Fontconfig error: "local.conf", line 1: XML or text declaration not at start of entity

[Understudy]

Hi All,

I am running FreeBSD 9.0 on a thinkpad t60p  xorg 7.5.2 with Xorg Server 
1.7.7

I have the following error

Fontconfig error: "local.conf", line 1: XML or text declaration not at 
start of entity

I get this error when trying to run

fc-cache -f

This is line 1 from my local.conf

<?xml version="1.0"?>

I have been doing this based on the handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-fonts.html

What should line 1 be if not what is shown in the handbook?

Sincerely,
Brendhan