THROUGH WILD EUROPE 43 



days of summer. The Vultures would probably 

 have cause to remember 1905 as a year of unusual 

 plenty. For no rain fell until late in the autumn, 

 the drought having lasted for ten months ; the crops 

 were an utter failure, and the cattle perished by 

 thousands. 



There was the greatest distress among the popula- 

 tion, and starving mobs of people paraded the towns 

 clamouring for work and bread. In ordinary years 

 brigandage in Spain is almost stamped out, or at 

 least kept under by the efficiency of the Guardas 

 civile s ; but in times of scarcity like these it is apt 

 to crop up unexpectedly, especially in remote dis- 

 tricts and in the sierras. Smuggling, too, is never 

 altogether kept under — desperate conflicts between 

 armed contrabandistas and the civil guards being 

 of constant occurrence, and it does not take much 

 to convert a contrabandista into a brigand. We 

 had, in fact, been strongly advised not to travel 

 unarmed ; and when we left Gibraltar many of the 

 residents who have country houses in the neighbour- 

 hood were shutting them up and coming into the 

 town with their families and movables. 



Under these circumstances we could not expect 

 to find a great number of birds in the marismas. 

 And indeed there was hardly one to be seen, nothing 

 to break the bare expanse of sun-baked mud except 

 the deceptive glamour of the mirage. In the middle 



