WILDFOWLING IN THE WILDERNESS. 385 



tion, now the travellers find in their stead a calcined plain 

 devoid of all that is attractive to the tastes of their tribe. 

 For the parched-up soil, whose life-blood has been drained 

 by the heats of the summer solstice, whose plant-life is 

 burnt up, remains panting all the autumn through for the 

 precious moisture that comes not. The carcases of cattle 

 and horses that have died of thirst and lack of pasturage 

 strew the plains ; the winter-sown wheat is dead ere germi- 

 nation is complete. 



In such years of drought many of the newly- arrived 

 wildfowl — especially pintails — pass on southwards (into 

 Africa) not to return till February; but numbers crowd 

 into the few places where the precious element — water 

 — still exists. Such a spot is the Eetuerta ; and along 

 its ten-mile length of tasselled sedge and 30-foot bamboo 

 are concentrated such hosts of wildfowl as seldom entrance 

 the sportsman's eye. In this favoured nook in distant An- 

 dalucia let us now live again a few of those eventful days. 



At length our party of ten guns are assembled in the 

 shooting-box. Never before, at this season, have we 

 ridden those thirty miles across so thirsty a land. Vasquez 

 and his confreres received us reproachfully — Why have we 

 not come sooner ? But are all the geese gone ? Hay, hay 

 anseres, pero no la decima parte de que habia — " there are 

 some geese," he replies, " but not the tenth part of what 

 there were." Then a smile came over his Ked-Indian. coun- 

 tenance, as he added — pero todavia hay para dwertirse — 

 " there are yet enough for sport." When Vasquez reckons 

 there are enough for sport we know that, allowing for 

 Andalucian exaggeration, there will be hot barrels before 

 the day is done. What he calls, in his expressive 

 language, a salpicon — a sprinkling, may mean several acres 

 in a flock ; a pufiado, or handful, a thick mass of several 

 thousand ! When he talks of a tiro regular — an ordinary 

 shot, we know he means about thirty couples of mallards 

 with one barrel. For Vasquez has striven for a living, as 

 his fathers did before him, with the ducks of these wilds ; 

 and when he did let off his ponderous blunderbuss it was 

 at very close quarters, and meant execution. Quantity was 



c c 



