Walter John Buck

“ For the haunts aforesaid are precisely those areas of the earth’s surface which are the most repugnant to man, and least suited to his existence.
In crowded England there survive but few of those dreary estuaries where miles of oozy mud-flats separate sea and land, treacherous of foot-hold, exposed to tide-ways and to every gale that blows. Such only are the haunts of British wildfowl, though how many men in a million have ever seen them? To wilder Spain, with its 50 per cent of waste, and its vast irreclaimed marismas, come the web-footed race in quantities undreamt at home. ”

“ Where stretches of open country border or intersect jungle, or lie between the nocturnal hunting-grounds of carnivorae and the thickets where they lie-up by day, there one may enjoy hours of intense interest in watching what passes under the moon. In the Coto Doñana we have many such spots, some within an hour or two’s ride of our shooting-lodges. Here, when the moon shines full, and the soft south wind blows towards the dark leagues of cistus and tree-heath behind us, we line-out three or four guns, each looking outwards across glittering sand-wastes on his front. ”

“ With rear and flanks protected by a revêtement of gnarled roots and a labyrinth of stems, he fears nothing behind, while the furiously baying hounds on his front he now utterly despises. Blank shots fired in the air alarm him not, nor will Pepe Espinal—in a service of danger—succeed in dislodging him with a garrocha, after a perilous climb along the briar-matted roof. That boar is victor—master of a stricken field.
One human resource remains, to go in á arma blanca—with the cold steel. There are dashing spirits who will do this—in Spain we have seen such. ”

“ Yonder goes a fox, slowly trotting along below the crest, in his self-sufficient, nonchalant style. His upstanding fur, long bushy brush, and swollen neck appear to double his bulk and lend him quite an imposing figure. But let a rifle-ball sing past his ears or dash up a cloud of the sand below—what a transformation! One hardly now recognises the long lean streak that whips up and over the ridge.
A handsome trophy is the Spanish lynx, especially those more brightly coloured examples sparsely spotted with big black splotches arranged, more or less, in interrupted lines. ”

“ Yet in those bygone days of Spain’s world-power these somnolent spots produced the right stuff,—a minority, no doubt, belonged to the type satirised by Cervantes,—but many more strong in mind as in muscle, who went forth, knights-errant, Paladins and Crusaders, to conquer and to shape the course of history. Is the old spirit extinct? Our own impression is that the material is there all right ready to spring to life like the stones of Deucalion, so soon as Spain shall have shaken off her incubus of lethargy and the tyranny that clogs the wheels of progress. ”

“ No lights are allowed and no sound shocks the mystery of night save the creaking of punt-pole or lapping of wave—no human sound, that is, for “the night is filled with music”; the pall overhead, the unseen wastes on every side are vocal with wildfowl cries. Continuously the still air is rent and cleft by the rush of myriad pinions. From right and left, before and behind, pass hurrying hosts, their violent flight resonant as the wash of an angry sea. But never a shot is fired. ”

“ As the last watch of night wears on towards the dawn, the deer, withdrawing from their feeding-grounds on open strath or marsh, slowly direct a course covertwards, lingering here and there to nibble a tempting genista, or to snatch up a bunch of red bog-grass on their course. We have reached a favourite glade, often used by deer. It is not yet light—rather it might be described as nearly dark—when the splashing of light hoofs through water puts us on the alert. ”

“ All around you, in fact, forest and jungle, scrub, sallow, and bramble-brake abound with minor bird-forms—with our British summer visitors, here settled down in their winter quarters; with charming exotic warblers and silent songsters—all off work for the season. Where nodding bulrush fringes quaking bog, or miles of tasselled cane-brakes border the marsh, there is the home of infinite feathered amphibians, crakes and rails, of reed-climbers and bush-skulkers, all for the nonce silent, shy, reclusive.
BLACKSTART (Ruticilla titys)
Abundant in winter; retires to the sierra to nest. ”

“ From beginning to end, climate, scenery, sport, and hospitable entertainment combine, in that happy region, to make the hours all too short for the joys they bring. Equipped with Paradox-gun or rifle, and some variety of ammunition, to suit the shifting requirements of deer and boar, lynx, partridge, wild-geese and ducks, snipe, rabbit and hare, nay, perhaps a chance shot at flamingo, vulture, or eagle, the favoured visitor steps from the Bonanza pier into the broad wherry waiting to carry him across the Guadalquivir, a few miles only from its outflow into the Atlantic. ”

