CHAPTER VIII 



THE MARISMAS OF GUADALQUIVIR 



THE DELTA 



From Seville to the Atlantic the great river Guadalquivir pursues 

 its course through seventy miles of alluvial mud-fiats entirely of its 



own construction. The whole 

 of this viewless waste (in 

 winter largely submerged) is 

 technically termed the mar- 

 isma ; but its upper regions, 

 slightly higher - lying, have 

 proved amenable to a limited 

 dominion of man, and nowa- 

 days comprise (besides some 

 rich corn-lands) broad pastur- 

 ages devoted to grazing, and 

 which yield Toros hravos, 

 that is, fiorhtino-bulls of 

 breeds celebrated throughout 

 Spain, as providing the popu- 

 lar champions of the Plaza. 

 It is not of these developed 

 but of the Lower Delta, which still 

 a wilderness, and must for centuries remain so^a 

 vast area of semi-tidal saline ooze and marsh, extending over 

 some forty or iifty miles in length, and spreading out laterally 

 to untold leao^ues on either side of the river. 



This Lower Delta, the marisma proper, while it varies here 

 and there by a few inches in elevation, is practically a uniform 

 dead-level of alluvial mud, only broken by vctas, or low grass- 

 grown ridges seldom rising more than a foot or two above the 



regions 

 remains 



that 



AVOCET 



we treat, 



