OUR "HOME-MOUNTAINS"
THE SERRANÍA DE RONDA
I. SAN CRISTOBAL AND THE _PINSÁPO_ REGION
This mountain-system may be regarded as an outlying eastern extension of
the Sierra Neváda. Except at the "Ultimo Suspiro del Moro" there is no
actual break, and both in physical features and in fauna the two ranges
coincide, while differing essentially from the Sierra Moréna, their
immediate neighbour on the north. The Serranía de Ronda, nevertheless,
displays distinctive characters which entitle it to a place in this
book; it forms, moreover, our "Home-mountains," lying within a
thirty-mile ride eastward of Jerez.
[Illustration: PINSÁPO PINE]
The outstanding feature is the _massif_--or, in Spanish, _Nucléo
Central_--of San Cristobal, which rises to 5800 feet, and stands head
and shoulders above its surrounding satellites, an imposing pile of cold
grey rock and perpendicular precipice.[57]
Nestling beneath its western bastions lies the Moorish hamlet of
Benamahoma, whence, housed in friendly quarters, we have oft explored
this hill. The route to the summit (which may almost be reached on
donkey-back) is by the southern face; for summits, however, merely as
such, we have no sort of affection, and never expend one ounce of energy
in gaining them, unless they chance to aid a main objective. As to
"views," we are sure to enjoy these from other points quite as
effective.
New-fallen snow powdered the ground and mantled the surrounding peaks as
we rode out of Benamahoma on March 20. But the sun shone bright, and
from a poplar softly warbled a rock-bunting--with pearl-grey head,
triple banded. Serins and kitty-wrens sang from the wooded slopes, and
we observed long-tailed tits, with cirl-buntings and woodlarks. A grey
wagtail by the burnside was already acquiring the black throat of
spring.
[Illustration: ROCK-BUNTING (_Emberiza cia_)]
The tortuous track writhes upwards through sporadic cultivation--the
angles at which these hill-men can work a plough amaze, beans and
_garbanzos_ grow on slopes where no ordinary biped could maintain a
foothold. The industry of mountaineers (here as elsewhere in Spain) is
remarkable. Each tillable patch, however small or abrupt, is reduced to
service, its million stones removed and utilised to form the foundation
for a tiny era, or threshing-floor (like a shelf on the hillside),
whereon the hard-won crop is threshed with flails. Higher out on the
hills rude stone sheilings are erected to serve as shelters during
seed-time and harvest. Not even the hardy Norseman puts up a tougher
tussle with nature to wrest her fruits from the earth.
Presently one enters forests of oak and ilex with strange misshapen
trunks, stunted and hollow, but decorated with prehensile convolvulus
and mistletoe--many three-fourths dead, mere shells with cavernous
interior, sheltering tufts of ferns. Here, instead of destroying the
whole tree, charcoal-burners pollard and lop; huge lateral limbs are
amputated as they grow, and the result, during centuries, produces these
monstrosities, rarely exceeding twenty feet in height and surmounted by
a delicate superstructure of branches totally disproportionate. No more
fantastic forms can be conceived than these bloated boles, wrestling, as
it were, with death, yet still able to transmit life to the
superstruction above. They recall the Baobab trees of Central Africa. In
neither case is the effect absolutely displeasing, albeit grotesque.
Both may be described as deformed rather than disfigured.
On rounding the northern shoulder of the mountain, suddenly the whole
scene changes. Instead of limb-lopped trunks, one is faced by the dark
foliage of the pinsápo pine--a forest monarch whose stately growth
strikes one's eye as something conspicuously new. And new indeed it is.
For the range of this great Spanish pine (_Abies pinsapo_) is limited
not merely to Spain, but actually to this one mountain-range, the
Serranía de Ronda--there may exist more remarkable examples of a
restricted distribution, but none certainly that we have come across.
The pinsápo, moreover, affects even here but three spots: first, San
Cristobal itself; secondly, the Sierra de las Nieves, a mountain plainly
visible some thirty miles to the eastward (all its northern corries
darkened by pinsápos); and, lastly, the Sierra Bermeja on the
Mediterranean, distant thirty to thirty-five miles S.S.E. On each of the
three the pinsápo grows in forests; on adjacent hills we have observed
one or two scattered groups--otherwise this pine is found nowhere else
on earth.
