Sierra de Grédos 211 
while was broken up; tents and gear packed on ponies and 
mules, breakfast finished—we were off, heavenwards. Then, just 
as the laden pack-animals filed through the burn, there rode up a 
man—he had ridden all night—and bore a message that changed 
our exuberant joy to grief—bad news from home. 
There could be no doubt—the writer must return at once. 
Within five minutes I had decided to make for a point on the 
northern railway beyond the hills and distant some sixty miles 
as the crow flies. Baggage and battery were abandoned; a 
handbag with a satchel of provisions and a wine-skin formed my 
luggage, and, leaving my companions in this wild spot, I set 
forth in the grey dawn on a barebacked mule devoid of saddle, 
bridle, or stirrups, and accompanied by two of our hill-bred 
lads, one riding pillion behind or running alongside in turn. 
Where the grey ramparts of the Risco del Fraile and the 
Casquerdézo frown on a rugged earth below I parted with my 
old pals, they to continue the ibex-hunt, I on my mournful 
homeward way. 
Bee-eaters poised and chattered, brilliant butterflies (whose 
names I forgot to note), abounded as we rode along those fearful 
edges and boulder-studded steeps. Six hours of this brought us 
to a rock-poised hamlet of the sierra. The landlord of the posada 
was also the Alcalde (mayor) of the district, and even then pre- 
siding over a meeting of the council (aywntamiento). Amidst 
dogs, children, fleas, and dirt, along with my two goat-herd 
friends, we made breakfast. 
Thence over the main pass of Navasomera—no road, not the 
vestige of a track, and a tremendous ravine stopped us for hours, 
and for a time threatened to prove impassable. By patience and 
recklessness we lowered mule and ourselves down scrub-choked 
screes, and after some of the roughest work of my life gained a 
goat-herd’s track which led upwards to the pass. After clearing 
the reverse slope we traversed for twenty miles a dreary upland 
(6000 feet) till we struck the head-waters of the Albirche river, 
where my lads tickled half-a-dozen trout and a frog! Kites beat 
along the stony hills, where wheatears and stonechats fluttered 
incessant, with dippers and sandpipers on the burn below. 
We halted at a lonely venta (wayside wine-shop), where 
assembled goat-herds courteously made room, and passed me their 
wine-skin. Presently one of them asked whither I went, remarking, 
