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Late one March evening we encamped on the spurs of a great Andalucian sierra. Away in the west, beyond the rolling prairie across which we had been riding all day, the sun was slowly sinking from view, and to the eastward the massive pile of San Christoval reflected his gorgeous hues in a soft rosy blush, which mantled its snow-streaked summit. Below in the valley we could discern the little white hermitage of La Aina, once the prison of a British subject, a Mr. Bonnell, who, captured in 1870[7] near Gibraltar, was carried thither by sequestradores, and concealed in this remote spot till the stipulated ransom had been lodged by the Governor of Gibraltar in the consulate at Cadiz: an incident which led to unpleasant correspondence between the British and Spanish Governments, and which was luckily closed by the tragic deaths of all the offenders.

These miscreants had also formed a plan for an attack upon a private house at Utrera; but their intentions having become known (through treachery) to the Civil Guards, the latter surrounded the house, and drove the robbers into the patio, where a simultaneous volley terminated the careers of the whole crew. For advancing the ransom, £6,000 (which, after various adventures, involving more bloodshed, fell finally into the hands of a fresh robber-gang), the then Governor of Gibraltar was freely "hauled over the coals" in the House of Commons at the time.

Wild tales of similar bearing beguiled the dark hours in the gloom of the forest where our big fire burned cheerily. Despite a fine, warm, winter climate, the Andalucian atmosphere is chilly enough after sundown, and we were glad to draw up close around the blazing logs, where a savoury olla was cooking: and afterwards, while enjoying our cigarettes and that delicious "natural" wine of Spain which the British public, like a spoilt child, first cries for and then abuses.

Towards nine o'clock the moon rose, and we continued our journey along the dark defiles of the sierra, pushing a way through evergreen thicket, or silent forest, where the startling cries of the eagle-owl outraged the stillness of night. As far as one could see by the dim moonlight, our course alternated for a long distance between a boulder-strewn ravine and a glacis of smooth sloping rock, steep as a roof, and more suited to the nocturnal gambols of cats than for horsemen. But the Andalucian jaca is hardly less sure of foot, and in due course we emerged into a more level valley, where, after riding some miles beneath huge cork-oaks and ilex, we heard at length the distant challenge of our friend Gaspár's big mastiff, and soon the long ride was over, and we entered the portals of the rancho which for the succeeding week was to be our home.

Here we were confronted by a nuisance in the non-arrival of the commissariat. The pack-mules, despatched two days in advance, had not turned up. It transpired that the men, loitering away the daylight, as is the custom in Andalucia (and elsewhere), had lost the way in the darkness, almost immediately after leaving the last vestiges of a track, and had bivouaced among the scrub awaiting the break of day. Our resources for the night were thus limited to the scanty contents of the alforjas (saddle-bags). We had, however, each provided ourselves with a big sackful of chaff at the last outpost of the corn-lands—chaff, or rather broken straw, being the staple food of the Spanish horse; and these now formed our beds, though their softness decreased nightly by reason of the constant inroads on their substance made by our Rosinantes. Otherwise the naked stone-paved room was absolutely innocent of either furniture or food; yet we were happy enough, as, rolled in our mantas, we lay down to sleep on those long pokes.

"FURNITURE."

Early in the morning the mountaineers began to assemble in the courtyard of the rancho. Light of build as a rule, sinewy, and bronzed to a copper hue, looking as if their very blood was parched and dried up by tobacco and the fierce southern sun, and with narajas stuck in their scarlet waistbands, these wild men might each have served as a melodramatic desperado. Three brothers of our host had ridden up from a distant farm; there was old Christoval, the ready-witted squatter on the adjoining rancho, a cheery old fellow, carrying fun and laughter wherever he went; last came the Padre from the nearest hill-village (Paterna), whose sporting instinct had made light work of the long and early ride across the sierra to join our batida. Alonzo, the herdsman, who added to his pastoral knowledge an intimate acquaintance with the wild beasts of his native mountains, was placed in command of the beaters, a motley, picturesque group with their leathern accoutrements and scarlet fajas. Of dogs, we had four podencos, tall, stiff-built, wiry-haired "terrier-greyhounds," fleet of foot, trained to find and harass the boar, to force him to break covert, but yet so wary at feint and retreat as to avoid the sweep of his tusks. Then there was huge "Moro," Don Gaspár's half-mastiff, half-bloodhound, whose staunchness was tested of old, and others of lesser note.

OUR QUARTERS IN THE SIERRA.

