on the Atlantic front--by an unbroken circle of sierras. Commencing at Tarifa on the south, the mountain-barrier is carried past Gibraltar and Malaga to the Sierra Nevada, whose snow-clad summits reach 12,000 feet; and beyond, on the east, by the Almerian spurs. Nestling in the lap of this long southern range lies the narrow belt of "Africa in Europe," above alluded to, where, secured from northern winds and facing the blue Mediterranean, grow even cotton and the sugar-cane; while the date-palm, _algarrobo_ or carob-tree, the banana, quince, citron, lemon, and pomegranate, with other sub-tropical plants, flourish in this Spanish Riviera. Then, from the easternmost point of the province, the Sagres Mountains continue the rock-barrier to the point where the Sierra Morena separates the sunny life of Andalucia from the barrenness of La Mancha and primitive Estremadura. These grim and almost unbroken solitudes of the Sierra Morena form the entire northern boundary, continued by the Sierra de Aroche to the frontier of Portugal, and thence, by a lesser chain, to the Atlantic once more. The short coastline between Trafalgar and Huelva thus forms, as it were, the only opening to this favoured land, secure in a mountain-setting--the gem for which contending races fought for centuries, and from whose southernmost rock the British flag floats over the bristling battlements of Gibraltar.

To see Andalucia, the traveller must ride. In a wide and wild land, where distances are great and the heat greater, where roads, rail, and bridges exist not, the saddle is the only means of locomotion. In Spain nothing can be done on foot: in a land of _caballeros_ even the poorest bestrides his _borrico_. The traveller becomes an integral part of his beast, and his resting-place, the village _posada_, is half-inn, half-stable, where he must provide for the needs of his four-footed friend before he thinks of his own. A ride through the wilder regions, and especially among the sierras, involves, however, an amount of forethought and provision that, to those unacquainted with the _cosas de Espana_, would be well nigh incredible. In the open country no one lives, and nothing can be obtained, or, at least, it is unsafe to rely on it for anything. Thus one is obliged to carry from the town all the necessaries of life--an elastic, indefinite expression, it is true. What serves amply for one man may imply discomfort and misery to another: still, there remains for all an irreducible minimum, and only those who have tested their requirements in the field know how numerous and bulky remains this absolutely indispensable "balance." First there is provend for the beasts; heavy sacks of grain, straw, &c., necessitating mules to carry them, and this, in turn, nearly doubling the quant.i.ty. Thus an expedition of a fortnight or so signifies nothing less than the transport of huge mule-loads of impedimenta, the most bulky of which are for the use of the beasts themselves: though the indispensables for their riders are considerable--bread, meat, eggs and oranges, skins of wine, and, in most cases, tents with all the paraphernalia of camp-outfit, cooking apparatus, and the rest.

Burdened with all this cargo, and in a rough country where each traveller makes his own road--since no others exist--progress is slow: through jungle, broken ground or wood, the wayfarer steers by compa.s.s, landmark, or instinct--sometimes by the lack of the latter, as he finds too late. Deep bits of bog and frequent lagoons must be circ.u.mvented, and rivers forded where no "fords" exist: an operation which, owing to the deep mud and treacherous ground bordering the sluggish southern rivers, often involves off-loading, carrying across in detail, and restowing on the other bank--a troublesome business, especially after dark.

