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I 2 Unexplored Spain 



enormous pan of potatoes over a green brushwood fire, while 

 domestic animals (including cattle) passed freely through to the 

 byres beyond. These being on higher ground had created in 

 front a sort of quagmire, which was crossed by a plank-bridge. 

 Rain was falling smartly, and the wTiter's spirits, be it confessed, 

 sank to zero at the prospect of a week or two in such quarters. 

 Worse situations, however, have had to be faced, and usually 

 yield to resolute treatment. Thus when a separate room — albeit 

 but a dirty potato store — had been assigned to us, trestle-beds 

 and a table set up, the quality of comfort advanced in quite 

 disproportionate degree. 



Now the Sierra Nevdda with its leaofue-lono; lines of unbroken 

 snow, accentuated by the mystery of the towering Veleta, massive 

 Mulahacen, and the rest, presents an alpine panorama that is 

 absolutely unrivalled in all the Peninsula. But immediately 

 below those transcendent altitudes, in its middle regions the 

 Sierra Nevada is lacking in many of those attributes that charm 

 our eyes — naturalists' eyes. Over vast areas and on broad 

 shoulders of the hills the winter-snows linger so long that plant- 

 life, where not actually extinct, is scant and starved ; while these 

 dreary inchoate stretches are strewn broadcast with a debris of 

 shale and schist that resembles nothino- so much as one of nature's 

 giant rubbish tips. True, there exists a sporadic brushwood, 

 exiguous, dwarfed, and intermittent ; there are scattered trees, 

 ilex and pinaster {Pinus imiaster), up to about 7000 feet. But 

 all seems barren by comparison. One's eye hungers for the deep 

 jungles of Morena, for the dark -green ijinscqoos of San Cristobal, 

 or the stately granite walls of Gredos. Here all is on a big 

 scale, the biggest in Spain ; but size alone does not itself con- 

 stitute beauty, and the adornments of beauty are lacking. We 

 write of course not as mountaineers, but as naturalists. 



It boots not to tell of days when rain fell in sheets and an 

 icy nehlina swept the hills, shrouding their summits from view. 

 A single ornitholooical remembrance shall be recorded — the 

 abundance of certain northern-breeding species on the middle 

 heights, especially common wheatears and skylarks. After 

 watching these carefully, we were convinced by their actions 

 (their song, courting, and fluttering flight) that both intended 

 to nest here at 7000 feet, and dissection confirmed that view. 

 Time alone prevented our settling the point ; but a month 



