THE BIG GAME OF SPAIN 
D ESPITE the cynical remark (attributed to Napoleon, I think) 
k that Africa begins at the Pyrenees, Spain yet remains 
1 an integral part of Europe. The Straits of Gibraltar have 
f proved a more enduring and impregnable barrier than 
any mountain range, whether the Pyrenees still survive or 
not. Hence the census of Spanish big game is essentially 
European — in other words, few in numbers as compared with the 
vast variety and teeming herds of the opposite continent, a considerable 
part of which lies stretched out in full perspective from many a dominating 
height in the South -Spanish sierras. From such lofty standpoints — say 
from Bermeja, above Estepona; or from the Picacho de la Veleta 
(11,597ft.) in Sierra Nevada — the Mediterranean appears but as a narrow 
blue lake; Gibraltar an islet; while one’s prospect across Africa is only 
limited by the snow -clad ranges of the Atlas, far away on the verge of the 
Great Sahara. 
Well I remember the impression left on my youthful mind, decades ago, 
by this panorama of two continents in one coup d'oeil. In those days Spain 
promised enough, and more than enough, to fulfil every personal aspiration. 
No dream that, in after days, I should wander afar into the heart of the then 
“Dark Continent” ever suggested itself even as a remote contingency. 
Spain, though European, is essentially a country of big game— that is 
to say, big game of one sort or another is distributed fairly regularly over 
the whole superficies of the Peninsula. Few and far between are the inter- 
spaces in wild Spain where the traveller loses touch entirely, either of deer 
or boar, bear, ibex or chamois. 
The mountainous character of the whole Iberian Peninsula favours 
the survival of the wilder animals. Spain — with the exception of a quite 
insignificant proportion of low-lying littoral — is an elevated tableland, 
400 miles square, and averaging 1,000 to 2,000 feet in mean altitude. This 
again is surmounted by a series of vast mountain chains (all running east 
and west) some of which reach 8,000 to 10,000 feet in height: while the 
Sierra Nevada falls but little short of 12,000 feet above the Mediterranean 
lying beneath. 
Such conditions are adverse to agriculture or settlement: vast regions 
lie abandoned to wild nature, while the loftier areas almost repel human 
intrusion save for a handful of goatherds during the summer months. 
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