Immense Reed-beds 93 
is to raise a very painful swelling, the skin assuming the colour 
of a ripe raspberry for some inches around the wound—the pain 
lasting usually for twenty-four hours. I have known men standing 
in the laguna after sundown in the month of December, waiting for 
duck, to be bitten by this mysterious thing and I mention its 
existence as an additional warning to those who may wade. in 
Spanish marshes to take the precaution to wear protective clothing. 
To me the most trying part of these lagunas is the impossibility 
of resting from time to time. Now and again some more solidly 
constructed nest of Heron or Harrier may offer a temporary seat, 
but it is usually only a question of time before your weight causes 
the nest to sink below the water. 
But in saying that the bottom of these lagunas is level, | omitted 
one rather important proviso. It is true there are many hundreds 
of acres which are as level as a well-made polo-ground, but there 
are again many hundreds more where the vast herds of pigs which 
find subsistence in this region have been at work digging for 
tubers. During the months of the year that the plains are either 
moist or submerged a strong growth of reeds, the Cyperus longus, 
(known to the Spaniards as castajiuelas from castaiio a chestnut), 
having round tuberous roots, covers certain portions of the plain 
and the systematic way in which the pigs convert such spots into 
a series of shallow craters separated by low banks is surprising. 
So long as these excavations can be seen they are of no great 
account, although tiring to walk across. But when covered by a 
few inches of muddy water they are intensely exasperating and 
vastly increase the chances of a fall, since all your calculations 
are thrown out by suddenly finding one leg is either 6 in. longer 
or shorter, as the case may be, than it may reasonably be 
assumed to be. A stumble and fall under such conditions, even 
in the shallows, is a most unpleasant affair. For this reason | 
invariably carry a long iron-spiked herdsman’s stick when on such 
expeditions, 
