Our ‘‘Home-Mountains” 3 53 
The bed of the canyon, which from above had appeared to be 
paved with sand, now proved to consist of boulders ten feet 
high. After threading a devious course through these for 
half-a-mile we reached the mouth of the grotto. Its width 
would be nearly 200 feet and height about half that, the form 
roughly resembling the quarter of a cocoa-nut. The dome, in 
delicate colouring, passes description—the apex bright salmon- 
pink, changing, as it passed inwards, first into clear emerald, 
then to dark green, and finally to indigo; while the reflected 
sunlight filtering down between the rock-walls of the canyon 
caused phantasmagoric effects such as, one thought, existed only 
in fairyland. The cavern was backed by pillars of stalactites 
resembling the pipes of a mighty organ, and of so soft and 
feathery a texture that it was surprising, on touching them, to 
find hard rock. The floor also was composed of great smooth 
stalagmites, deep brown in colour. 
From outside, one saw the sky as through a narrow rift 
between the perpendicular walls which towered up 300 feet ; and 
above that level there again uprose the vultures’ cliffs already 
described. 
One evening we detected afar a cavern which showed signs 
of being the present abode of a lammergeyer. Ere reaching it, 
however, a keen eye descried one of these birds in the heavens 
at an altitude that dwarfed the great G'ypaétus to the size of a 
humble kestrel. Presently, after many descending sweeps, the 
lammergeyer entered another cavern 2000 feet higher up—in fact, 
close under the sky-line, among some scanty pinsdpos. The hour 
was 4 p.M., and after a long day’s scramble, the writer shied at 
a fresh ascent. Not so my companion, L., who set off at a run, 
and within an hour had reached the eyrie. It proved empty, 
though the leg of a freshly killed kid lay half across the nest. 
This was presumably the alternative site, used, this year, merely 
as a larder; but time did not that night admit of further search. 
The writer beguiled the two-hours interval in interviewing a 
wild gipsy-eyed girl of twelve, whose name was Joséfa Aguilar, 
and whose vocation in life to attend a herd of swine. Through- 
out Spain, whether on mountain or plain, one sees this thing— 
a small boy or girl spending the livelong day in solitary charge 
of dumb beasts, goats or pigs, even turkeys—and the sight ever 
