228 Unexplored Spain 
human presence than you would see in equatorial Africa— 
surveying, let us say, the well-known Athi Plains from the 
adjoining heights of Lukénia. 
We are aware that already, in describing La Mancha, we have 
employed an African simile ; but here, in Estremadura, the com- 
parison is yet more apposite and forceful than in the wildest of 
Don Quixote’s country. We will vary it by likening Estremadura 
rather to the highlands of Transvaal—the land of the back-veld 
Boer—than to Equatoria. Here, as there, rocky koppies stud 
the wastes, and (differing 
from La Mancha) water- 
courses traverse them, with 
intermittent pools surviving 
even in June, stagnant and 
pestilent. Such in Africa 
would be jungle-fringed— 
worth trying for a lion! 
Here their naked banks 
scarce provide covert for a 
hare. 
An index of the poverty- 
stricken condition of Estre- 
madura is afforded by the 
comparative absence of the 
birds-of-prey. Never do 
the soaring vultures—elsewhere so characteristic of Spanish skies 
—catch one’s eye, and very rarely an eagle or buzzard. A pro- 
vince that cannot support scavengers promises ill for mankind. 
In his mirror-like ‘Notes from Spain,” Richard Ford 
suggested that the vast unknown wildernesses of Estremadura 
would, if explored, yield store of wealth to the naturalist, and 
each succeeding naturalist (ourselves included) followed that clue. 
Therein, however, lurked that old human error, ignotum pro 
mirabil. Deserted by man, the region is equally avoided by 
bird and beast. We write generally and in full sense of local 
exceptions—that wild fallow-deer, for example, find here one, 
possibly their only European home ;' that red deer of superb 
“SCAVENGERS ” 
1 Wild fallow-deer are indigenous among the infinite scrub-clad hills that fringe the 
course of the Tagus, as well as in various dehesas in the province of Caceres—those of 
Las Corchuelas and de Valero may be specified. The wild fallow are larger and finer animals 
than the others. 
