With Crown Prince Rudolf I 
on 
accomplishments I was at the time, I am ashamed to say, quite 
unaware. Our meeting resulted in the Prince requesting me to 
take him a ride into Spain the following day, the upshot of which 
was that when the A/zrvamar sailed for Tangier I was bidden 
to accompany him. We subsequently went a cruise up the Guadal- 
quivir when, thanks to the kindness of the late Henry Davies 
of Jerez and his comrades, we were permitted to explore that most 
fascinating region the Coto de Donana. Here I made acquaint- 
ance with the since famous “wild” camels and gathered some 
eges of the Flamingo. I was naturally much impressed with all | 
saw and learnt, not least with the wild camels. 
Thanks however to my mentors and advisers, Lord Lilford 
and Colonel Irby, I refrained from “discovering” either camels or 
Flamingoes’ eggs in Europe, since I learned from them the story 
of how these camels had been imported from the Canaries many 
years before, and how, their owners having departed, the Spaniard in 
charge of them had opened the stable door and bid them depart. 
As regards the Flamingoes, it is necessary for a man to be an 
enthusiastic oologist to find comfort and bliss as I do to this day 
in the fact that I have found a freshly laid egg of the Flamingo 
and further, dows it, in spite of the appalling mud-bath it entailed 
owing to my horse subsiding. 
After these delightful experiences in the famous marismas 
of the Guadalquivir I accompanied the Crown Prince to Jerez 
de la Frontera, where we got nests of the Great Bustard, and on 
to Seville and was on the point of going with him to the Royal 
preserves in the Sierra de Grédos when the Prince received a 
pitiful telegram from the authorities at Gibraltar, which cut short 
my career of absolute bliss and ordered me back to the Rock to 
“persecute my vocation” as a subaltern on the Waterport Guard. 
It was truly a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. 
This was in 1879. I left Gibraltar the following year, but since 
