150 Unexplored Spain 
attest a bygone enterprise. To this day, we are told, the baths 
of Fuen-Caliente attract summer-visitors; we trust their health 
benefits thereby. Surely some counter-irritation is needed to 
balance the perils of a sojourn within that unsavoury eyrie. We 
write feelingly, even after all these years, and after suffering 
assorted tribulations in many a rough spot—Fuen-Caliente is bad 
to beat. 
Having tents and full camp-outfit, we had thought to live 
independent of the village posada. One night, however, as we 
climbed the rising ground that leads to the higher sierra there 
burst in our faces an easterly gale (Jevante), with driving snow- 
storms that even a mule could not withstand. Nothing remained 
but to seek shelter in the village below. 
Here my bedroom measured twelve feet by four, with a door 
at each end. The door proper was reached by a vertical ladder ; 
the second might perhaps be differentiated as a window, but 
could only be distinguished as such by its smaller size—both 
being made of solid wood. Thus, were the window open, snow 
swirled through as freely as on the open sierra; if shut, we 
lived in darkness dimly relieved by the flicker of a mariposa, 
that is, a cotton-wick reposing in a saucer of olive-oil. Under 
such conditions, with other nameless horrors, we passed three days 
and nights while gales blew and snow swirled by incessant. 
On the fourth morning the wind fell, and snow had given 
place to fine rain. These /evantes usually last either three or 
nine days; so, thinking this one had blown itself out, we packed 
the kit and set out in renewed search of ibex, Caraballo, with 
accustomed forethought, buying a bunch of live chickens, which 
hung by their legs from the after-pannier of the mule. On the 
limited area of Quintana, ibex offer the best chance of stalking. 
Mules are marvellous mountaineers. The places that animal 
surmounted to-day passed belief. Two donkeys that belonged 
to the local hunters, Abad and Brijido, who accompanied us, soon 
got stuck, and had to be left below. 
By three o’clock we, mule and all, had reached the highest ridge 
of Quintana, and encamped within a few hundred feet of its top- 
most 7iscos. 
To set up a tent among rocks is never easy; even specially 
made iron tent-pegs find no hold, and guy-ropes have to be made 
fast, as securely as may be, to any projecting point. 
