THE COTO DOÑANA: OUR HISTORIC HUNTING-GROUND
A Foreword by SIR MAURICE DE BUNSEN, G.C.M.G., British Ambassador
at Madrid.
Among my recollections of Spain none will be more vivid and delightful
than those of my visits to the Coto Doñana. 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. In
its hold the first of many enticing _bocadillos_ is spread before him.
Table utensils are superfluous luxuries, but, armed with hunting blade
and a formidable appetite, he plays havoc with the red mullet,
_tortilla_, and _carne de membrillo_, washed down with a tumbler of
sherry which has ripened through many a year in a not far distant
_bodega_.
In half an hour he is in the saddle. Distances and sandy soil prohibit
much walking in the Coto Doñana.
[Illustration: SAND WASTE IN COTO DOÑANA.]
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE IN COTO DOÑANA, WITH MARISMA IN BACKGROUND.
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY H.R.H. PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS.]
[Illustration: SPANISH IMPERIAL EAGLE]
Marshalled by our host, the soul of the party, the cavalcade canters
lightly up the sandy beach of the river. Thence it strikes to the left
into the pine-coverts, leading in five hours more to the friendly roof
of the "Palacio." A picturesque group it is with Vazquez, Caraballo, and
other well-known figures in the van, packhorses loaded with luggage and
implements of the chase, and lean, hungry _podencos_ hunting hither and
thither for a stray rabbit on the way. The views are not to be
forgotten, the distant Ronda mountains seen through a framework of
stone-pines, across seventy miles of sandy dunes, marismas, and
intervening plains. After a couple of hours we skirt the famous
sandhills, innocent of the slightest dash of green, which for some
inscrutable reason attract, morning after morning, at the first tinge of
dawn, countless greylag geese to their barren expanse and on which, _si
Dios quiere_, toll shall be levied ere long. The marismas and long
lagoons are covered here and there with black patches crawling with
myriads of waterfowl, to be described after supper by the careful
Vazquez as _muy pocos, un salpicon_--a mere sprinkling. Their names and
habits, are they not written, with the most competent of pens, in this
very volume? We stop, perhaps, for a first deer-drive on our line of
march. How thrilling that sudden rustle in the brushwood! Stag is it, or
hind, or grisly porker? As we approach the "Palacio" we see the
spreading oak on which perched, contemptuous and unsuspecting, the
imperial eagle, honoured this year by a bullet from King Alfonso's
unerring rifle. As we ride through the scrub the whirr of the
red-legged partridge sends an involuntary hand to the gun. They may
await another day. At dusk we ride into the whitewashed _patio_, just in
time to sally forth and get a flighting woodcock between gun and
lingering glow of the setting sun.
For no precious hours are wasted in the Coto Doñana. Next day at early
dawn, maybe, if the lagoon be our destination, or at any rate after a
timely breakfast, off starts again the eager cavalcade, be it in quest
of red deer or less noble quarry. Then all day in the saddle, from drive
to drive, dismounting only to lie in wait for a stag, or trudge through
the sage-bushes after partridge, or flounder through the boggy _soto_,
beloved of snipe, with intervening oases for the unforgotten
_bocadillo_.
If Vazquez be kind, he will take you one day to crouch with him behind
his well-trained stalking-horse, drawing craftily nearer and nearer to
where the duck sit thickest, till, straightening your aching back, you
have leave to put in your two barrels, as Vazquez lays low some twenty
couples with one booming shot from his four-bore, into the brown.
[Illustration: EGRET-HERONRY AT SANTOLALLA, COTO DOÑANA.
(THE FOREGROUND IS SAND.)
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY H. R. H. PHILIPPE, DUKE OF ORLEANS.]
But one morning surely a visit must be paid to the sandhills. Caraballo
will call you at 4 A.M., and soon after you will be jogging over the six
or eight miles which separate the "Palacio" from that morning
_rendezvous_ of the greylag. The stars still shine brightly as you
dismount at the foot of the long stretch of dunes. A few minutes' trudge
will deposit you in a round hole dug deep in the dazzling white expanse
the day before; for a hole too freshly dug will expose the damp brown
sand from below, staining the spotless surface with a warning blotch,
and causing the wary geese to swerve beyond the range of your No. 1
shot. It is still dark as you drop into your hole. Gradually the sky
grows greyer and lighter, till the sun rises from the round yellow rim
of the blue morning sky. Who shall describe the magic thrill of the
first hoarse notes falling on your straining ear? The temptation to peep
out is strong, but crouching deep down, you wait till the mighty pinions
beat above you, and the first wedge of eight or ten sails grandly away
in the morning sun. You judge them out of shot. But surely this second
batch is lower down? Are they not close upon you? Why then no response
to your two barrels? Was the emotion too great, or have you misjudged
the speed of that easy flight or its distance through the crystal
air? All the keener is the joy when, with heavy thump, your first goose
is landed on the sand amid the tin decoys. When three or four lie there,
Vazquez will send his fleet two-legged "water-dog" to set them up with
twigs supporting their bills, to beguile more of their kind into line
with the barrels. If the day be propitious, the sky will be dotted at
times with geese in all directions. Now and again they will give you a
shot, the expert taking surely three or four to the tyro's one. It is
half-past eight, and you have sat in your hole close on two hours before
Vazquez comes to gather the slain, to which he will add two or three
more, marked down afar, and picked up as dead as the rest. Never have
two of your waking hours passed so quickly. What would you not give to
live them over again and undo some of those inexplicable misses? But one
goose alone would amply repay that early start. Even four or five are
all you can carry, and the twenty or thirty that our expert [who must be
nameless] would have shot, will live to stock the world afresh.
[Illustration: SPANISH LYNX]
Among the fauna of the Coto Doñana, a word must be given to the lynx.
Never can I forget sitting one afternoon, Paradox in hand, on the fringe
of a covert. I was waiting for stag, rather drowsily, for the beat was a
long one and the sun hot, when my eyes suddenly rested on a lynx
standing broadside among the bushes, beyond a bare belt of sand, some
fifty yards off. Fain would I have changed my bullet for slugs, but
those sharp ears would have detected the slightest click; so I loosed
my bullet for what it was worth.
The lynx was gone. When the beat came at last to an end, I thought I
would just have a look at his tracks. He lay stone-dead behind a bush,
shot through the heart.
The eventful days are all too soon over. But the recollection remains of
happy companionship and varying adventure, of easy intercourse between
Spaniard and Englishman, with the echo of many a sporting tale, mingled
with sage discourse from qualified lips on the habits of bird and beast.
Who can tell you more about them than that group of true sportsmen and
lovers of nature whose names, Garvey, Buck, Gonzalez, and Chapman, are
indissolubly linked with the more modern history of the famous Coto
Doñana?
MAURICE DE BUNSEN.
BRITISH EMBASSY, MADRID,
_July 1910_.
[Illustration: GREENSHANK (_Totanus canescens_)]