For rough living we are of course prepared, and accept the necessity without demur or second thought while travelling. But when more serious objects are in hand--say big-game or the study of nature, objects which demand more leisurely progress, or actually encamping for a week or more at selected points--then we prefer to assure complete independence of all local assistance and shelter.
[Illustration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
A true European canary, but its song is harsh and hissing.]
An expedition on this scale involves an amount of care and forethought that only those who have experienced it would credit. For in Spain it is an unknown undertaking, and to engineer something new is always difficult. Quite an extensive camping-trip can be organised in Africa, where the system is understood, with less than a hundredth part of the care needed for a comparatively short trip in Spain where it is not. The necessary bulk of camp-outfit and equipment requires a considerable cavalcade, and this mule-transport (since no provender is obtainable in the country) involves carrying along all the food for the animals--the heaviest item of all. Naturally the cost of such expeditions works out to nearly double that of simple riding.
But, after all, it is worth it! Compare some of the miseries we have above but lightly touched upon--the dirt and squalor, the nameless horrors of _choza_ or _posada_--with the sense of joyous exhilaration felt when encamped by the banks of some babbling trout-stream or in the glorious freedom of the open hill. Casting back in mental reverie over a lengthening vista of years, we certainly count as among the happiest days of life those spent thus under canvas--whether on the sierras and marismas of Spain, on high field or dark forest in Scandinavia, or on Afric's blazing veld.
Should some remarks (here or elsewhere in this book) appear self-contradictory the reason will be found rather in our inadequate expression than in any confusion of idea. 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. Take, for instance, the corn-lands. There the great bustard is alike the index and the price of vast, unwieldy farms unfenced and but half tilled, remote from rail, road, or market. That condition we neither expect nor hope to see exchanged for smug fields with a network of railways. For "three acres and a cow" is not the line of Spanish regeneration; it is rather a claptrap catch-word of politicians--a murrain on the lot of them!