Hunting -- Spain; Natural history -- Spain; Spain -- Description and travel
After a fruitless search of four hours, the scouts returned; no better
results attended a second morning and a third--nor our impatience.
Clearly the second resource, that of "driving," must now be tried. It
was only ten o'clock that third morning, and already the drivers, who
had left at dawn so as to reach agreed positions in case of the failure
of resource No. 1, would be approaching the fixed points four miles away
on the encircling heights, whereat, by signal, they would know whether
to proceed with the "drive" or to return by the circuitous route they
had gone. Meanwhile we have ourselves to reach the "passes" in the
heights above, and the scramble and struggle which that ascent involved
we must leave readers to imagine. Bertram gets through such work fairly
well, but the writer, a generation older, is fain to choose a lower
place, reputed a likely "pass." Here, after waiting an hour, we descried
the drivers showing-up at different points of those encircling Riscos de
Morezón, climbing like flies down perpendicular faces, disappearing in
gorges, and doing all that specialised hunters can. But not an ibex came
our way. When we reassembled, it proved that three goats had been seen,
one a ram. Thus ended that day--cruel work amidst lovely though terrible
scenery--and never a wild-goat within our sight.
On the morrow our selected positions were to be yet nearer the heavens
above than those of yesterday--along the highest skylines of Grédos,
between the Plaza de Almanzór and the Ameál. From our camp my own post
was pointed out, a niche in that far-away impossible ridge. How long, I
asked Ramón, do you imagine it will take me to reach it? Our friends,
who, lean and lythe of frame, a specialised race of mountaineers, mock
mountain-heights and appreciate too little (though they recognise) our
relative weakness, reply, "Two hours." But at that precise moment, while
I yet scanned with binoculars the scene of this supreme effort,
examining in a species of horror that infinity of piled rock-masses,
their details cruelly developed in a blazing sunlight, just then, across
the field of the glass soared a single lammergeyer. Now I know that
these giant birds-of-prey span some ten feet from wing to wing, and the
tiny speck that this one, reduced by distance, appeared on the
object-glass helped me to gauge what lay before us.
A black point that from camp I had mentally noted as a landmark proved
to be a mass of dolomite seamed with interjected striæ of glistening
felspar, big as a village church!
[Illustration: "THE WAY OF AN EAGLE IN THE AIR"
(LAMMERGEYER--_Gypaëtus barbatus_)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account