“ The pueblecitos of the sierra show up as a concrete splash of white on the brown hillside. Once outside the gates you are in the campo = the country. Even Jerez with its 60,000 inhabitants boasts no suburban zone. Within half an hour’s walk one may witness scenes in wild bird-life for the like of which home-staying naturalists sigh in vain. We are at our “home-marsh,” a mile or two away: it is mid-February. Within fifteen yards a dozen stilts stalk in the shallows; hard by is a group of godwits, some probing the ooze, the rest preening in eccentric outstretched poses. ”

“ True, during the fiery noontides of July and August even the little bustard enjoys a siesta and may then be shot. It will, in fact, “lie close” before pointers and cackle like a cock-grouse as it rises from those desolate dehesas which form its home—vast stretches of rolling veld where asphodel, palmetto, and giant thistles grow rampant as far as eye can reach. But that scarce comes within our category of sport, since a solar heat that can (even temporarily) tame a sisón is quite likely to finish off a Briton for good and all. ”

“ These prove to be the ears of two hinds; presently the spiky horns of a stag appear behind them, and the trio move slowly across our front, stopping to nibble some tuft of bent.
None of these are what we seek, but as dawn approaches you may (or may not) detect the form of some beast-of-prey making for its lair in the jungle behind you. Foxes, as their habit is, trot straight in; the lynx comes with infinite caution. Should some starveling bush survive a hundred yards out, she may stop, squatting on her haunches, half-hidden in its shade. ”

“ Now we have placed our guns in line and within that short distance of the unsuspecting game that all but assures a certain shot. We cannot, let us confess, recall many moments in life of more tense excitement than those spent thus, lying prone on the gentle slope listening with every sense on stretch for the cries of the galloping beaters as in wild career they urge the huge birds towards a fatal course. ”

“ Riding with the beaters it is instructive to watch the manœuvres of an old stag as, sinking from sight, he couches among quite low scrub on some hillock, or stands statuesque with horns aback hiding behind a clump of tall tree-heaths—alert all the while, stealthily to shift his position as yapping podencos on one side or the other may suggest—and watching each opportunity to evade the encompassing danger. Now a stretch of denser jungle obstructs the advancing line. The beaters are forced apart to pass it, and a gap or two yawns in the attack. ”

“ The central table-lands, subject all summer to solar rays that burn, in winter shelterless from biting blasts off snow-clad sierras, present precisely that landscape of desperate desolation that always results from a maximum of sunshine combined with a minimum of rainfall. A desiccated downland, khaki-colour or calcareous by turn, but bare (save for a few weeks in spring) of green thing, naked of bush or shrub, innocent even of grass. Not a tree grows so far as eye can reach, not a watercourse but is stone-dry and leaves the impress that it has been so since time began. ”

“ Should “progress” only advance on these lines no scrap of that continent will be left to wanderer in the wilds—no spot where clanging skeins of wild-geese serry the skies, and the swish of ten thousand wigeon be heard overhead; or that marvellous iridescence—as of triple flame—the passing of a flight of flamingoes, be enjoyed. [6]
That national progress and development may come, for Spain’s sake, we earnestly pray. But does there exist inherent reason why progress, in itself, should always come to ruin natural and racial beauties? ”

“ Hour after hour one pushes forward across a flooded plain only to bring within view more and yet more vistas of watery waste and endless horizons of tawny water. On a low islet at farthest distance stand a herd of cattle—mere points in space; but these, too, partake of the general wildness and splash off at a gallop while yet a mile away. Even the wild-bred horses and ponies of the marisma revert to an aboriginal anthropophobia, and become as shy and timid as the ferae naturae themselves. ”

“ In foreground, background, and horizon both earth and sky are filled with teeming, living multitudes; while the shimmering grey monotony of the marisma, tessellated with its grey armies of the Anatidae, is everywhere brightened and adorned by rosy battalions of flamingoes. And out there, far beyond our visible horizon, there wander in that watery wilderness the wild camels, to which we devote a separate chapter.
Flamingoes ignore the limits of continents, and shift their mobile headquarters between Europe and Africa as the respective rainfall in either happens to suit their requirements. ”

“ Last night a troop of wild-pig have sought here for mole-crickets—small fry, one may think; yet even worms they don’t despise, for we have seen masses of these reptiles (some still alive) in the stomach of a newly-shot boar. Follow the spoor onwards, and where it enters a pine-grove, you notice splintered cones and scattered seed. Thus wild-beasts are assisting to fulfil nature’s plan, and if you care to advance it another stage, turn some soil over those overlooked pine-nuts, and some day forest-monarchs will result to reward another generation. ”

