3i6 Unexplored Spain 



Norway. Here, both to-day and yesterday, we observed ring- 

 ouzels, doubtless nesting amid the dense covert. 



We soon picked up our friends of yesterday — small hedge- 

 sparrow-like birds with blue-grey throat, striated back, and red 

 patches on either flank, the alpine accentor. At first they were 

 fairly tame, allowing us to watch and sketch them perched on 

 lowly shrub or rock, warbling a sweet little carol (louder, but 

 otherwise resembling that of our hedge-sparrow), or darting to 

 pick up a straying ant. After a while that confidence, though 

 wholly unabused, vanished ; they became wild and cautious, 

 refusing to allow us a single specimen ! These birds were 

 evidently paired, but showed no signs of nesting. Alas, that a 

 •irawing by Commander Lynes depicting the scene with the 

 Picdcho de la Veleta in the background refuses to " reproduce " ! 



These were the only accentors we saw, nor did we see to-day 

 or any other day a single snow-finch. 



An Alpine Farm. — The lands of San Geronimo (where we 

 were quartered) extend up the Monachil to either watershed 

 — a length of 4|- leagues, while the breadth cannot average less 

 than two. The acreage we leave to be calculated by those who 

 care for such detail. At this date (early May) certainly one- 

 half lay under snow, which still encumbered the higher patches 

 of cultivation — to-day we saw men unearthing last autumn's 

 crop of potatoes well above the snow-line. At lowM^r levels some 

 corn already stood six inches high, but many "fields" were 

 necessarily, as yet, unploughed. Fields, by the way, were 

 separated not, as at home, by hedges, but sometimes by a sheer 

 drop of 500 or 1000 feet, elsewhere by perpendicular rock-fsices 

 or by shale-shoots. But the laborious cultivation missed not one 

 level patch — nor unlevel either, since we saw ox-teams ploughing 

 where one wondered if even a cat could maintain a footing. 



This is the highest farm in Nevada, possibly in all Spain. 

 The house stands at 6000 feet and the lands extend to the Veleta, 

 11,597 feet. It provides grazing for goats and sheep, as well as a 

 small herd of cattle, and thus affords permanent employment to 

 several herdsmen. But at seed-time and harvest it em^jloys 

 as many as twenty or thirty men who, Avitli their dependents, live 

 in rude esparto-thatched huts scattered over the whole fifteen 

 miles, and it was the numbers of these (assembled for pay-day) 



