The Goto Donana 



33 



through the crystal air? All the keener is the joy when, with 

 heavy thump, your first goose is landed on the sand amid the tin 

 decoys. When three or four lie there, Vazquez will send his 

 fleet two-legged "water-dog" to set them up with twigs 

 supporting their bills, to beguile more of their kind into line with 

 the barrels. If the day be propitious, the sky will be dotted at 

 times with geese in all directions. Now and again they will give 

 you a shot, the expert taking surely three or four to the tyro's 

 one. It is half-past eight, and you have sat in your hole close on 

 two hours before Vazquez conies to gather the slain, to which he 

 will add two or three more, marked down afar, and picked up as 



SPANISH LYNX 



dead as the rest. Never have two of your waking hours passed 

 SO quickly. What would you not give to live them over again 

 and undo some of those inexplicable misses ? But one goose 

 alone would amply repay that early start. Even four or five 

 are all you can carry, and the twenty or thirty that our expert 

 [who must be nameless] would have shot, will live to stock 

 the world afresh. 



Among the fauna of the Goto Donana, a word must be given 

 to the lynx. Never can I forget sitting one afternoon, Paradox 

 in hand, on the fringe of a covert. I was waiting for stag, 

 rather drowsily, for the beat was a long one and the sun hot, 

 when my eyes suddenly rested on a lynx standing broadside 

 among the bushes, beyond a bare belt of sand, some fifty yards 

 off". Fain would I have changed my bullet for slugs, but those 