“ When the bustard is the object of pursuit, two men are required, one of whom carries a gun. The pack of bustard will be carefully watched during the afternoon, and not lost sight of when night comes until their sleeping-quarters are ascertained. When quite dark, the tinkling of the cencerro will be heard, and a ray of light will surround the devoted bustards, charming or frightening them—whichever it may be—into still life. ”

“ True, each to their appointed seasons, had come, the dark clouds of pintail, teal, and wigeon, the long skeins of grey geese. Where in other years they had revelled in shallows rich in aquatic vegetation, now the travellers find instead nought but torrid plains devoid of all that is attractive to the tastes of their tribe. For the parched soil, whose life-blood has been drained by the heats of the summer solstice, whose plant-life is burnt up, has remained panting all the autumn through for that precious moisture that still comes not. ”

“ We love Spain primarily because she is wild and waste; but, loving her, are naturally desirous that she should advance to that position among nations that is her due. Such material development, nevertheless, need not—and will not—imply the total destruction of her wild beauties. Development on those lines would not consist with the peculiar genius of the Spanish race, and, while we trust the development will come, we fear no such collateral results. ”

“ Yet it is wrong to describe La Mancha as barren. Rather its central highlands present a monotony of endless uninteresting cultivation. League-long furrows traverse the landscape, running in parallel lines to utmost horizon, or weary the eye by radiating from the focal point as spokes in a wheel. But never a break or a bush relieves one’s sight, never a hedge or a hill, not a pool, stream, or tree in a long day’s journey. Oh, it is distressing, wherever seen—in Old World or New—that everlasting cultivation on the flat. ”

“ A SPANISH SYSTEM OF FOWLING
THE “CABRESTO” OR STALKING-HORSE SPAIN is a land of flocks and herds, of breeders and graziers. At the head of the scale stands the fighting-bull, monarch of the richest vegas; at the opposite extreme come the shaggy little ponies and brood-mares that eke out a feral and precarious subsistence in the wildest regions. Throughout the marismas hardy beasts with wild-bred progeny on which no human hand has ever laid, abound, grazing knee-deep in watery wildernesses where tasteless reed or wiry spear-grass afford a bare subsistence. ”

“ Then for a while hound-music frightens the darkness and shocks the silence of the sleeping woods; there is crashing among dry forest-scrub, a breakneck scurry of mounted men among the timber, until the furious baying of the hounds and the noisy rush of the hunters converge towards one dark point among the shadows, and in the half-light a great grisly tusker dies beneath the cold steel, but not before he has written a lasting record on the hide of some luckless hound. ”

“ Nor are there lacking compensating charms in those hours of silent expectancy spent in the solitude of jungle or amid the aromatic fragrance of pine-forest. Every sense is held in tension to mark and measure each sign or sound; ‘tis but the fall of a pine-cone that has caught your ear, but it might easily have been a single footfall of game. The wild-life of the wilderness pursues its daily course around unconscious of a concealed intruder in its midst. ”

“ BIRD-LIFE IN A DRY SEASON BIRD-LIFE in the Spanish marisma—in spring no less than in winter—presents spectacles of such abounding variety as can nowhere in Europe be surpassed. In the Arctic are vaster aggregations, but these, comprising, say, only half-a-dozen species, are less attractive. It is the infinite kaleidoscopic succession of graceful and dissimilar forms that hour by hour flash on one’s sight—in a word, it is variety that lends abiding charm to our Spanish bird-world. ”

“ One second’s consideration decides him and it is executed at once—he is off like a gust of wind. But a Paradox ball at easy range in the open broke a hind-leg, and it was curious to note his evolutions—he, poor fellow, not realising what had occurred, flung himself round and round in rapid gyrations, the while biting at his own hind-leg. Needless to say not an instant passed ere a second ball terminated his sufferings. To observe the beautiful traits in the habits of wild beasts is to me quite as great a joy as adding them to my score and immensely augments the enjoyment of a big-game drive. ”

“ There they live, splashing in the shadows, heads half-immersed as they pull up subaquatic herbage; on the back of one rides perched a snow-white egret, on another a couple of magpies, preying on ticks or warbles, while all around swim wildfowl that scarce deign to move aside.
No fowler could view such a scene without perceiving that approach to the wildfowl might be effected under cover of these unsuspected ponies. The earliest aucipial mind probably realised the advantage offered, and the system has been practised in Spain from time immemorial. ”