The Goto Dofiana 37 



summits of the tallest trees. Nor is the menace wholly hypo- 

 thetic ; for not seldom has the unstable element sliifted bodily 

 onwards to enoulf in molecular ruin whole stretches of these 

 isolated and enclosed corrales. Noble pines, already half sub- 

 merged, struggle in death-grips with the treacherous foe ; of 

 others, already dead, naught save the topmost summits, sere and 

 shrunk, protrude above that devouring smiling surface, beneath 

 which, one assumes, there lie the skeletons of buried forests of a 

 bygone age. 



All along these lonely dunes there stand at regular intervals 

 the grim old watch-towers of the Moors, reminiscent of half- 

 forgotten times and of a vanished race. Arab telegraphy was 

 neither wireless nor fireless when beacon-lights blazing out from 

 tower to tower spread instant alarm from sea to sierra, seventy 

 miles away. 



In contrast with the scenery of both these zones, shows up 

 the landscape of a third region, on the west — that of scrub. 

 Here, one day later in geological sense, the eye roams over 

 endless horizons of rolling grey- green brushwood, the chief 

 component of which is cistus (Uelianthemuin), but interspersed 

 in its moister dells with denser jungle of arbutus and lentisk, 

 genista, tree-heath, and giant-heather, with wondrous variety of 

 other shrubs ; the whole studded and ornamented by groves of 

 stately cork-oaks or single scattered trees. All these, with the 



ilex, beinof evergreen, one misses those ever-chano;ino; autumnal 



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tints that glorify the "fEill" in northern climes. Here only a 

 sporadic splash of sere or yellow relieves the uniform verdure. 



Obviously regions of such physical character can ill subserve 

 any human purpose. As designed by nature, they afford but a 

 home for wild beasts, fowls of the air, and other ferae which 

 abound in striking and charming variety. For centuries the 

 Goto Dofiana formed, as the name imports, the hunting-ground 

 of its lords, the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, and to not a few of 

 the Spanish kings — from Phillip IV. in the early part of the 

 seventeenth century (as recorded by the contemporary chronicler, 

 Pedro Espinosa) to Alfonso XII. in 1882, and quite recently to 

 H.M. Don Alfonso XIII. For five-and- twenty years the authors 

 have been co-tenants, previously under the aforesaid ducal house ; 

 latterly under our old friend, the present owner. 



The sparse population of Donana includes a few herdsmen 