A curious character of the pinsápo is that it only grows on the northern
faces of the hills.
The tree possesses remarkable personality. Though one sees a chance
specimen grow up straight as a spruce, yet its normal tendency is to
"flatten out" on top, whence three, four, even a dozen independent
"leaders" spring away, each with equal vigour, and finally form as many
distinct vertical trunks, say six or eight separate pines all arising
from a common base.
To see the pinsápo in its pristine majesty and massiveness, one must
ascend beyond the range of charcoal-burners; up there flourish gigantic
specimens, some of which we measured (by rough pacing) to encompass ten
to fifteen yards of base. These trees grow from screes of broken
rock--great blocks of white dolomite; but the deep-searching tap-roots
penetrate to black alluvia beneath. Other huge pines found roothold in
walls of living rock. The three sketches, made from individual trees
(presumed for the purpose to be divested of foliage), illustrate the
singular multiple growth described.
The foliage of the pinsápo differs from ordinary pine-needles, being
rather a series of stiff outstanding spines analogous to those of the
Araucaria. They display a crimson efflorescence in March, developing
into clusters of red cones by April, and ripening in August to
September.[58]
[Illustration: PINSÁPO PINES (_Abies pinsapo_)
Diagram to show trunk-plan, divested of foliage. Girth at base 30 to 45
feet.]
The pinsápo-forests are subject to terrible destruction alike by hatchet
and fire, tempest and avalanche. Forest-fires sweep whole glens; while
rock-slides overwhelm and uproot even the biggest trees by scores. Few
scenes that we have witnessed are more eloquent of nature's violence
than these traces of an avalanche. Mammoth skeletons, weird and
weather-blanched, protrude by the hundred from chaotic rock-ruin--some
still upright, others overthrown or half submerged in debris, yet
stretching great white arms heavenward, as though in agonised appeal.
The distant roar of an avalanche is a not infrequent sound throughout
the mountain-land.
The pinsápo-forests of San Cristobal present one of the most striking
mountain-landscapes in Andalucia. For some three miles they cover in a
semicircle the whole scooped-out amphitheatre of the mountain-side.
Their dark-green masses, contrasted against the white rocks on which
they grow--and in winter with yet whiter snow--cluster upwards, tier
above tier, from below the 3000-feet level away to the extreme summit of
the knife-edged ridge above, say 5500 feet. Would that we could depict
the beauty of the scene.
[Illustration: CROSSBILL
Wrestling with pine-cone.]
Through these dark forests a track winds, and here again the evident
industry of the mountaineers surprised. At intervals along this pathway
lay great baulks of pine-timber (sleepers, planks, and poles), dressed
and piled ready for transport. That such loads could be carried hence on
donkey-back, or, were such possible, that the labour could be repaid,
appeared incredible--so distant are markets and so heavy the cargo.[59]
We had hoped to find in these forests a home of the Spanish crossbill,
but not a sign of it rewarded our search. To avail the ripe fruit, the
crossbill would need to nest in autumn, and that (wide as is the
latitude of its breeding-season) is too much even for the _Pico-tuerto_.
An interesting species found here in March was the cole-tit (_Parus
pinsapinensis?_), which climbed around us, swinging from twigs within a
yard as we sat at lunch. Blackstarts abounded, also firecrests. The
latter have a pretty habit of engaging in aërial struggle--whether for
love or war--both falling locked together to earth, as blue-tits do. On
one such occasion a male, ere taking wing, spread out his flaming crown
fanlike, as it were a halo.
Beyond the pinsápo-forests succeeds a region of wiry esparto-grass, up
which we climbed to yet more sterile zones above. Here cruel rocks are
adorned with a dwarf sword-broom, steel-tipped, a thorny berberis, and
vicious pin-cushion gorse that protects its newer growths (not that
there is anything tender about it at any stage) by a delicate grey
tracery that deceives a careless eye. For that subtle tracery is, in
fact, the indurated malice of last year's spikey armour. No handhold
does nature here vouchsafe.
