FROM CORDOVA TO CATHAY.

bus; perhaps equally old are a gnarled and twisted fig-tree and two gray-green
olives that keep it company. Extending southward, even to the mouth of the
Guadalquivir, are the Arenas Gordas, or the great sands that make this coast a
solitary waste. Truly, it is a lonesome spot, this upon which the building is
perched, and the soul of Columbus must have been aweary as he drew near the
convent portal. The Domingo Rubio, a sluggish stream tributary to the Tinto,
separates from Rabida a sandy island, where there is an ancient watch-tower
and a camp of carbineers on the watch for contrabandistas. A little to the west
the Domingo Rubio meets with, and is lost in, the Rio Tinto, and the two join
with the Odiel and flow tranquilly on to the ocean, where the foaming breakers

 

THE ‘‘ COLUMBUS ROOM” AT LA RABIDA.
(Here the Admiral, the Prior and the Doctor held the conversation that led to the monk’s intercession with Isabella.)

roar with a sound that reaches even to La Rabida. Beyond their united waters
again is another sandy island and another distant watch-tower, till the low coast
fades away in the distance. Down this channel sailed, or floated, Columbus,
bringing his boats from Palos, on his way to the sea.

The landscape is flat, with distant woods, and, farther off, a hint of purple
hills. Opposite, across the bay, lies Huelva, like a snowdrift white upon a
tongue of land between copper-colored hills and the sea. A dreary landscape,
yet a bright sun in its setting might make it transiently glorious.