298 WILD SPAIN. 



name ; had never heard of such a thing ; the first 

 man one meets probably never has ; but there was in 

 the village a goatherd, muy inteligente en pajaros, " who 

 knew all about birds." I sent for this worthy, Francisco 

 Garcia de Conde by name, a light-built, why moun- 

 taineer. Francisco's ornithological repute was easily 

 acquired, for among the blind a one-eyed man is king; 

 but he certainly did know the Lammergeyer, and his 

 description of its habits and appearance passed the 

 evening away pleasantly enough. The quebranta-huesos he 

 described as a fierce and solitary bird — never seen more 

 than two together, and discriminated it from the vultures 

 as being muy daiiino — very destructive to goats, kids, and 

 other hill-stock, which it seizes and kills on the spot, or 

 hurls over the ledge of some precipice. He well described 

 their habit of engaging in aerial combat — " siempre se 

 ponen peleando en el ayre " — and their loud wild "pwing! 

 pwing ! " resounding through the mountain solitudes. Of 

 their actual nesting-places, however (which I was most 

 anxious to discover), he knew nothing, beyond positively 

 stating (and in this he was corroborated by other hill- 

 men) that they bred exclusively in the loftier sierras 

 beyond Eonda. We had ourselves spent some time tra- 

 versing those very sierras without seeing anything of this 

 bird ; but should add, were not at that time specially in 

 search of it. Their eyries, Francisco asserted, were only 

 to be found in the region of "living rocks" (piedras vivas), 

 which form the loftiest peaks. In this, however, as will 

 appear hi the next chapter, our friend Francisco was 

 mistaken. 



Our conversation was listened to — I don't imagine en- 

 joyed — by a pair of lovers, who, with a rather pretty girl, 

 the daughter of the house, presumably in the capacity of 

 duena, occupied the other side of the table. The cn- 

 amorados scarcely ever spoke ; he sat looking mutely into 

 her face, only muttering a whisper at long intervals. She 

 was absolutely silent, and looked stolid and stupid too. 



Leaving Algar, we crossed the bleak plateaux to the 

 eastward, brown, stony, and sterile ; thence descending to 



