98 



WILD SPAIN. 



de Villa Franca, in 1829, he intending to make use of 

 them in the Coto for transporting timher, charcoal, &c. 

 The descendants of this Domingo, the two brothers Bar- 

 rera of Almonte, now own the fifty or sixty animals which 

 make the marisma lying between the Coto proper and the 

 Guadalquivir their feeding- ground. They seldom appear 

 on the wooded parts, remaining winter and summer in the 

 marisma, moving with the greatest ease in winter through 

 the mud and water, from one island to another, occasion- 

 ally coming to the woods to pasture on the tops of the 

 young pines. 



"You know, from your flamingo experiences, how vast 

 a waste is comprised between the borders of the Coto and 

 the river (Guadalquivir) which accounts for the camels 

 being seldom seen except by herdsmen and others (Mr. 

 Abel Chapman, to wit) whose business may take them out 

 into the watery wilderness. Manuel Euiz, conocedor of the 

 Villa- Vilviestre herd,* now tells me that at about three- 

 quarters of a league from the Cerro-Trigo he saw yesterday 

 three females with their young, which he judged to be 

 about twenty days old. 



" I can send you any further particulars required, and if 

 the unbelievers will not swallow your camel, we must do 

 what Mr. Saunders did with the doubted specimen [of 

 the crane's egg] , and bring before them a Spanish-born 

 camel, hump and all. Nothing is easier. Sport pretty 

 good so far — five stags, four pigs, two lynxes." 



We are also kindly privileged to quote the following 

 statement of Lord Lilford's personal observation of the 

 wild camels : — " I was not aware till I saw Saunders' note 

 at the end of your paper and read the subsequent cor- 

 respondence in The Field, that any one doubted the exist- 

 ence of camels in a virtually wild state in the marisma. 

 I once saw four or five of them together at a vast distance, 

 and, in 1872, came across their ' spoor ' several times when 

 exploring the marismas of the Coto. Their existence is 

 perfectly well known to many people at San Lucar, and, 



* Wild-bred cattle, many of them destined for the bull-rings of 

 Jerez or Seville. 



