DEER-STALKING AND " STILL-HUNTING." 438 



less sleeping away the hours of daylight in some of the 

 neighbouring thickets. Hours passed, but no rastro gordo 

 (heavy track) was discovered, though every sign and 

 impress on the light sandy soil was read as a book by the 

 brothers, who quartered the ground to right and left like a 

 brace of first-rate setters. M. was the first to find : 

 suddenly he stopped and beckoned : — yes, those prints are 

 undoubtedly of far larger hoofs than any we have yet seen : 

 nor are they the spoor of one tunante, but of two. Here, 

 says M., look where the two big beasts have stopped 

 together to nibble the shoots of this escobon (genista) — 

 there they have stripped a romero (rosemary) of its mauve- 

 coloured blossoms — and here, along this hollow, they have 

 taken their way at daybreak, direct towards some thicket- 

 sanctuary. Now, we will not leave them, adds the wild 

 man, till you have had a carambola a boca de jarro ! "a 

 right-and-left at half-range." For three or four miles, 

 we follow the line, the men hardly deigning to look on the 

 ground, but making, as by instinct, for points at which we 

 invariably picked up the trail. At first it was all plain 

 sailing ; but presently we came to places where to our eyes 

 no trace of spoor existed — to swamps where the uninitiated 

 would detect no sign in bruised water-flower or bent sedge- 

 shoot ; we passed beneath pine-coppices where the thick- 

 lying needles told him no tale of nimble feet that had 

 pressed them hours before. At such spots a check occa- 

 sionally occurred, when the brothers, muttering maledic- 

 tions on old stags in general, and still more scandalous 

 reflections on the maternal ancestry of these two in par- 

 ticular, opened out till one or the other caught the thread. 

 The discovery was signalled by holding up a hand, and on 

 we file, all three pressing quickly forward along the fatal 

 trail. A pretty sight to watch these men cast like sleuth- 

 hounds, when the trace was apparently lost — though lost 

 it never was. 



Now, after four miles or more, the trail gave certain 

 indications that were interpreted to mean a desire on the 

 part of the deer to seek shelter for the day — not a change 

 in their course but its import was calculated by the 



