The Coto Dofiana 47 
have gone under our wind, and now the landscape is 
vacant. 
“Hinds only bark at a persona,” remarks Dominguez, as we 
turn homewards, ‘“‘never at any other bicho.” The stag knew 
that too. But it was a curious way of putting it. 
We are too early; it is still pitch-dark; no sign of 
dawn beyond a slight opalescence low on the eastern horizon. 
Moreover, an icy wind rustles across the waste, and for dreary 
minutes we seek shelter, squatting beneath some friendly gorse. 
Presently a strange sound—a distinct champing, and close by— 
strikes our ears. “Un javato comiendo” =‘‘a boar feeding,” 
whispers Dominguez, and creeping a few yards towards an open 
strath, we dimly descry a dusky monster. At the moment his 
snout is buried deep in the soil, up to the eyes, and the tremendous 
muscular power exerted in uprooting bulbs of palmetto arrests 
attention even in the quarter-light. Now he stands quiescent, 
head up, and the champing is resumed—a rare scene. The 
distance is a bare fifteen yards, and all the while my companion 
insists on hissing in my ear, “ tiré-lo, tiré-lo” =“ shoot, shoot.” 
Presently up goes the boar’s muzzle; straight and steadfastly he 
gazes in our direction, but his glance seemed to pass high over 
our heads. I don’t think he saw us; yet a consciousness of 
danger had got home—in two bounds he wheeled and disappeared, 
headlong, amid the bush beyond. 
Far and wide the bosky glade is furrowed with sinuous 
trenches, and infinite turrets stand erect as where children build 
sand-castles on the beach. Last night a troop of wild-pig have 
sought here for mole-crickets—small fry, one may think; yet even 
worms they don’t despise, for we have seen masses of these reptiles 
(some still alive) in the stomach of a newly-shot boar. Follow 
the spoor onwards, and where it enters a pine-grove, you notice 
splintered cones and scattered seed. Thus wild-beasts are assist- 
ing to fulfil nature’s plan, and if you care to advance it another 
stage, turn some soil over those overlooked pine-nuts, and some 
day forest-monarchs will result to reward another generation. 
Such matutinal forays are, however, but an incident. The 
main system of dealing with the deer is by driving. For this 
purpose both the fragrant solitudes of pine and far-stretched wilds 
of bending cistus are mentally mapped out by the forest-guards 
