160 Unexplored Spain 
guerrilleros on earth) comes effectively into play. In practice 
it is seldom that the best “‘ passes” are not commanded. 
In the higher ranges skylines are frequently pierced by nicks 
or “ passes” (termed por'tillas) sufficiently marked as to suggest, 
even to a stranger possessed of an eye for such things, the 
probable lines of retreat for moving game. But “passes” are 
not always conspicuous, nor are all skylines of broken contour. 
On the contrary, there frequently present themselves long summits 
that to casual glance appear wholly uniform. Here comes to aid 
that local intuition referred to, nor will it be found lacking. 
Many a long hill-ridge apparently featureless may (and often 
does) include several well-frequented passes. Some slight sense 
of disappointment may easily lurk in one’s breast in surveying 
one’s allotted post to perceive not a single sign of “advantage ” 
within its radius—or ‘‘ jurisdiction,” as Spanish keepers quaintly 
put it. Yet it may be after all—and probably is—the apex of a 
congeries of converging watercourses, glens, or other accustomed 
salidas (outlets), all of which are invisible in the unseen depths 
on one’s front; but which salient points in cynegetic geography 
are perfectly appreciated by our guide. 
The brushwood of Moréna consists over vast areas—many 
hundreds of square miles—of the gum-cistus, a sticky-leaved 
shrub that grows shoulder-high on the stoniest ground. Wherever 
a slightly more generous soil permits, the cistus is interspersed 
and thickened with rhododendron, brooms, myrtle, and a hundred 
cognate plants. On the richer slopes and dells there crowd 
together a matted jungle of lentisk and arbutus, white buck-thorn 
and holly, all intertwined with vicious prehensile briar and 
woodbine, together with heaths, genista, giant ferns, and gorse 
of a score of species. Watercourses are overarched by oleanders, 
and the chief trees are cork-oak and ilex, wild-olive, juniper, and 
alder, besides others of which we only know the Spanish names, 
quejigos, algarrobas, agracejis, etc. 
Naturally, in such rugged broken ground as the sierras, where 
the guns are protected by intervening heights, shooting is 
permissible in any direction, whether in front or behind, and 
even sometimes along the line itself. A survival of savage days, 
when beaters didn’t count, is suggested by a refrain of the sierra :— 
Mas vale matdr un Cristiano 
Que no dejar ir una res— 
