IBEX-SHOOTING IN SPAIN. 161 



natives, tiradores of Enalguacil, of Coin, and other hamlets 

 of the sierra, sleeping on the open hill, and possessing 

 twice our speed of foot on their native rocks, were always 

 on our front ; and in order to get clear of competition, we 

 moved our camp across the ridge to the north. This 

 operation involved sending forward at daybreak a dozen 

 men with hatchets to clear a way for the laden mules, 

 some fifty or sixty well-grown pines, with hundreds 

 of lesser growth, perishing before a passage was practic- 

 able. "We encamped on a forest-opening at a spot called 

 the Majada del Alcornoque, altitude 3,400 feet, the same 

 evening — first having to remove several hundred stones 

 from the camping-ground, for almost each afforded shelter 

 to a scorpion or gigantic centipede. 



Here, during the next few days, we had the (to us) 

 singular experience of ibex-driving in thick pine-forest and 

 deep wooded ravines, with generally a strong undergrowth 

 of bushes and scrub — the beau ideal of a roe-deer country, 

 but the last place in the world in which we should have 

 expected wild-goat. The goats were there, nevertheless, 

 for females and young males were seen on different occa- 

 sions by guns or beaters. In one tremendous clam- shaped 

 gorge, an ibex and a wild pig were both on foot at once ! 

 The only ibex the present writer had the luck to see in this 

 part of the sierra — which seemed to be composed almost 

 entirely of ironstone and other mineral ores — was by a 

 purely fortuitous encounter. On the sudden lifting of a 

 dense cloud-bank which rested on the mountain-side, I 

 descried, right above me, four ibex — including two fair- 

 sized rams — all standing oh a projecting rock, in bold 

 relief against the sky, and not above 400 yards away. 

 The intervening ground was rugged — rocks and brushwood 

 with scattered pines — and, except for the first fifty yards, 

 the stalk seemed to offer no great difficulty. Already I 

 had passed the dangerous bit, and had crawled near 200 

 yards, when, alas ! in a moment the wet mist settled down 

 again, and I saw no more of the game. 



Curiously, on the fog first lifting, a large eagle sat, all 

 bedraggled and woe-begone, on a rock-point not forty 



