DEER-STALKING AND " STILL-HUNTING." 429 



and the stately and historic city had been swept away — as 

 Consuegra and many a small town or village was swept 

 away in Southern Spain during the terrible floods of 

 'ninety-two. 



Such climatic conditions would not be wholly unfavour- 

 able for deer-stalking — reducing the area over which the 

 game is scattered — provided there should now be some 

 cessation of the down-pour. A lull had at length occurred, 

 and the writer set out from Seville to spend the few 

 remaining days of the season in a remote region of those 

 brush-clad prairies which cover so vast an area in Southern 

 Spain. My only companions were two Spanish cazadores, 

 brothers, men of keen eye and of tried skill in woodcraft. 

 The object was to endeavour by rastreando, or still-hunting, 

 to secure a few of the old and wary stags which roamed 

 over these barren down-lands ; but which were far .too 

 cunning to lose their lives in the customary Spanish 

 batidas, or drives. Was it possible, single-handed, and on 

 such comparatively open ground, to out-manceuvre these 

 old forest-monarchs, which, on a former visit, we had seen 

 make good their escape from six or eight rifles? This 

 question we decided to solve, and to devote the remaining 

 days to " still-hunting," abandoning every other form of 

 attack. 



The rains had left much of these rolling downs too wet 

 for shelter, many of the thickets and patches of " seroggy " 

 wood being breast-deep in water. The picarps tunantes, 

 i.e., cunning old rogues, as Manuel termed our friends 

 the big stags, were therefore reduced for dry-lying to the 

 higher ridges and plateaux of the plains ; and these, it 

 chanced, lay at the greatest distance — a long two-days' ride. 



The sun was low ere our horses' hoofs resounded on dry 

 land, instead of the constant splash, splosh through 

 flooded hollows or standing pools of rain-water. Here, too, 

 the swelling prairie afforded rather more covert. We had 

 now reached favourable ground, and from each rising point 

 we examined the surrounding country with minute scrutiny, 

 scanning each nook and corner with the binoculars. After 

 a while we made out the head of a stag, apparently feeding 



