It may occur to those accustomed to deal with mountain-game on a large scale that the chance of moving animals with any sort of accuracy towards a scant line of guns scattered over vast areas must be remote. True, the number of guns--even ten or twelve--is necessarily insufficient, but here local knowledge and the skill of Spanish mountaineers (by nature among the best _guerrilleros_ on earth) comes effectively into play. In practice it is seldom that the best "passes" are not commanded. In the higher ranges skylines are frequently pierced by nicks or "passes" (termed _portillas_) sufficiently marked as to suggest, even to a stranger possessed of an eye for such things, the probable lines of retreat for moving game. But "passes" are not always conspicuous, nor are all skylines of broken contour. On the contrary, there frequently present themselves long summits that to casual glance appear wholly uniform. Here comes to aid that local intuition referred to, nor will it be found lacking. Many a long hill-ridge apparently featureless may (and often does) include several well-frequented passes. Some slight sense of disappointment may easily lurk in one's breast in surveying one's allotted post to perceive not a single sign of "advantage" within its radius--or "jurisdiction," as Spanish keepers quaintly put it. Yet it may be after all--and probably is--the apex of a congeries of converging watercourses, glens, or other accustomed _salidas_ (outlets), all of which are invisible in the unseen depths on one's front; but which salient points in cynegetic geography are perfectly appreciated by our guide. The brushwood of Moréna consists over vast areas--many hundreds of square miles--of the gum-cistus, a sticky-leaved shrub that grows shoulder-high on the stoniest ground. Wherever a slightly more generous soil permits, the cistus is interspersed and thickened with rhododendron, brooms, myrtle, and a hundred cognate plants. On the richer slopes and dells there crowd together a matted jungle of lentisk and arbutus, white buck-thorn and holly, all intertwined with vicious prehensile briar and woodbine, together with heaths, genista, giant ferns, and gorse of a score of species. Watercourses are overarched by oleanders, and the chief trees are cork-oak and ilex, wild-olive, juniper, and alder, besides others of which we only know the Spanish names, quejigos, algarrobas, agracejis, etc. Naturally, in such rugged broken ground as the sierras, where the guns are protected by intervening heights, shooting is permissible in any direction, whether in front or behind, and even sometimes along the line itself. A survival of savage days, when beaters didn't count, is suggested by a refrain of the sierra:-- Más vale matár un Cristiano Que no dejár ir una res-- (Rather should a Christian die Than let a head of game pass by.)