228 



Unexplored S pain 



human presence than you woukl see in equatorial Africa — 

 surveying, let us say, the well-known Athi Plains from the 

 adjoining heights of Lukenia. 



We are aware that already, in describing La Manclia, we have 

 employed an African simile ; but here, in Estremadura, the com- 

 parison is yet more apposite and forceful than in the wildest of 

 Don Quixote's country. AVe will vary it by likening Estremadura 

 rather to the highlands of Transvaal — the land of the back-veld 

 Boer — than to Equatoria. Jlero, as there, rocky koppies stud 



the wastes, and (difi'ering 

 from La Mancha) water- 

 courses traverse them, with 

 intermittent pools surviving 

 even in June, stagnant and 

 pestilent. Such in Africa 

 would be jungle -fringed — 

 worth trying for a lion I 

 Here their naked banks 

 scarce provide covert for a 

 hare. 



An index of the poverty- 

 stricken condition of Estre- 

 madura is afforded by the 

 comparative absence of the 

 birds -of- prey. Never do 

 the soaring vultures — elsewhere so characteristic of Spanish skies 

 — catch one's eye, and very rarely an eagle or buzzard. A pro- 

 vince that cannot support scavengers promises ill for mankind. 



In his mirror-like "Notes from Spain," Richard Ford 

 suo'O'ested that the vast unknown wildernesses of Estremadura 

 would, if explored, yield store of wealth to the naturalist, and 

 each succeeding naturalist (ourselves included) followed that clue. 

 Therein, however, lurked that old human error, ignotum pro 

 mi7^abili. Deserted by man, the region is equally avoided by 

 bird and beast. We write generally and in full sense of local 

 exceptions — that wild fallow-deer, for example, find here one, 

 possibly their only European home ; ^ that red deer of superb 



1 Wild fallow-deer are indigenous among the infinite scrub-clad hills that fringe the 

 course of the Tagus, as well as in various dehesas in the province of Caceres — those of 

 Las Corchuelas and de Valero may be specified. The wild fallow are larger and finer animals, 

 than the others. 



"SCAVENGERS" 



