Part 34 (1/2)

The Sierra Nevada with its striking skylines, crisp and clean-cut against an azure background, is yearly surveyed by thousands of tourists in southern Spain. The majority content themselves with the distant view from the battlements of Alhambra or from the summer-palace of Generalife. Few penetrate the alpine solitude or scale peaks that look so near yet cost some toil to gain.

We are not ashamed to admit that these glorious sierras have in themselves possessed for us attractions that transcend in interest the acc.u.mulated art-treasures, the store of historic and legendary lore that illumine the shattered relics of Moslem rule--of an Empire City where during seven centuries the power and faith of the Crescent dominated south-western Europe and the focal point of mediaeval culture and chivalry. None, nevertheless, can long sojourn in Granada wholly uninfluenced by its stirring past, by the pathetic story of the fall of Moorish dominion, and the words graven on countless stones till they seem to represent the very spirit of this land, the words of the founder, King Alhama: LA GALIB ILLA ALLAH = Only G.o.d is Victor.

Abler pens have portrayed these things, and we will only pause to touch on one dramatic episode--since its scene lies on our course to the ”high tops”--when Boabdil, last of the Caliphs, paused in his flight across the _vega_ to cast back a final glance at the scene of his former greatness and lost empire. ”You do well,” snarled Axia, his mother, ”to weep over your kingdom like a woman since you could not defend it like a man.” That the maternal reproach was undeserved was proved by Boabdil's heroic death in battle, thirty years later, near Fez.[54]

From this spot--still poetically called El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro--the Sierra Nevada stretches away some forty miles to the eastward with an average depth of ten miles, and includes within that area the four loftiest alt.i.tudes in all this mountain-spangled Peninsula of Spain. The chief points in the Pyrenees, nevertheless, run them fairly close, as shown in the following table:--

GREATEST ALt.i.tUDES IN FEET

_Sierra Nevada._

Mulahacen 11,781 Picacho de la Veleta 11,597 Alcazaba 11,356 Cerro de los Machos 11,205 Col de la Veleta 10,826

_Pyrenees._

Pico de Nethou 11,168 Monte de Posets 11,046 Monte Perdido 10,994

By way of comparison it may be added that the next greatest elevations in Spain are:--

Picos de Europa (described in Chap. XXVIII.) 10,046 feet Sierra de Gredos (already described) 8,700 ”

Curiously all the loftiest elevations occur outside the great central table-lands of Spain, the highest point of which latter is the last-quoted Sierra de Gredos.

Adjoining the Sierra Nevada on the south, and practically filling the entire s.p.a.ce between it and the Mediterranean, lie the Alpuxarras, covering some fourteen miles by ten. The Alpuxarras are of no great elevation (4000 to 5000 feet), and are separated from their giant neighbours by the Valle de Lecrin, the entrance to which bears the poetic name of El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, as just described.

Here is a Spanish appreciation of Nevada:--

Compare this with northern mountains--Alps or Pyrenees: the tone, the colours, the ambient air differentiate this southern range.

Snow, it is true, surmounts all alike, but here the very sky flashes radiant (_rutilante_) in its azure intensity contrasted with the cold blue of glacier-ice. Here, in lower lat.i.tude, the rocks appear rather scorched by a torrid sun than lashed by winter rain and hibernal furies. The valleys present a semi-tropical aspect, resulting from the industry of old-time Moors, who, ever faithful to the precepts of the Koran, introduced every such species of exotic fruit or herb as was calculated to flourish and enrich the land.[55]

The main chain of the Sierra Nevada const.i.tutes one of the strongholds of the Spanish ibex; and, curiously, the ibex is the solitary example of big game that these mountains can boast. Differing in geological formation from other mountain-systems of southern Spain, the Sierra Nevada shelters neither deer of any kind--red, fallow, or roe--nor wild-boar. The ibex, on the other hand, must be counted as no mean a.s.set, and though totally unprotected, they yet hold their own--a fair average stock survives along the line of the Veleta, Alcazaba, and Mulahacen. This survival is due to the vast area and rugged regions over which (in relatively small numbers) the wild-goats are scattered; but even more so to the antiquated muzzle-loading smooth-bores. .h.i.therto employed against them. That moment when cheap, repeating cordite rifles shall have fallen into the hands of the mountain-peasantry will sound the death-knell of the ibex.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAMMERGEYER (_Gypallus barbatus_)

A glorious denizen of Sierra Nevada.]

While writing the above we hear (from two sources) that the ”Mauser” has at last got into the hands of at least one local goat-herd, who last summer killed four out of a band of five ibex--all s.e.xes and sizes.

There is no mistaking the import of this. It signifies that the end is in view unless prompt measures are taken to save the ibex of Nevada from extirpation.

So long as local hunters were restricted to their old ball-guns, the contest was fairly equal and the game could hold its own. But neither ibex nor any other wild beast on earth can withstand _FREE_ shooting (unlicensed and unlimited) with 1000-yard ”repeaters.” Personally the writer regards the use of repeating-rifles on game as sheer barbarism.

These are military weapons, and should be excluded from every field of sport.

A precisely a.n.a.logous case is afforded by Norway and her reindeer. The Mauser first appeared there in 1894. Three years later we pointed out, both to the Norwegian Government and also in _Wild Norway_, that unless steps were taken to regulate and limit the resultant ma.s.sacre, the wild reindeer would be extinct within five years. Our warnings pa.s.sed unheeded; but the prediction erred only on the side of moderation. For only four years later (in 1901) the Norsk Government was forced to _prohibit absolutely_ all shooting for a period of seven years, and to impose, on the expiry of that time, both licence-duties and limits, alike on native as well as on foreign sportsmen.

Free shooting, unregulated and unlimited, means with modern weapons instant extermination--a matter of a few years. Then, after some creature has perished off the face of the earth, we read a gush of maudlin regret and vain disgust. It is too late; why do not these good folk bestir themselves while there is time to safeguard creatures that yet survive, though menaced with deadly danger? Warnings such as ours pa.s.s unnoticed, and platonic tears are bottled-up for posthumous exhibition.

In winter the ibex are driven downwards by the snow. They first descend southwards to the Trevenque--one of those abruptly peaked mountains that ”stretch out” even skilled climbers to conquer. A long knife-edged ridge is Trevenque, culminating in a sheer pyramidal aiguille, its flanks scarred by ravines with complication of scarp and counter-scarp, upstanding crags and steep shale-shoots that defy definition by pen or pencil.