26 



WILD SPAIN. 



beasts of his native mountains, was placed in command of 

 the beaters, a motley, picturesque group with their leathern 

 accoutrements and scarlet fajas. Of dogs, we had four 

 podencos, tall, stiff-built, wiry-haired "terrier-greyhounds," 

 fleet of foot, trained to find and harass the boar, to force 

 him to break covert, but yet so wary at feint and retreat 

 as to avoid the sweep of his tusks. Then there was huge 

 " Moro," Don Gaspar's half-mastiff, half-bloodhound, whose 

 staunchness was tested of old, and others of lesser note. 

 Around our quarters were cultivated clearings of a few 





OUR QUARTERS IN THE SIERRA. 



acres, fenced with the usual aloe and cactus : otherwise 

 the landscape was one panorama of forest and evergreen 

 brushwood, extending far up the mountain-sides, and 

 towards the barren stony summits. These sierras of 

 Jerez are of no great height relatively— perhaps 3,000 to 

 4,000 feet— and many of them bear unmistakable evi- 

 dence of their long struggles with glacial ice in bygone 

 ages — each tall slope consisting of a regular series of 

 vertical bastions, or buttresses, alternating with deep glens 

 in singular uniformity. Their conformation recalled the 

 distant valleys of Spitsbergen, where we have seen the 