Curiously, we noticed woodlarks up here, while blackstarts abounded as
titlarks on a Northumbrian moor. In an ivy-clad gorge at 4200 feet we
found two nearly completed nests in rock crevices: one occupied a
vertical fissure that needed quite twelve inches of packed moss to
provide a foundation, the cup-shaped nest being superimposed. But it was
not till a month later (April 24) that these birds were laying in
earnest.
At 5000 feet the "Piorno" (_Spartius scorpius_) began to grow, a
red-stemmed shrub, known locally as _Leche-interna_, and on breaking it,
the twigs are found to be filled with a milky fluid that justifies the
name. The piorno we have never found growing except on the high tops of
Grédos and other lofty sierras, where it forms a chief food of the
Spanish ibex, its presence being, in fact, always associated with that
of the wild-goat. Alas! that here, on San Cristobal, that association
has been severed--another instance of the heedless improvidence that
marks the Spanish race. Fifteen years ago they destroyed the last ibex;
fifteen years hence they will have destroyed the last pinsápo!
Once for brief moments a broad-horned head, peering over the topmost
crags, lent joyous hope that after all an ibex or two might yet survive.
But the intruder proved to be one of the dark-brown rams of _Ovis
bidens_ that, in semi-feral state, roam these peaks.
San Cristobal itself now holds no big game; though ibex are found but a
few leagues to the eastward, and, we rejoice to add (on certain sierras
where protection is afforded them), begin to increase. The Serranía de
Ronda, like Neváda, of which it is an extension, has never held either
boar or deer; both are too rocky and precipitous to shelter those
animals, though both boar and roe are found in the lower hills towards
Jerez.
* * * * *
Just below the highest peak, the Cumbre de San Cristobal, lies a curious
little alpine meadow. It is only forty yards square, and while we
rested, lunching, on unaccustomed level a golden eagle swept overhead,
chased and hustled by a mob of choughs that colonise these crags. Ten
minutes later a lammergeyer afforded a second glorious spectacle,
speeding through space on pinions rigidly motionless, but strongly
reflexed, as is usual on a descending gradient. Only once, as far as eye
could follow, was one great wing gently deflected, and that merely from
the "wrist."
[Illustration: LAMMERGEYER OVERHEAD
Gliding high on down-grade with rigid reflexed wings, outer primaries
in-drawn, fan-wise.]
On reaching a crest above, two lammergeyers appeared, the first carrying
a long stick or thin bone athwart his beak; the second held a course
direct to where L. sat on the ridge, coming so near that the rustle of
huge wings sounded menacingly and the white head, golden breast, and
hoary shoulders showed clear as in a picture. We expected to find the
eyrie somewhere hard by, but in this we were mistaken--once more. It was
not on that hill, nor the next; but on a third![60]
We discovered the nest of our friends, the golden eagles. It was situate
quite two miles away, in a vertical pulpit-shaped rock-stack, that
stood forth in a terribly steep scree. From a cavern in the face of this
(prettily overhung by a clump of red-berried mistletoe) flew the male
eagle. From below, the eyrie was accessible to within a dozen feet; but
that interval proved impassable. In the evening we returned with the
rope, and having made this fast above, L. was about to ascend from
below, when the man left in charge at the top (probably misunderstanding
his instructions) let all go, and down came the rope clattering at our
feet! It was too late to rectify the blunder that night, and a month
elapsed ere we would revisit the spot. Then this curious result ensued.
The eagles, we found, had so bitterly resented the indignity of a rope
having been (even momentarily) stretched athwart their portals that they
had abandoned their stronghold, leaving two handsome eggs, partly
incubated. Their eyrie was eight feet deep, its entrance partly
overgrown with ivy and (as above mentioned) overhung by red-berried
mistletoe growing on a wild-cherry--the nest built of sticks, lined with
esparto, and adorned with green ivy-leaves and twigs of pinsápo.
[Illustration: GOLDEN EAGLE HUNTING
(1) The "stoop"--quite vertical. (2) "Got him."
