36 Unexplored Spain 
remains that to-day there is tacked on to the southernmost 
confines of Europe a singular exotic patch of African desert. 
This sand-barrier, known as the Coto Dofiana, occupies, 
together with its adjoining dunes on the west, upwards of forty 
miles of the Spanish coast-line, its maximum breadth reaching 
in places to eight or ten miles. The Coto Dofiana is cut off from 
the mainland of Spain not only by the great river, but by the 
marisma—a watery wilderness wide enough to provide a home 
for wandering herds of wild camels. (See rough sketch-map 
above. ) 
Sand and sand alone constitutes the soil-substance of Dofiana, 
overlying, presumably, the buried alluvia beneath. Yet a 
wondrous beauty and variety of landscape this desolate region 
affords. From the river’s mouth forests of stone-pine extend 
unbroken league beyond league, hill and hollow glorious in 
deep-green foliage, while the forest-floor revels in wealth of 
aromatic shrubbery all lit up by chequered rays of dappled 
sunlight. Westward, beyond the pine-limit, stretch regions of 
Saharan barrenness where miles of glistening sand-wastes devoid 
of any vestige of vegetation dazzle one’s sight—a glory of 
magnificent desolation, the splendour of sterility. To home- 
naturalists the scene may recall St. John’s classic sandhills of 
Moray, but magnified out of recognition by the vastly greater 
scale, as befits their respective creators—in the one case the 
100-league North Sea, here the 1000-league Atlantic. Rather 
would we compare these marram-tufted, wind-sculptured sand- 
wastes with the Red Sea litoral and the Egyptian Soudan, where 
Osman Digna led British troops memorable dances in the ‘nineties 
—alike both in their physical aspect and in their climate, red-hot 
by day, yet apt to be deadly chilly after sundown. Resonant 
with the weird cry of the stone-curlew and the rhythmic roar of 
the Atlantic beyond, these seaward dunes are everywhere traced 
with infinite spoor of wild beasts, and dotted by the conical 
pitfalls dug by ant-lions (Myrmeleon). 
Between these extremes of deep forest and barren dune are 
interposed intermediate regions partaking of the character of 
both. Here the intrusive pine projects forest-strips, called 
Corrales, as it were long oases of verdure, into the heart of the 
desert, hidden away between impending dunes which rear them- 
selves as a mural menace on either hand, and towering above the 
