AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 343 



to drink any amount of the white country wine and 

 to eat any amount of red sausage, or any other highly 

 seasoned provend with which his temporary employer 

 may supply him, but, full or famishing, equally 

 ready to get over from thirty to forty miles of any 

 sort of country daily under a hot sun, and come 

 home singing if successful, and vociferously objurga- 

 tory if things have gone ill ; he was always accom- 

 panied by his two brothers-in-law, larger and more 

 stolid than himself, but with sufficient intelligence to 

 carry out his directions, and a lad to ride the donkey 

 that carried our provisions, ammunition, and any 

 Bustards that we might kill. The country about our 

 place of meeting consists for the most part of undu- 

 lating corn-land, with occasional stretches of virgin 

 down and grassy valleys. As soon as we are ready 

 we start in a westerly direction, Perico ahead and 

 his brothers-in-law to right and left of him, their 

 usual pace an honest five miles an hour till they 

 approach a ridge or sky-line, when they doff their 

 head-gear and advance, cautiously stooping till they 

 can command a view over the summit of the down ; 

 we watched them anxiously, and great was our 

 delight when one or other of them dropped flat upon 

 the ground for an instant, and the three came 

 rushing back to us with the welcome announcement 

 of " Hay pajaros ! " " There are birds ! " After a 

 brief consultation as to the wind, Perico led off the 

 guns to their posts, if possible generally in a dry 

 watercourse, often in the middle of standing wheat, 

 and now and then with no concealment but a patch 

 of tall thistles or mallows to our front ; in the latter 

 case it was often necessary to lie flat or to kneel; 

 but these positions of course we always avoided as 

 much as possible, the right thing being the turfy 



