CHAPTER XXI 
SIERRA DE GREDOS (Continued) 
IBEX-HUNTING 
Way try to describe the distress of that morning or the efforts 
it cost, during fourteen hours, to gain the summits of Grédos ? 
Again and again what we had taken for our destination proved 
to be some intervening ridge with another desperate gorge beyond. 
Suffice it that it was an hour after dark ere we finally lifted the 
cargoes from the dead-beat beasts. Presently the moon arose, 
and against her pale effulgence towered the gnarled and pinnacled 
peaks of Almanzér, piercing the very skies—a lovely but to me 
an appalling scene. Their altitude is 8800 feet. 
Our whole plan and ambitions in this expedition were to find 
and stalk the ibex—the very undertaking which had proved 
beyond our powers during two strenuous efforts in former years 
as readers of Wild Spain already know. 
Now in all stalking it must be obvious even to non-technical 
readers that the first essential is to bring under survey of the 
binoculars a very considerable extent of game-country every day ; 
but here, in the chaotic jumble of perpendicular or impending 
precipice or smooth rock-faces inclined at angles that we dare not 
traverse, any such extensive survey is a sheer impossibility. 
Alpine climbers or others in the fullest enjoyment of youth 
and activity might get forward at a reasonable speed. To 
us, already past that stage, the feat was impossible, ze. by our 
own sole exertions. That we, of course, knew in advance ; but 
our plan was to supplement our own powers by availing the 
splendid rock-climbing ‘abilities of our friends, the goat-herds of 
Almanzér, on whom we relied for at least finding the game in the 
first instance. 
Ramoén and Isidéro were away by the first glint of dawn, 
216 
