I02 



Unexplored Spain 



trasted colouring, and among them all, swing along with leisurely 

 wing-beats but equal speed, wedge-like skeins of great grey-geese. 

 A single mornino's bao- mav include seven or eioht different 

 species, sometimes a dozen. 



Now the rim of the sun shows over the distant sierra, and 

 one becrins to see one's environment and to realise what Las 



o 



Xuevas is like. Of Mother Earth as one normally conceives it 

 not a particle is in sight, beyond such low reeds and miles of 

 samphire-tops as break the watery surface, and a vista of this 

 extends to the horizon. 



Behind our positions stretched a lucio of open water. 

 Upon this, a mile away, stood an army of flamingoes, whose 



croaks and gabblings filled the still air. During a quiescent 

 interval I examined these with binoculars. Thereupon I dis- 

 covered that the whole lucio around them and stretching away, 

 say a league in length, was carpeted with legions of duck, which 

 had not been noticed with the naked eye. The discovery ex- 

 plained also a resonant reverberation that, at recurring intervals, 

 I had noticed all the morning, and which I had attributed to 

 the gallant Cervera's squadron at quick-firing gun-practice away 

 in Cadiz Bay. Now I saw the cause ; it was due to the duck- 

 hawks and birds-of-prey I Twice within ten minutes a swooping 

 marsh-harrier aroused that host on wing — or, say, half-a-mile of 

 them — to fly in terror ; but only to settle a few hundred yards 



