Our ^^Home-Mountains" 349 



delicate superstructure of Ijraiiches totally disproportionate. 

 No more fantastic forms can be conceived than these l)loated 

 boles, wrestling, as it were, with death, yet still able to transmit 

 life to the superstruction above. They recall the Baobal) trees 

 of Central Africa. In neither case is the effect absolutely dis- 

 pleasing, albeit grotes(|ue. Both may be described as deformed 

 rather than disfiQ;ured. 



On rounding the northern shoulder of the mountain, suddenly 

 the whole scene changes. Instead of limb-lopped trunks, one is 

 faced by the dark foliage of the pinsapo pine — a forest monarch 

 whose stately growth strikes one's eye as something conspicuously 

 new. And new indeed it is. For the range of this great Spanish 

 pine (Abies pinsapo) is limited not merely to Spain, but actually 

 to this one mountain-range, the Serrania de Konda — there may 

 exist more remarkable examples of a restricted distribution, l)ut 

 none certainly that we have come across. The pinsapo, more- 

 over, affects even here but three spots : first, San Cristobal 

 itself; secondly, the Sierra de las Nieves, a mountain plainly 

 visible some thirty miles to the eastward (all its northern corries 

 darkened by pinsapos) ; and, lastly, the Sierra Bermeja on the 

 Mediterranean, distant thirty to thirty-five miles S.S.E. On 

 each of the three the pinsapo grows in forests ; on adjacent hills 

 we have observed one or two scattered groups — otherwise this 

 pine is found nowhere else on earth. 



A curious character of the pinsapo is that it only grows on 

 the northern faces of the hills. 



The tree possesses remarkable personality. Though one sees 

 a chance specimen grow up straight as a spruce, yet its normal 

 tendency is to " fiatten out " on top, whence three, four, even 

 a dozen independent "leaders" spring away, each with equal 

 vigour, and finally form as many distinct vertical trunks, say six 

 or eight sej)arate pines all arising from a common base. 



To see the pinsapo in its pristine majesty and massiveness, 

 one must ascend beyond the range of charcoal-burners ; up there 

 fiourish gigantic specimens, some of which we measured (by rough 

 pacing) to encompass ten to fifteen yards of base. These trees 

 grow from screes of broken rock — great blocks of white dolomite ; 

 but the deep-searching tap-roots penetrate to black alluvia 

 beneath. Other huge pines found roothold in walls of living 

 rock. The three sketches, made from individual trees (presumed 