Around our quarters were cultivated clearings of a few acres, fenced with the usual aloe and cactus: otherwise the landscape was one panorama of forest and evergreen brushwood, extending far up the mountain-sides, and towards the barren stony summits. These sierras of Jerez are of no great height relatively—perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 feet—and many of them bear unmistakable evidence of their long struggles with glacial ice in bygone ages—each tall slope consisting of a regular series of vertical bastions, or buttresses, alternating with deep glens in singular uniformity. Their conformation recalled the distant valleys of Spitsbergen, where we have seen the power of ice in actual operation, and carving out those grim Arctic hills after a precisely similar pattern. Here, however, dense jungle had for ages replaced the snow, and the wild boar now occupied strongholds where, possibly, the reindeer had once ranged in search of scanty lichen. For the season (March) the greenness of all foliage was remarkable; the oaks alone remained naked, and even from their leafless boughs hung luxuriant festoons of ivy and parasitic plants.

The upper end of our valley was shut in by the towering, transverse mass of the Sierra de las Cabras, which terminates hard by, in a fine abrupt gorge or chasm called the Boca de la Foz. It was to the deep-jungled corries which furrow the sides of this chasm that Alonzo had that morning traced to their camas some six or eight pig, including a couple of boar of the largest size, and this was to be the scene of our first day's operations.

A pitiable episode occurred while we were surveying our surroundings, and preparing for a start. From close behind, suddenly resounded a peal of strange inhuman laughter, followed by incoherent words; and through the iron bars of a narrow window we discerned the emaciated figure of a man, wild and unkempt of aspect, and whose eagle-like claws grasped the barriers of his cell—a poor lunatic. No connected replies could we get—nothing but vacuous laughter and gibbering chatter: now he was at the theatre and quoted magic jargon; now supplicating the mercy of a judge; then singing a stanza of some old song, to break off as suddenly into a fierce denunciation of one of us as the cause of all his troubles. Poor wretch! He had once been a successful lawyer and advocate, but having developed signs of madness, which increased with years, the once popular Carlos B—— was now reduced to the wretched 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 permitted. We were told it was hopeless to make any effort to ameliorate his lot—his case was too desperate. What hidden wrongs and outrage exist in a land where no judicial intervention is permitted between the "rights" of families and their insane relations (or those whom they may consider such), is only too much open to suspicion.

The day was still young when we mounted and set out for the point where Alonzo's report had led us to hope for success. The first covert tried was a strong jungle flanking the main gorge; but this, and a second batida, proved blank, only a few foxes appearing, and a wild cat was shot. Two roe-deer were reported to have broken back, and several mongoose, or ichneumon, were also observed during these drives, but were always permitted to pass. The Spanish ichneumon (Herpestes widdringtoni), being peculiar to the Peninsula, deserves a passing remark; it is a strange, grizzly-grey beast, shaggy as a badger, but more slim in build, with the brightest of bright black eyes, and a very long bushy tail. Owing to his habit of eating snakes and other reptiles (in preference, it would seem, to rabbits, &c.), the ichneumon stinks beyond other beasts of prey. A large black ichneumon happened to be the first game that fell to the writer's rifle in Spain, and was carefully stowed in the mule-panniers—never to be seen again; for no sooner were our backs turned, than the men discreetly pitched out the malodorous trophy.

As we approached our third beat—the main manchas, or thickets of the Boca de la Foz, the "rootings" and recent sign of pig became frequent, and we advanced to our allotted positions in silence, leaving the horses picketed far in the rear.

The line of guns occupied the ridge of a natural amphitheatre, which dipped sharply away beneath us, the centre choked with strong thorny jungle. On the left towered a range of limestone crags, the right flank being hemmed in by huge uptilted rocks, like ruined towers, and white as marble. One of us occupied the centre, the other guarded a pass among these pinnacle rocks on the right. While waiting at our posts we could descry the beaters, mere dots, winding along the glen, 1,500 feet below. The mountain scenery was superb; but no sound broke the stillness save the distant tinkle of a goat-bell; nor was there a sign of life except that feathered recluse, the blue rock-thrush, (in Spanish "solitario,") and far overhead floated great tawny vultures. Ten minutes of profound silence, and then the distant shouts and cries of the beaters in the depths beneath told us the fray had begun.