]
The golden eagle is still common, ornamenting with majestic flight every
sierra in Spain. For eagles are notoriously difficult to kill, and, when
killed, cannot be eaten; so the goat-herd, with characteristic apathy
and Arab fatalism, suffers the ravages on his kids and contents himself
with an oath. Only once have we found a nest in a tree; it was a giant
oak, impending a ravine so precipitous that from the eyrie you could
drop a pebble into a torrent 200 feet below. Usually their nests are in
the crags, vast accumulations of sticks conspicuously projecting, and
generally in pairs, perhaps 100 yards apart, and which are occupied in
alternate years. Eggs are laid by mid-March, but the young hardly fly
before June. It was in this sierra that we made the sketches of golden
eagles from life, here and at p. 317.
Bonelli's eagle is another beautiful mountain-haunting species, but of
it we treat elsewhere.
* * * * *
From the knife-edged ridge above our eagle's eyrie (height 5500 feet) we
enjoyed a memorable view. Due south, 50 miles away, beyond the jumbled
Spanish sierras, lay Gibraltar, recognisable by its broken back, but
looking puny and inconsiderable amidst vaster heights. Beyond it--beyond
Tetuan, in fact--rose Mount Anna, an 8000-feet African mountain; to the
right, Gebel-Musa and all the Moorish coast to Cape Spartel, the straits
between showing dim and insignificant. To the eastward, beyond the
Sierra de las Nieves aforesaid, stands out boldly the long white
snow-line of Neváda, its majesty undimmed by distance and 140 miles of
intervening atmosphere. To the west we distinguish Jerez, 40 miles away,
and beyond it the shining Atlantic.
From one point there lies almost perpendicularly below, the curious
mediæval village of Grazalema, jammed in between two vast cinder-grey
rock-faces--its narrow streets, white houses, and india-red roofs
resembling nothing so much as a toy town. No space for "back-streets,"
each house faces both ways; yet Grazalema is one of the cleanest spots
we have struck--how they manage that, we know not.
Immediately beneath Grazalema is a bird-crag that contains a regular
"choughery," hundreds of these red-billed corvines nesting in its caves
and crevices. As neighbours they had lesser kestrels and rock-sparrows
(_Petronia stulta_), while the roofs of the caverns were plastered with
the mud nests of crag-martins. We also noticed here alpine swifts, and a
great frilled lizard escaped us amid broken rocks.
Within the limits of a chapter even the more notable spots of a great
serranía cannot all find place; but the rock-gorge known as the Yna de
la Garganta will not be overpassed, though no words of ours can convey
the stupendous nature of this place, a chasm riven right through the
earth's crust till its depths are invisible from above; and overshadowed
by encircling walls of sheer red crags, broken horizontally at
intervals, thus forming, as it were, tier above tier, and flanked by a
series of bastions and flying buttresses apparently provided to support
the vast superstructure above.
[Illustration]
By climbing along the rugged central tier, one overlooks from its apex,
as from the reserved seats of a dress-circle, the whole domestic economy
of a vulture city in being. Every ledge in that abyss was crowded; many
vultures sat brooding, their heads laid flat on the rock or tucked under
the point of a wing. Elsewhere a single grey-white chick, or a huge
white egg, lay in full view on the open ledge, nestled, apparently, on
bare earth; and behind these each niche or cavern had its tenant. The
rocks around a nest were often stained blood-red, and one vulture
arrived carrying a mass of what appeared carrion in its claws. Another
brought a wisp of dry esparto-grass athwart her beak and deposited it in
her nest.[61]
While we watched this scene a smart thunderstorm passed over, with the
result that shortly afterwards the vultures spread their huge wings to
dry, displaying attitudes some of which we endeavour to sketch--see also
p. 9.
[Illustration: "WING-DRYING"]
The descent into the unseen depths beneath was rewarded, despite a
terrible scramble--part of the way on a rope--by discovering a fairy
grotto filled with pink, azure, and opalescent stalactites and
stalagmites. The bed of the canyon, which from above had appeared to be
paved with sand, now proved to consist of boulders ten feet high. After
threading a devious course through these for half-a-mile we reached the
mouth of the grotto. Its width would be nearly 200 feet and height about
half that, the form roughly resembling the quarter of a cocoa-nut. The
dome, in delicate colouring, passes description--the apex bright
salmon-pink, changing, as it passed inwards, first into clear emerald,
then to dark green, and finally to indigo; while the reflected sunlight
filtering down between the rock-walls of the canyon caused
phantasmagoric effects such as, one thought, existed only in fairyland.
