16 GAME-SHOOTING. 
pleasant certainty of living under canvas during rainy weather, 
is a great drawback to winter shooting. 
Another, in my opinion insuperable objection to shooting in 
Morocco is, that if any great quantity of game be bagged, it 
has to be thrown away, as, unless within twenty miles or so 
of Tangier,it is useless. The Moors, being Mahometans, will 
not eat any thing killed by a Christian or infidel ; and killing 
for the mere sake of slaughter does not come within the creed 
of a real sportsman. In Spain all this is very different, as any 
one and every one is only too glad to accept of the surplus game. 
In almost all parts of Morocco rabbits abound ; and hares 
are in places plentifal. Woodcocks are sometimes tolerably 
abundant ; Quails, of course, are in swarms during migration ; 
and there are a great number of Little Bustard. 
Shooting in Andalucia is far more satisfactory and pleasant 
sport than on the African side. In the first place, accommo- 
dation can always be had in a house of some sort : the ventas 
are much to be preferred to cortijos, or farm-houses, as the latter 
usually swarm with fleas ; but by taking your own blankets and 
a camping-palliasse, which can be refilled at each resting-place 
with chopped straw, one can generally by the aid of a liberal use 
of flea-powder"^ manage to cheat the vermin of their nocturnal 
banquet. It is almost absolutely necessary to take this powder 
with one, as sleep in some of the dens which I have been in 
Avould have been impossible without using it. Another most 
necessary item is an india-rubber flexible bath, as it is seldom a 
"lebrillo" or large earthenware pan big enough to wash in 
can be obtained. 
In addition to the shelter to be got in Andalucia there are 
some roads ; and bad as they may be, they do afford means of 
communication ; and there are bridges, though not always 
placed in the right situations ; for in places you see a bridge 
built across a gully without any road on either side of it, and 
others where the stream has quitted its old course for a new 
one — single instances out of the many thousand strange and 
wondrous cosas de Espafia. 
* This vegetable powder is made from a species of Fever-few {Pyre- 
thrum), and is quite innocuous except to insects ; many other plants of 
the Radiatse group are equally offensive to insects. 
