The Marismas of Guadalquivir 93 



estuaries where miles of oozy mud-flats separate sea and land, 

 treacherous of foot-hold, exposed to tide- ways and to every gale 

 that blows. Such only are the haunts of British wildfowl, though 

 how many men in a million have ever seen them ? To wilder 

 Spain, with its 50 per cent of waste, and its vast irreclaimed 

 marismas, come the web-footed race in quantities undreamt at 

 home. 



We have before attempted to describe such scenes, though 

 a fear that we might be discredited oft half paralysed the 

 pen. An American critic of our former book remarked that it 

 "left the gaping reader with a feeling that he had not been told 

 half." That lurking fear could not be better explained. A dread 

 of Munchausenism verily gives pause in writing even of what 

 one has seen again and again, raising doubts of one's own eye- 

 sight and of the pencilled notes that, year after year, we had 

 scrupulously written down on the spot. 



The Baetican marisma has afforded many of those scenes of 

 wild-life that, for the reason stated, were before but half-described. 

 With fuller experience we return to the subject, though daring 

 not entirely to satisfy our trans-Atlantic friend. 



The winter of 1896 provided such an occasion. It was on the 

 26th of November that, under summer conditions, we rode out, 

 where in other years we have sailed, across what should have 

 been water, but was now a calcined plain. 



November w^as nearly past ; autumn had given place to winter, 

 yet not a drop of rain had fallen. Since the scorching days of 

 July the fountains of heaven had been stayed, and now the winter 

 wildfowl from the north had poured in only to find the marisma 

 as hard and arid as the deserts of Arabia Petraea. Instinct was 

 at fault. True, each to their appointed seasons, had come, the 

 dark clouds of pintail, teal, and wigeon, the long skeins of grey 

 geese. Where in other years they had revelled in shallows rich 

 in aquatic vegetation, now the travellers find instead nought but 

 torrid plains devoid of all that is attractive to the tastes of their 

 tribe. For the parched soil, whose life-blood has been drained by 

 the heats of the summer solstice, whose plant-life is burnt up, 

 has remained panting all the autumn through for that precious 

 moisture that still comes not. The carcases of horses and cattle, 

 that have died from thirst and lack of pasturage, strew the plains ; 

 the winter-sown wheat is dead ere germination is complete. 



