278 Unexplored Spain 



hunting-dog, Frascuelo by name, after a straiglit-away run of 

 five or six miles over the sun-dried plain, we fairly rode liold 

 Reynard down and killed him. 



Six months after the publication of Wild Spain we received 

 the following letter from H.R.H. the late Phillippe, Comte de 

 Paris, the owner of the adjoining Goto del Rey : — 



June 17, 1893. 

 Having read with the greatest pleasure and interest your description 

 of the wild camels, it struck me that you may appreciate a photograph 

 taken from nature of one of these independent inhabitants of the 

 shores of Guadalquivir. I found that one could only look at them 

 from a distance, and therefore the enclosed photograplis may be of 

 interest. They were taken three months ago by my nephew, Prince 

 Henry of Orleans. My keepers had in the early morning separated tliis 

 single animal from the herd, but it escaped from them about JMarilopez at 

 noon, and when we met with him near the Laguna de la Madre, and 

 about a mile from the Goto del Rey, we had only to give him a last 

 gallop to catch him. These camels spend great part of the year on ground 

 of which I am either the owner or the tenant, and I do my best to 

 protect them from the terrible poacliers coming from Trebujena. In 

 order to be able to do this more effectually*, I bouglit yesterday from the 

 heirs of the landowners who turned them out some seventy years ago, I 

 think, all the claims they can have on these animals. 



We have recently been favoured by the present Comte de 

 Paris with the latest details respecting the camels. In a note 

 dated August 1910, H.R.H. writes : — 



For some time their numbers have been decreasing, and we no longer 

 see great troops of them as we used to do eighteen years ago. The cause 

 of tlieir diminution is certainly the bitter war waged against them by 

 poachers. The parts of the marisma frequented by the M'ild camels lie 

 between the Coto del Eey on the north, the Goto Donana on the west, 

 and the Guadalquivir on the south-east. The long deep channels of 

 La Madre, however, interfere with their reaching the Goto Donana, and 

 they chiefly graze in the marismas of Hinojos and Almonte. The plan 

 pursued by the poachers is as follows : — Goming down from some of the 

 little villages, they cross the river in small flat-bottomed boats in which 

 they can creep along the shores to points where they have seen either the 

 spoor or the animals themselves during the day. Then drawing near to 

 the camels, under cover of the waning light, they are able to kill one or 

 sometimes two, which they skin and disembowel on the spot. The flesh 

 is cut up into pieces, sewn up in the skin, and, on returning to the river- 

 bank, secreted beneath the flat bottom-boards of the boat, thereby evading 