The heart of the jungle—all lentisk, or mimosa and thorn, interlaced with briar—being impenetrable, the efforts of our men were confined to directing the dogs, and by incessant noise to drive the game upwards. First a tall grey fox stole stealthily past, looked me full in the face and went on without increasing his speed; then a pair of red-legs, unconscious of a foe, sped by like 100-yard "sprinters"—a marvellous speed of foot have these birds on the roughest ground, and well are Spanish by-ways named caminos de perdices! Then the crash of hound-music proclaimed that the nobler quarry was at home. This boar proved to be one of those grizzly monsters of which we were specially in search; his lair a chaotic jumble of boulders islanded amid deepest thicket. Here he held his ground, declining to recognize in his noisy aggressors a superior force; and, though "Moro" and the boar-hounds speedily reinforced the skirmishers of the pack, the old tusker showed no sign of abandoning his stronghold. For minutes, that seemed like hours, the conflict raged stationary; the sonorous baying of the boar-hounds, the "yapping" of the smaller dogs, and shouts of the mountaineers, blended with the howl of an incautious podenco as he received his death-rip—all these formed a chorus of sounds which carried sufficient excitement to the sentinel guns above. Such and kindred moments are worth months of ordinary life.

The actual scene of war lay some half-mile below, hence no immediate issue was probable or expected; then came a crashing of the brushwood on my front, and a three-parts-grown boar dashed straight for the narrow pass where the writer barred the way. The suddenness of the encounter was disconcerting, and the first shot was a miss, the bullet, all but grazing his back and splashing on the grey rock beyond, and time barely remained to jump aside to avoid collision. The left barrel told with better effect: a stumble as he received it, followed by a frantic grunt as an ounce of lead penetrated his vitals, and the beast plunged headlong among the brushwood, his life-blood dyeing the weather-blanched rocks and dark green palmettos. There for a moment he lay, kicking and groaning; but ere the cold steel could administer a quietus, he regained his legs and dashed straight back. Whether that charge was prompted by revenge, or was merely an effort to regain the thickets he had just left, matters not; for a third bullet, at two yards' distance, laid him lifeless.

A STRAIGHT CHARGE.

Plate V. THAT OLD TUSKER. Page 31.

During this interlude, though it had only occupied a few moments, the main combat below was approaching its climax. The old boar had at length left his hold, and after sundry sullen stands and promiscuous skirmishes with the hounds, he took to flight. Showing first on the centre, he was covered for some seconds by a ·450 express; but not breaking covert, no shot could be fired, and when he at last appeared in view, he was trotting up the stony slopes on the extreme left. Here a rifle-shot at long range broke a fore-leg below the shoulder. This was the turning point: the wounded boar, no longer able to face the hill, wheeled and retreated to the thickets below, scattering the dogs and passing through the beaters at marvellous speed, considering his disabled condition. And now commenced the hue and cry and the real hard work for those who meant to see the end and earn the spoils of war. Soon "Moro's" deep voice told he had the tusker at bay, down in the defile, far below. What followed in that hurly-burly—that mad scramble through brake and thicket, down crag and scree—is impossible to tell. Each man only knows what he did himself—or did not do. We can answer for three; one of these seated himself on a rock and lit a cigarette; the others, ten minutes later, arrived on the final scene—one minus his nether garments and sundry patches of skin, but in time to take part in the death of as grand a boar as ever roamed the Spanish sierras.

First to arrive was Gaspár himself, familiar with every by-way and goat-track on the hills, and nervous for the safety of his hound; but only a few seconds before the denuded Inglés. In a pool of the rock-strewn brook, the beast stood at bay, "Moro's" teeth clenched in one ear and two podencos attacking in flank and rear. Gaspár elected to finish the business with the knife, fixed bayonet-wise, but the horn haft slipped from the muzzle, and a moment later two simultaneous bullets had closed the affair.

One by one the scattered guns turned up: some, who had taken a circuitous course, arriving before others whose ardour had led them to follow direct—so dense was the brushwood and rugged the sierra. A picturesque group stood assembled around the blood-dyed pool with its wild environment and bold mountain background; but rejoicings were tempered by the loss of two of our podencos, one having been killed outright, the other found in a hopelessly wounded condition at the point of the first conflict.

The boar proved a magnificent brute, one of the true grey-brindled type—de los Castellanos, weighing over 300 lbs. The wild-boars of the sierras run larger than those of the plains, some being said to reach 400 lbs. Beneath the outer grizzly bristles lies a reddish woolly fur.

We were soon mounted and steering for another mancha, where, late in the afternoon, two sows and a small boar were found and driven forward through the line of guns. One fell to a fine shot from our host's brother, the others escaping scathless. Night was already upon us ere the party re-assembled, and we rode off amidst the shadows of the forest-glades, to fight the battles of the day again and again round the cheery blaze in the courtyard of our mountain-home.

Plate VI. BUSTARDS ON THE BARRENS—WINTER. "A First Shade of Suspicion." Page 33.