142 WILD SPAIN. 



rough pine forest, gradually opening out, and giving place 

 to a zone of brushwood and coarse vegetation : above, 

 another zone, of esparto and wiry grass interspersed with 

 patches of a peculiar gorse and rosemary scrub, and the 

 p'unni), a tough green shrub, whose bleached limbs closely 

 resemble human skeletons. Here and there one could 

 imagine that the rugged slope had been, at no remote 

 period, the scene of a bloody battle.* Above this level, 

 plant-life rapidly grows scarcer and more alpine — the 

 bleaberry and gentian, stunted heaths and pionios, with 

 beds of purple saxifrage, white and violet crocuses, 

 and a yellow narcissus, the two last right up to the 

 snow. 



The riding here grew worse and worse : the little mules 

 scrambled like cats over the naked rocks, but at last even 

 they could no further go, and were left, j)icketed in rock- 

 stalls, on some hanging shelf. Now came a terrible 

 scramble on foot — hardly a step but needed to be made 

 good ])y hand-hold also, and then we reached the lower 

 snows. Treacherous ground this, here frozen into 

 miniature glaciers, there soft and " rotten," or, worst of all, 

 hollowed beneath, precipitating one in a moment upon 

 cruel rocks below. Here several minor accidents, and one 

 of a more serious nature occurred : but after all we prefer 

 the snow to the penultimate zone above— the region of 

 naked rock-matrix (in Spanish cancJios corridos), where 

 smooth slippery faces of granite left no hold either for the 

 snow, or for feet, though clad in hempen-soled alpara- 

 gatas ; and every crevice filled level with frozen stride of 

 snow. Mass above mass towered these monoliths of 

 living granite, veined and streaked with the narrow 

 snow-lines : and beyond them, stretching away for leagues, 

 came the snow-fields of Gredos, imposing in the majesty 

 of a contemporary glacial epoch, and the silence of ever- 

 lasting ice. 



We had high hopes of success in this first Jxitida, for 



* The ibex are very fond of this shrub, which in smniner has a red 

 bloom ; and the zone of the j^iomalcs is the lowest to which they 

 descend, even in winter. 



