The following morning we tried a comprehensive drive encompassing two gorges composed of sublimely grand rocks. As I look over the edge of the black pinnacle that forms my post the sheer drop below is appalling, and above me tower similar masses in rugged and frowning splendour. But not a goat was seen till quite late in the afternoon, when two females slowly approaching were descried. For a mile we watched them, so deliberate was their progress, till they disappeared through the very "pass" where A. had shot his some five years before. _September 6._--Our scouts returned last night, having failed to locate ibex on the opposite mountain; so we made a final effort on the Riscos of Villarejo--again blank. Well! we have done our best for six days on those terrible rocks, on which we must now turn our backs for the present. At the village of Arénas de San Pedro we bade good-bye to all our people; even their wives (clad in the same short skirts of greens and other brilliant hues we had noticed in '91, for fashions change slowly in the sierra) came down from Guisando to say farewell to the Ingléses. Here Ramón brought in the head of Bertie's ibex shot the week before; Ramón presented me with his powder-horn and bullet-pouch as a keepsake, and Juanito with a mountain-staff. Our visit had marked an epoch in the simple annals of the sierra and of its honest and primitive inhabitants. * * * * * To-day we rejoice to add that, as already fully set forth at pp. 141-142, wild-goats may be counted in troops on the erewhiles ibex-denuded crags of Almanzór. CHAPTER XXII AN ABANDONED PROVINCE (ESTREMADURA) Can this really be Europe--crowded Europe? For four long days we have traversed Estremenian wilds, and during that time have scarce met a score of folk, nor seen serious evidence of effective human occupation. At first our northward way led through rolling undulations, the western foothills of the long Sierra Moréna, clad with the everlasting gum-cistus, with euonymus, a few stunted trees, and the usual aromatic brushwood of the south. Only at long intervals--say a league or two apart--would some tiny cot, of woodcutter perhaps, or goat-herd, gleam white amidst the rolling green monotone. Here and there wild-thyme (_cantuéso_) empurpled the slopes as it were August heather, but the chief beauty-spot was the rose-like flower of the cistus, now (May) in fullest bloom--waxy white, with orange centre and a splash like black velvet on each petal. Next, for a whole day we ride through open forest of evergreen oak and wild-olive, the floor carpeted with tasselled grasses, tufty broom, and fennel. We encamp where we list and cut firewood, none saying us nay or inquiring by what authority we do these things.