The Cliffs of Trafalgar 235 
Starting at 6 o'clock, I reached the shores of Trafalgar Bay 
two hours later near the ancient Moorish walled town of Zara 
or Zahara. At a mountain corézjo near here I picked up some 
Spanish friends, a farmer and his henchman, and we rode along 
the strand to the river Barbate. After fording a deep tidal branch 
of the river, a ferry-boat took us across the main stream to the 
small town of Barbate, famous for its tunny fishery. Leaving 
Barbate we followed the strand again for some distance until 
it narrowed and we reached the point where the cliffs com- 
menced, with the waves lapping at their foot. It now became 
necessary to strike upwards so as to gain a track along the summit. 
The low cliffs here are of yellow and red sandstone strata sur- 
mounting beds of blue slider clay which had been exposed by sea 
action and is in a constant state of disintegration. Northward 
of this the cliffs become perfectly vertical and are of an older 
and harder formation, but rotten and crumbling and very dangerous 
to climb. The country immediately bordering on the sea-cliffs 
is overgrown with cistus, lentiscus and cypress, wind-swept and 
stunted. The ground is very rough and uneven, forming in- 
numerable sheltered dells in which there was, at the time of our 
visit, a great wealth of colour, masses of pale purple and white 
rosemary, crimson snapdragon and large red thistles growing in 
the grassy glades amid arbutus and butcher’s broom. — Further 
inland are many square miles of sandhills covered in places with 
a dense growth of stone pines, many of the trees being of con- 
siderable size. Upon gaining the top of the cliffs, about goo ft. 
above the sea, we dismounted and giving our horses to our attendant 
to lead along a track at a safe distance from their edge, proceeded 
to examine the cliffs. It was a matter of no small difficulty and 
some risk to approach near enough to the edge to look over but 
by taking advantage of sundry re-entrants and headlands formed 
by big slips at various times and of smaller slips among the upper 
