218 Unexplored Spain 
some ten feet from wing to wing, and the tiny speck that this 
one, reduced by distance, appeared on the object-glass helped me 
to gauge what lay before us. 
A black point that from camp I had mentally noted as a 
landmark proved to be a mass of dolomite seamed with inter- 
jected strize of glistening felspar, big as a village church ! 
I had demanded four hours, and precisely within that period 
“THE WAY OF AN EAGLE IN THE AIR” 
(LAMMERGEYER—GYypaétus barbatus) 
reached my celestial pinnacle. Bertram was beyond and higher 
still—where, I could not see. But my own post seemed to me as 
sublime as even an ibex-hunter could desire, at the culminating 
apex of the Spains and the centre of dispersal of four giant gorges 
each bristling with bewildering chaos of crags and rock-ruin, while 
above, to right and left, towered yet loftier 77scos. 
At these serene altitudes life appeared non-existent. The last 
signs of a cryptogamic vegetation we had left below, and I 
could now see eagles or vultures soaring almost perpendicularly 
beneath and reduced by distance to moving specks. 
Yet shortly before reaching our posts, along one of those 
