A pitiable episode occurred. While preparing to mount, there resounded from behind a peal of strange inhuman laughter, followed by incoherent words; and through an iron-barred window we discerned the emaciated figure of a man, wild and unkempt, whose eagle-like claws grasped the barriers of his cell--a poor lunatic. No connected replies could we get, nothing beyond vacuous laughter and gibbering chatter. Now he was at the theatre and quoted magic jargon; anon supplicating the mercy of a judge; then singing a stanza of some old song, to break off abruptly into fierce denunciation of one of us as the cause of his troubles. Poor wretch! he had once been a successful advocate; but signs of madness having developed, which increased with years, the once popular lawyer was reduced to the durance of this iron-girt cell, his only share and view of God's earth just so much of sombre everlasting sierra as the narrow opening allowed. We were warned that any effort to ameliorate his lot was hopeless, his case being desperate. What hidden wrongs may exist in a land where no judicial intervention is obligatory between the "rights of families" and their insane relations (or those whom they may consider such) are easy to conceive. The first covert tried was a strong jungle flanking the main gorge, but this and a second beat proved blank, though two roebuck broke back. The third drive comprised the main _manchas_, or thickets, of the Boca de la Foz, and to this we ascended on foot, leaving the horses picketed behind. Our four guns occupied the rim of a natural amphitheatre which dipped sharply away some 1500 feet beneath us, the centre choked with brushwood--lentisk, arbutus, and thorn--20 feet deep. On our left towered a perpendicular block of limestone cliffs, the right flank of the jungle being bordered by a series of up-tilted rock-strata, white as marble and resembling a ruined street. Ten minutes of profound silence, not a sound save the distant tinkle of a goat-bell, or the song of that feathered recluse, the blue rock-thrush (in Spanish, _Solitario_), then the distant cries of the beaters in the depths below told us the fray had begun.