FROM CORDOVA TO CATHAY.

For nearly seven hundred years the Moors possessed the better part of Spain;
they built mosques and palaces; they intended that their descendants should
possess this fair land forever. They gave to Spain a distinctive people and
oriental forms of speech and of architecture. The Moorish invasion had been
almost miraculous in its wide-spread conquests; but finally came the time when
they, too, must succumb, and to the prowess of Northern arms. Down from the
mountains of the north, from the Asturias and Pyrenees, swept the Castilian
armies, wave after wave, until the soil and cities the Africans had won with so
much bloodshed were wrested from them, and the conflict of centuries culmi-
nated, in 1492, in the fall of Granada and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain.
Toward the close of the fifteenth century, the only strongholds remaining to the
Moors lay in Andalusia, the southernmost section of Spain. This section is called
by the Spaniards, because of
its delightful climate, its fruit-
ful fields and its natural ad-
vantages asa dwelling-place
forman, La Tierra de Maria
Santissima—“land of the
most Sacred Virgin.”

When at last the union of
Tsabella and Ferdinand joined
the forces of Aragon and
Castile, then appeared pos-
sible the long-deferred, long
hoped-for scheme of univer-
sal conquest and the ultimate
expulsion of the Moors: from
Spanish territory. The most
fascinating episodes of that
final period of warfare oc-
curred in the beautiful Vega, or great plain of Granada, and among the hills
surrounding it.

Standing conspicuously upon every hill-crest overlooking the Vega, are the
remains of Moorish watch-towers. These they called their atalayas, and from
them the watchful sentinels flashed blazing signal-fires at the appearance of
the enemy.

Even to-day these towers may be seen in various places, lone and solitary
landmarks, useless now around the fruitful valleys they were built to guard.
Centuries have slipped by since the danger signals flamed from their summit-
platforms, and they are now fast going to ruin and decay. One such atalaya
rose above the Hill of Elvira, always visible from the Alhambra at sunset, a black
sentinel against the brilliant sky. This tower I took as the objective point of

 

‘THE MOSQUE OF A THOUSAND COLUMNS,’’ CORDOVA.