294 WILD SPAIN. 



sounded almost satirical — as some one has said, life would 

 be endurable but for its pleasures. By dawn we were 

 crossing the hungry gravel-ridges beyond Cuartillos, and 

 watched the sun rise from behind the stony pile of San 

 Christobal, bathing the distant mountains, whither we 

 were bound, in glorious golden glow. 



Crossing the Guadalete by the ford of Barca Florida, 

 our route led through leagues of lovely park-lite land 

 — here straggling natural woods or ferny glades, anon 

 opening out upon stretches of heath and palmetto. The 

 track, where one existed, a typical Spanish by-way, shut in 

 between vertical banks of slippery white marl, that barely 

 left room for the laden mule ; its narrow bed was a turgid 

 mud-hole, honeycombed with the footprints of beasts that 

 had gone before. "Where the heath was more open we 

 could take an independent course ; but the scrub, as a 

 rule, was impenetrable, and left no alternative but to go 

 on plunging through the clinging mud. At noon we out- 

 spanned for almuerzo beneath a cork-oak, the weather and 

 the scene alike lovely beyond words. The evergreen woods 

 swarmed with life ; over the green expanse of palmetto 

 hovered hen-harriers : a pair of kites swept over the 

 wooded slopes of Berlanger, grey shrikes sat perched on 

 dead boughs; chats, larks, buntings, and goldfinches 

 swarmed, and all the usual Spanish birds, to wit, 

 bustards great and small, cranes, storks, peewits, red-legs, 

 kestrels, &c, were observed during the day's ride. 



Later in the afternoon we were fairly among the out- 

 spurs of the sierra, and overhead, on heavy wing, soared 

 the vultures. What a curious commentary on the state 

 of a country are such hordes of huge carrion-feeders, and 

 how eloquently does their presence attest a backward and 

 listless condition in the lands they inhabit ! In Spain, 

 it is true, vultures serve a useful office as scavengers ; 

 yet in modern Europe they surely seem an anachronism. 

 No doubt it is due as much to the physical conditions, to 

 the desert character and semi-tropical climate of this wild 

 land, as to the apathy of the Spanish people, that they 

 exist in such numbers. Among nations more keenly im- 



