366 Unexplored Spain 
was trotting up a stone-slide on the extreme left. Here a rifle-shot 
broke a foreleg, and the disabled beast, unable to face the hill, retreated 
to the thicket below, scattering dogs and beaters in headlong flight. And 
now commenced the hue and cry—the real hard work for those who 
meant to see the end and earn the spoils of war. Presently Moro’s deep 
voice told us of the boar at bay, far away down in the depths of the 
defile. What followed in that hurly-burly—that mad scramble through 
brake and thicket, down crag and scree—cannot be written. Each man 
only knows what he did himself, or did not do. We can answer for 
three. One of these seated himself on a rock and lit a cigarette. The 
others, ten minutes later, arrived on the final scene, one minus his nether 
garments and sundry patches of skin, but in time to take part in the 
death of as grand a boar as roams the Spanish sierras. 
This last spring (1910), after thirty-eight years, we revisited 
the Boca de la Foz, partly to reassure ourselves that the above 
description was not overdrawn. No! ’Tis a terrible wild gorge, 
the Foz, but the days when we can follow a wounded boar 
through obstacles such as those have passed away. The boars, 
we were told, are still there, and so are the vultures in those 
magnificent crags. We climbed along the ledges and there were 
the great stick-built nests, each in its ancestral site. In March 
each contains a single egg; now (April) that is replaced by a 
leaden-hued chick. These cliffs are also tenanted by ravens and 
a single pair of choughs. Neophrons occupied the same cavern 
whence I shot a female in 1872, and crag-martins held their old 
abodes, plastered on to the roofs of the caves. 
As April advances a new and striking bird-form arrives to 
adorn the higher sierras—the least observant can scarce miss this, 
the rock-thrush (Monticola sawatilis), conspicuous alike in 
plumage and actions; with clear blue head and chestnut breast, 
its colour-scheme includes a broad patch of white set in the 
centre of a dark back. The contrast is most effective, and, so 
far as we know, this “fashion” of a white back is unique among 
birds, unless indeed it be shared by Bonelli’s eagle. The rock- 
thrush is also endowed with a lovely wild song, quite low and 
simple, but replete with a fine “ high-tops ” quality. By April 
20 he yields to vernal impulses, and his courting is pretty to see ; 
wheeling around on transparent pinions, he soars and sings the 
livelong day ; at intervals, with collapsed wing, he drops like a 
stone to join his sober-hued mate among the rocks; a few 
picturesque poses, displaying all those flashing tints of orange 
