OUR LAST WEEK IN FUERTEVENTURA 6 1 



Fuerteventura, although the country gradually became 

 less arid, with here and there an attempt at cultivation. 

 They are a dull lot, the birds of Fuerteventura, and 

 it says little for their musical capabilities that the 

 Hoopoe's note is the most often heard of any during 

 the daytime ; the monotonous " Go, oo, oo, oo, - Oo, 

 oo, oo, oo," heard in the early mornings, being a sound 

 that associates itself in my mind with the yellow stone 

 walls and blue-green cactus plants round about the 

 village of Tuineje. The cry may be exactly imitated 

 by three or four whistles on a very low note repeated 

 again and again. It has a strangely wooden sound. 



Lorenzo returned from a foraging expedition in one 

 of the villages that we passed through and showed me 

 an orange, quite a rarity in this island, and the first that 

 we had seen ; I admired it, but he still held it out 

 impatiently to me, evidently meaning it as a gift. 

 Villages were more numerous along this route than we 

 had found them on any of our previous journeys. Once 

 we passed a spring of clear water, which looked very 

 inviting, but was, so they informed me, salt. During 

 one of our expeditions a few days back, while we were 

 walking up the bed of a dry barranca, Don Ramon 

 stooped down at a certain point and dug away some 

 sand with his hands to a depth of about a foot. After 

 waiting for a few minutes this hollow began slowly to 

 fill with dirty-looking water, which he said was good to 

 drink. There were some camels and goats standing 

 near the place, so I think they must have been aware 

 of the fact of water being about, though they could have 

 made but little use of it themselves. In this barranco, 

 in which a few tamarisk bushes were growing, I saw 



