36 Unexplored Spain 



remains that to-day there is tacked on to the southernmost 

 confines of Europe a singular exotic patch of African desert. 



This sand-barrier, known as the Goto Donana, occupies, 

 together with its adjoining dunes on the west, upwards of forty 

 miles of the Spanish coast-line, its maximum breadth reaching 

 in places to eight or ten miles. The Goto Donana is cut oti" from 

 the mainland of Spain not only by the great river, but by the 

 marisma — a watery wilderness wide enough to provide a home 

 for wandering herds of wild camels. (See rough sketch-map 

 above. ) 



Sand and sand alone constitutes the soil-substance of Donana, 

 overlying, presumably, the buried alluvia beneath. Yet a 

 wondrous beauty and variety of landscape this desolate region 

 affords. From the river's mouth forests of stone-pine extend 

 unbroken league beyond league, hill and hollow glorious in 

 deep -green foliage, while the forest -floor revels in wealth of 

 aromatic shrubbery all lit up by chequered rays of dappled 

 sunlight. Westward, beyond the pine-limit, stretch regions of 

 Saharan barrenness where miles of glistening sand-wastes devoid 

 of any vestige of vegetation dazzle one's sight — a glory of 

 magnificent desolation, the splendour of sterility. To home- 

 naturalists the scene may recall St. John's classic sandhills of 

 Moray, but magnified out of recognition by the vastly greater 

 scale, as befits their respective creators ■ — in the one case the 

 lOO-league North Sea, here the lOOO-leao^ue Atlantic. Rather 

 would we compare these marram-tufted, wind-sculptured sand- 

 wastes with the Red Sea litoral and the Egyptian Soudan, where 

 Osman Digna led British troops memorable dances in the 'nineties 

 — alike both in their physical aspect and in their climate, red-hot 

 by day, yet apt to be deadly chilly after sundown. Resonant 

 with the weird cry of the stone-curlew and the rhythmic roar of 

 the Atlantic beyond, these seaward dunes are everywhere traced 

 with infinite spoor of wild beasts, and dotted by the conical 

 pitfalls dug by ant-lions [Myrmeleori). 



Between these extremes of deep forest and barren dune are 

 interposed intermediate regions partaking of the character of 

 both. Here the intrusive pine projects forest -strips, called 

 Con'ales, as it were long oases of verdure, into the heart of the 

 desert, hidden away between impending dunes which rear them- 

 selves as a mural menace on either hand, and towering above the 



