he dome was still more suggestive
of flowers. The highest and central piece was a deep trumpet-flower, whose
mouth was cleft into eight petals. It hung in the centre of a superb
lotus-cup, the leaves of which were exquisitely veined and chased. Still
further below swung a mass of mimosa blossoms, intermixed with pods and
lance-like leaves, and around the base of the dome opened the bells of
sixteen gorgeous tulips. These pictures may not be very intelligible, but
I know not how else to paint the effect of this fairy architecture.

In Granada, as in Seville and Cordova, one's sympathies are wholly with
the Moors. The few mutilated traces which still remain of their power,
taste, and refinement, surpass any of the monuments erected by the race
which conquered them. The Moorish Dynasty in Spain was truly, as Irving
observes, a splendid exotic, doomed never to take a lasting root in the
soil It was choked to death by the native weeds; and, in place of lands
richly cultivated and teeming with plenty, we now have barren and-almost
depopulated wastes--in place of education, industry, and the cultivation
of the arts and sciences, an enslaved, ignorant and degenerate race.
Andalusia would be far more prosperous at this day, had she remained in
Moslem hands. True, she would not have received that Faith which is yet
destined to be the redemption of the world, but the doctrines of Mahomet
are more acceptable to God, and more beneficial to Man than those of that
Inquisition, which, in Spain alone, has shed ten times as much Christian
blood as all the Moslem races together for the last six centuries. It is
not from a mere romantic interest that I lament the fate of Boabdil, and
the extinction of his dynasty. Had he been a king worthy to reign in those
wonderful halls, he never would have left them. Had he perished there,
fighting to the last, he would have been freed from forty years of weary
exile and an obscure death. Well did Charles V. observe, when speaking of
him: "Better a tomb in the Alhambra than a palace in the Alpujanas!"

Chapter XXXVI.

The Bridle-Roads of Andalusia.

Change of Weather--Napoleon and his Horses--Departure from Granada--My
Guide, Jose Garcia--His Domestic Troubles--The Tragedy of the
Umbrella--The Vow against Aguardiente--Crossing the Vega--The Sierra
Nevada--The Baths of Alhama--"Woe is Me, Alhama!"--The Valley of the
River Velez--Velez Malaga--The Coast Road--The Fisherman and his