FROM CORDOVA TO CATHAY.

Four centuries ago and two years more, the armies of Isabella and Ferdi-
nand had advanced their line of conquest to the mountain-wall around the Vega.
One after another, the Moorish towns and cities had fallen before the implacable
Ferdinand: Zahara, Antequera, Alhama, Loxa, Ilora, Moclin; until, in 1490,
Granada stood alone, isolate, crippled, yet
proudly defiant.

In April, 1491, the Spanish army,
horse and foot, fifty thousand strong,
poured over the hills and into the Vega,
intrenching themselves upon the site of
Santa Fé. It was a situation strategically

important, in the center of the plain.
Ee Ber nmrisaa) Granada lay full in sight before them.
Where to-day rise the towers of its great
cathedral, the minaret of a Moslem mosque towered skyward, and from its
summit the Muezzin called the faithful to prayers: “ Allah il Allah! Great
God! Great God! There is none but the one God! Come to prayer! Come
to prayer! Itis better to pray than to sleep!”

So near were the soldiers of Ferdinand to the object. of their desires that
they could almost hear the summoning cry of the Muezzin. Upon the site of
the fortified camp, which was first of tents, then huts of wood and stone, was
founded in the year 1492 the royal war-town of Santa Fé. It may be seen, as I
saw it that hot day in May, 1888, scarcely
lifting itself above and beyond broad fields
of barley, wheat and alfalfa.

A semi-somnolent city is Santa Fé, com-
pletely walled about, with most picturesque
gates facing the cardinal points. If the
term “ dead-and-alive”’ may be applied to
any place, it certainly may be to this.
Yet its history is interesting, and no
student of the conquest of Granada can
afford to pass it by without at least a RreUC Tae TREO TTR ree
peep into its past. Although we are deal-
ing with Columbus, yet we may not neglect the historical accessories that
make his story worth the telling. A hundred books, at least, in this Columbian
year, will tell the tale of his life and adventures, but will only repeat what is
already familiar to all, until the reader and the listener will weary of Columbus.
Hence it is to avoid the cyclopedic and biographic I shall aim, and shall present
the unfamiliar scenes of his adventures as viewed by myself. Since a multitude
of writers are already on the search, hunting the victim from the cradle to the
grave, we will not join in, but will lie quietly in ambush; perchance we may