Unexplored Spain

This is a journey into a Spain that no longer exists. Written in 1910 by hunting partners Abel Chapman and Walter J. Buck, this book documents their expeditions through the remote highlands, arid plateaus, and forgotten corners of a country that most Edwardian travelers never saw. What emerges is both a natural history of Spanish wildlife and a portrait of a land where wolves still roamed the mountains and the old ways persisted in isolated villages. The prose has the immediacy of field notes written after hard days in the saddle. Chapman and Buck track ibex through Sierra Nevada passes, observe migrating flocks across the Castilla plain, and witness landscapes so untouched they feel mythic. Their observations of bird behavior, mammalian habits, and the rhythms of wilderness have a scientific precision that also happens to be gripping adventure writing. The 209 illustrations by Joseph Crawhall, E. Caldwell, and Chapman himself capture a Spain on the verge of disappearing forever.