152 Unexplored Spain 
carried four points on the main beam, as well as four on top— 
length 344 inches, by 52 inches basal circumference. 
The “ Gia? of the ibex in the Sierra Quintana lie among 
some fairly big crags forming the eastern and southern faces of 
the range. The shooting at that time was free; hence the goats 
were never left in peace by the mountaineers, who all carried 
guns, and used them whenever a chance presented itself. The 
result was that the few surviving goats had become severely 
nocturnal in habit, spending the entire day in caves and crevices 
in the faces of sheer and naked precipices. 
Some of their eyries appeared absolutely inaccessible to any 
creature unendowed with wings. One cave, though it had no 
visible approach, was situate only some eight or ten feet above 
a ledge in the perpendicular rock-face. One morning at dawn 
two ibex having been seen to enter this cave, at once a couple 
of the wiry goat-herds thought to reach them from the ledge 
below, one lad actually climbing on to the other’s shoulders as he 
stood on that narrow shelf. In its rush to escape, however, the 
leading ibex upset the precarious balance, and the poor lad was 
precipitated among the tumbled rocks in the abyss below. 
Riding homewards through inhospitable brush-clad hills to- 
wards the railway (forty miles away), we put up one night at a 
village named, with unconscious irony, Cardefia Real. In the 
small hours broke out another terrific disturbance—shrieks, 
squeals, barking—all the dogs gone mad. The night was 
pitch-dark with rain falling in torrents; but next morning we 
ascertained that a pack of wolves had carried off the landlord’s 
pigs from their stye, not fifteen yards away—indeed, three 
mangled porkers lay piled up against the wall of our hovel. 
The contingency of pigs being worse off than ourselves had 
not previously occurred to us. Thus ended, in a cycle of catas- 
trophe, our first wrestle with Capra hispdnica in Moréna; but 
initial failure only served to stimulate further efforts later on. 
Winter, moreover, is no season for camping in these high sierras ; 
May is more favourable, but the early autumn is best of all. 
At this period (1901) the surviving ibex had fallen to a 
mere handful. Fortunately here, as elsewhere in Spain, there 
was aroused, within the next five years, the tardy interest of 
Spanish landowners to save them. 
The owner of the sierras above mentioned (the Marquis del 
