316 WILD SPAIN. 



CHAPTEE XXYII. 



RAMON AND THE TWO BIG EAMS. 

 AN INCIDENT OF IBEX-STALKING. 



For more than an hour we had been lying expectant, 

 Ramon and I. Our position was in a tuml)le of rocks, 

 which commanded the apjiroach to a pass — a Httle portiUo, 

 the only one l)y which the beetling crags above ^^;e^e 

 surmountable, even to an ibex. The pass was a narrow 

 cleft or fissure, traversing transversely the whole height 

 of the crags, whose sheer dolomite precipices otherwise 

 presented an utterly unscaleable face. Our post was a 

 favourable one, hence it was with a tinge of disappoint- 

 ment that we observed the appearance of one of our drivers 

 on the heights of the opposite sky-line. 



Eamon lay just in front of me on the narrow shelving 

 ledge, his head considerably lower than his feet, his lithe 

 body entwined around a projecting rock-buttress, while his 

 keen eye surveyed everything that moved in the panorama 

 of wild rock-chaos Ijeneath. During these hours of medita- 

 tion I began more clearly to understand one, at least, of the 

 raisons d'etre for that remarkable acuteness of smell which 

 is attributed to the ibex. The ibex-hunters invariably 

 assured us that the goats relied more on their sense of 

 smell than on that of sight — " they have more nose than 

 eyes — mas nariz que ojos,'" in Spanish phrase. This, I now 

 realized, was not, after all, so inexplicable, for the skin- 

 clad hunter before me was decidedly aromatic. It became 

 easy of comprehension that his presence might be more 

 readily perceptible to the nose than to the eyes ; for, while 

 Ramon's serpentine form, curving round a rock-angle, and 

 appearing to fit into its sinuosities, was all but invisible, 

 his whereabouts, even to human olfactory organs, might 