In this land of surprises, the _pays de l'imprevu_, it is the unexpected that always occurs. Seldom does a ride through the wilder regions of Spain pa.s.s without incident. Thus once we were carried off as prisoners by the Civil Guard--not having with us our _cedulas de vecindad_--and taken forty miles for the purpose of identification: or the way may be intercepted by that fraternity whose ideas of _meum_ and _tuum_ are somewhat mixed; or, worse still, as twice happened to us, by a fighting bull. One _toro bravo_, having escaped in a frenzy of rage from a herd whose pasturage had been moved fifty miles up the country, was occupying a narrow cactus-hedged lane near his old haunts, and completely barred the way, attacking right and left all who appeared on the scene. Warning of the danger ahead was given us at a wayside shanty where the _ventero_ and his wife had sought refuge on the roof. Nothing remained but to clear the way and rid the district of a dangerous brute already maddened by a wound with small shot. Leaving the horses in safety, we proceeded on foot to the attack, two of us strategically covering the advance behind the shelter of the cactus; while our _cazador_, Jose Larrios, boldly strode up the lane. No sooner had he appeared round a bend in the fence than the bull was in full charge. A bullet from the "flank gun,"

luckily placed, staggered him, and a second from Jose, crashing on his lowered front, at five yards, ended his career. When the authorities sent out next morning to bring in the meat, nothing was found remaining except the horns and the hoofs! On another occasion, when driving tandem into the town of P----, we met, face to face, a _novillo_ or three-year-old bull which, according to a custom of tauromachian Spain, was being baited in the public streets. We only escaped by driving across the shrubberies and flower-beds of the Alameda. In the former case we received the thanks of the munic.i.p.ality: in the other, were condemned to pay a fine![2]

Another ride was saddened by finding on the wayside the body of a murdered man; his mule stood patiently by, and there we left them in the gloom of gathering night. On all the bye-ways of Spain, and along the bridle-paths of the sierras, one sees little memorial tablets or rude wooden crosses, bearing silent witness to such deeds of violence, according to Spanish custom:--

"Below there in the dusky pa.s.s Was wrought a murder dread, The murdered fell upon the gra.s.s, Away the murderer fled."[3]

On more than one occasion our armed hunting-expeditions in the wilds have been mistaken--not perhaps without reason, so far as external appearances go--for a gang of _mala gente_; and their sudden appearance has struck dire dismay in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of peaceful peasants and _arrieros_, with convoys of corn-laden donkeys, till rea.s.sured by the brazen voice of Blas or Antonio--"_Ole, amigos! Aqui no hay mano negra, ni blanca tampoco!_"--which we give in Spanish, as it is not readily translatable at once into English and sense. On two occasions in the Castiles has our advent to some hamlet of the sierra been hailed with joy as that of a strolling company of acrobats! "_Mira los t.i.teres!_--Here come the mountebanks!" sing out the ragged urchins of the plaza, as our cavalcade with its tent-poles, camp-gear, and, to them, foreign-looking baggage, filed up the narrow street.

It is, however, unnecessary here to recapitulate all the curious incidents of travel, nor to recount the difficulties and troubles by which the wayfarer in Spanish wilds may find himself beset--many such incidents will be found related hereinafter. Sport and the natural beauties of this unknown land are ample reward, and among the other attractions of Andalucian travel may be numbered that of at least a spice of the spirit of adventure.

This flavour of danger gives zest to many a distant ramble: of personal molestation we have luckily had but little experience, although at times a.s.sociated in sport with _serranos_ of more than dubious repute, for the Spaniard is loyal to his friend. At intervals the country has been seething with agrarian discontent and sometimes with overt rebellion. On more than one occasion the bullets have been whistling pretty freely about the streets, and the surrounding _campina_ was, for the time, practically in the hands of an armed, lawless peasantry. In addition to these exceptional but recurrent periods of turmoil and anarchist frenzy, there exists a permanent element of lawlessness in the _contrabandistas_ from the coast, who permeate the sierras in all directions with their mule-loads of tobacco, cottons, ribbons, threads, and a thousand odds and ends, many of which have run the blockade of the "lines" of Gibraltar. The propinquity--actual or imaginary--of _mala gente_, often causes real inconvenience while camping in the sierra, such as the necessity of seeking at times the insectiferous refuge of some village _posada_ instead of enjoying the freedom of the open hill; or of having to put out the fire at nightfall, which prevents the cooking of dinner, preparing specimens, or writing up notes, &c.