The cavern was backed by pillars of stalactites resembling the pipes of
a mighty organ, and of so soft and feathery a texture that it was
surprising, on touching them, to find hard rock. The floor also was
composed of great smooth stalagmites, deep brown in colour.
From outside, one saw the sky as through a narrow rift between the
perpendicular walls which towered up 300 feet; and above that level
there again uprose the vultures' cliffs already described.
* * * * *
One evening we detected afar a cavern which showed signs of being the
present abode of a lammergeyer. Ere reaching it, however, a keen eye
descried one of these birds in the heavens at an altitude that dwarfed
the great _Gypaëtus_ to the size of a humble kestrel. Presently, after
many descending sweeps, the lammergeyer entered another cavern 2000 feet
higher up--in fact, close under the sky-line, among some scanty
pinsápos. The hour was 4 P.M., and after a long day's scramble, the
writer shied at a fresh ascent. Not so my companion, L., who set off at
a run, and within an hour had reached the eyrie. It proved empty, though
the leg of a freshly killed kid lay half across the nest. This was
presumably the alternative site, used, this year, merely as a larder;
but time did not that night admit of further search.
The writer beguiled the two-hours interval in interviewing a wild
gipsy-eyed girl of twelve, whose name was Joséfa Aguilár, and whose
vocation in life to attend a herd of swine. Throughout Spain, whether on
mountain or plain, one sees this thing--a small boy or girl spending the
livelong day in solitary charge of dumb beasts, goats or pigs, even
turkeys--and the sight ever causes me a pang of regret. Probably I am
quite wrong, but such hardly seems a human vocation--certainly it leads
nowhere. In intervals of pelting her recalcitrant charges with stones,
Joséfa told me she lived in a reed-hut which was close by, but so small
that I had overlooked its existence; that she never went to school or
had been farther from home than Zahara, a village some few miles away.
She asked if I was from Grazalema, and on being told from England, she
repeated the word "Inglaterra" again and again, while her bright black
eyes became almost sessile with wonderment. Joséfa's frock was hanging
in tatters, torn to bits by the thorny scrub. I gave her some coppers to
buy a new one, and with a little joyous scream Joséfa vanished among the
bush.
[Illustration: LAMMERGEYER ENTERING EYRIE]
Darkness was closing in ere L. returned; then great thunder-clouds
rolled up, obscuring the moon, and oh! what we suffered those next three
hours, scrambling over rock and ridge, through forest and thicket--all
in inky darkness and under a deluge of rain.
On returning to this remote ridge (having ascended from the opposite
face), we soon renewed our friendship with the lammergeyer--when first
seen, it was being mobbed by an impudent chough. Then it sailed up the
deep gorge below us, passing close in front, and after clearing an angle
of the hill, wheeled inwards and with gently closing wings plunged into
a cavern in the crag. We felt we had our object assured; yet on
examining these mighty piles of rocks--a couple of hours' stiff
climbing--it was evident we were mistaken, for no nest, past or present,
did they reveal. It was on yet a third stupendous crag, quite a mile
from the alternative site first discovered, that this year these
lammergeyers had fixed their home. The nest was in quite a small cave in
the rock-face; more often (as described in _Wild Spain_) the lammergeyer
prefers a huge cavern in the centre of which is piled an immense mass of
sticks, heather-stalks, and other rubbish--the accumulation of
years--and lined with esparto-grass and wool. The eggs always number two
and are richly coloured, whereas the griffon lays but one, and that
white. Although laying takes place as early as January, yet the young
are unable to fly before June. Our principal object this year was to
sketch the lammergeyer in life, and in this several rough portraits
serve to show that we succeeded--so far as in us lies.
* * * * *
There remain notes of later vernal developments in these beautiful
sierras; but alas! this chapter is already too long, so over the
taffrail they go.