y sallied forth and
took Zahara, one of the strongholds which the father of Ferdinand had
taken from the Moors. The chivalry of Spain sprang quickly into
well-girt saddles, and the ten years' siege of Granada, "the last
stronghold of the Moors in Spain," began in 1481. The Iliad of the
reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors has yet to be written; the Homer
of its Iliad has yet to appear. But the closing year of the struggle
between Christian knight and turbaned Moor would furnish as stirring
incidents, and immortalize the names of its heroes as successfully, as
has the Greek Homer the Trojan war.

Those of us who have read the story of the Arab-Moors in Spain, the
quick-witted, light-footed, brave-hearted Moors, who coveted the land
"flowing with milk and honey" that lay across a narrow strait; who
conquered it, redeemed its barren wastes, and made them to blossom as
the rose; who, in their quick flight from the Arabian deserts through
civilized lands, gathered seeds of knowledge and planted them so freely
in the land of their adoption that their planting overspread the earth;
who, like the Goths, became enervated when they became stationary, and
were no longer able to resist the powerful foe who had from their
entrance into Spain sworn their expulsion or their extermination, will
be ready to weep when the final retribution comes. Yet come it did, when
Ferdinand and Isabella pitched their tents and planted their banners of
Castile and Aragon upon the verdant vega, or plain, around Granada.

And yet we as readily accept the inevitable. We have known that it was
impossible for Isabella to allow any portion of her dominions to be
possessed by a people alien in race, language, customs, and religion; to
see the Crescent triumphant over any site that had been hallowed by the
Cross. To the Spanish Christian the fall of Granada was only the final
victory of a righteous war. It was the triumph of his race, his nation,
and his creed. And, looking back over the long march from Asturias to
Granada, he claimed to have invaded no man's right; every victory but
won back what was his own: every step retraced by the Moors but left him
in possession of another portion of his inheritance from his
forefathers.

The Arab-Moors claimed also hereditary rights. For nearly eight hundred
years the Moors had held possession of that strip of land between the
"Snow Mountains" and the blue sea, in Southern Spain. One cannot but
feel respect for