the Asturian mountains, the
maritime town of Gijon was the term[180] of the lieutenant of Musa, who
had performed with the speed of a traveller, his victorious march of
seven hundred miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the bay of Biscay.
The failure of land compelled him to retreat: and he was recalled to
Toledo, to excuse his presumption of subduing a kingdom in the absence
of his general. Spain, which in a more savage and disorderly state, had
resisted, two hundred years, the arms of the Romans, was overrun in
a few months by those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness of
submission and treaty, that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the
only chief who fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands.
The cause of the Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of
Xeres; and in the national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined
a contest with the antagonist who had vanquished the united strength of
the whole.[181] That strength had been wasted by two successive seasons
of famine and pestilence; and the governors, who were impatient to
surrender, might exaggerate the difficulty of collecting the provisions
of a siege. To disarm the Christians, superstition likewise contributed
her terrors: and the subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens,
and prophecies, and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of
Spain, that were discovered on the breaking open an apartment of the
royal palace. Yet a spark of the vital flame was still alive; some
invincible fugitives preferred a life of poverty and freedom in the
Asturian valleys; the hardy mountaineers repulsed the slaves of the
caliph; and the sword of Pelagius has been transformed into the sceptre
of the Catholic kings.[182]

[Footnote 179: In the Historia Arabum (c. 9, p. 17, ad calcem Elmacin),
Roderic of Toledo describes the emerald tables, and inserts the name of
Medinat Ahneyda in Arabic words and letters. He appears to be conversant
with the Mahometan writers; but I cannot agree with M. de Guignes (Hist.
des Huns, tom. i. p. 350) that he had read and transcribed Novairi;
because he was dead a hundred years before Novairi composed his
history. This mistake is founded on a still grosser error. M. de Guignes
confounds the governed historian Roderic Ximines, archbishop of Toledo,
in the xiiith century, with cardinal Ximines, who governed Spain in
the beginning of the xvith, and was the subject, not the author, of
historical compositions.]