356 Unexplored Spain 
a chasm riven right through the earth's crust till its depths are 
invisible from above ; and overshadowed by encircling walls of 
sheer red crags, broken horizontally at intervals, thus forming, 
as it were, tier above tier, and 
flanked by a series of bastions 
and flying buttresses apparently 
provided to support the vast 
superstructure above. 
By climbing along the rugged 
central tier, one overlooks from 
its apex, as from the reserved 
seats of a dress-circle, the whole 
domestic economy of a vulture 
city in being. Every ledge in 
that abyss was crowded; many vultures sat brooding, their 
heads laid flat on the rock or tucked under the point of a 
wing. Elsewhere a single grey-white chick, or a huge white egg, 
lay in full view on the open ledge, nestled, apparently, on bare 
earth; and behind these each niche or cavern had its tenant. 
The rocks around a nest were often stained blood-red, and one 
vulture arrived carrying a mass of what appeared carrion in its 
claws. Another brought a wisp of dry esparto-grass athwart 
her beak and deposited it in 
her nest.’ 
While we watched this 
scene a smart thunderstorm 
passed over, with the result 
that shortly afterwards the 
vultures spread their huge 
wings to dry, displaying 
attitudes some of which we a eth 
Dy Fyn 
endeavour to sketch —see OO ie 
also p. 9. 
The descent into the un- 
seen depths beneath was rewarded, despite a terrible scramble 
—part of the way on a rope—by discovering a fairy grotto 
filled with pink, azure, and opalescent stalactites and stalagmites. 
“WING-DRYING” 
1 Note that the pellets or ‘‘ castings” thrown up by vultures are chiefly formed of grass 
cut up into lengths and compacted with saliva, evidently digestive. We have frequently 
seen vultures carrying a wisp of grass in their beaks. 
