FROM CORDOVA TO CATHAY.

The old soldier in charge of the convent, Don Cristobal Garcia, the concerge,,
was evidently straitened in circumstances, yet he was cheerful, and his hospi-
tality shone forth resplendently. He laughingly informed me that he rejoiced
in the same name as Columbus, Cristobal; but, he added, he had never done.
anything to make it illustrious. He and his family lived in a primitive and even
pitiful state — at meal times gathering around a common platter; but my own
meals they served me on snowy linen at a table apart. There were six of them:
the old man, his wife, a little girl named Isabel, some twelve years old, and
three boys. Isabel, poor child, pattered about the stone pavement with bare feet ;
but they were pretty feet, and her little
brown ankles were neatly turned. There eT
was another member of the family, evi- (ApCESSetage:
dently an intruder, a little chap clad solely
in a short shirt, who had squint eyes and
a great shock of bristly black hair. Don
Cristobal told me that he was a descendant
of one of the Indians brought to Spain
from America on the first voyage ; and as
the child’s face was certainly that of an
Indian, I was more than half inclined to
believe the story. The little people were THE COURTYARD OF LA RABIDA.
delighted with the peeps I gave them
through my camera, and capered about with delight at the sight of the court.
and its flowers spread out before them in miniature, and nearly jumped out of
their jackets at the image of the grave old concerge standing on his head.
“Mira! Mira!” they exclaimed, and gazed at me with awe and wonder.

Don Cristobal gave me a bed in one of the cloister-cells— the very one, he
assured me, that Columbus occupied. I slept well through the night. It.
was a disappointment to me that I did not dream and receive a visitation from
some steel-clad hidalgo, or from a girdled monk or two. At six in the morning
I was awakened by the good concerge, who inquired if Don Federico would not
like a little refreshment. Don Federico would; and well he did, for it was three
or four hours before he received a hint of breakfast. The eldest boy had gone.
to Palos for twenty cents’ worth of meat and two eges, making apparent the
poverty of my host. He did not return until ten, and then we had breakfast ;
and there were the two eggs, which the mistress could not have regarded more
proudly had they been golden, for they were very scarce at that time in Palos,
and it was waiting on a hen’s pleasure that caused the boy’s delay. He had been
told to bring back two eggs, and if two hens had not happened along quite.
opportunely, I might have been waiting that boy’s return to this day.

The rain had fallen all the forenoon and had made the convent cold and
cheerless, so a fire was built in the fireplace of the ancient monks, and as it