ly virile effort, in strength and poetry akin to the
wind-swept rocks round which still whisper mysterious Oriental legends.
The huge bulk that overshadows it betrays exhausted vigor and a decadent
form. Here is simplicity by complexity, majestic sobriety close to
wanton magnificence, poise by restlessness; each speaks the language of
the age that conceived and brought it forth. Proximity has compelled the
odiousness of comparison, for you can never see the later Cathedral
apart from the old. You are haunted by the salience of their divergency,
the importance of their contrasts, until their meaning becomes so far
clear to you that the solid blocks of the ancient temple seem to
symbolize the Church Militant and Triumphant. That indomitable spirit
did not meet you under the mighty arches of the newer church, but go
into the hushed perfection of those abandoned walls and walk along the
dismantled nave and you will repeat the old epithet coupled with the
city, "Fortis Salamanca!"

This once famous town lay in a curious setting as seen from the
cock-tower in the month of August. Here and there were rusty,
copper-colored fields, where the plow had just furrowed the surface.
There were vineyards in which the sandy, white mounds were tufted by the
deep emerald of the grape-vines, but the prevailing color was the yellow
straw of harvested fields. These were a busy scene,--laborers were
driving their oxen harnessed to primitive carts and treading out the
grain as in olden times. They made their rounds between the high yellow
cones built up of grain-stalks and filled the hot air with golden dust.

This is Salamanca of to-day, seemingly robbed of all but her rich
vowels. The whole city, like her two cathedrals, bears traces of the
dynasties that have swept over her. Their footprints are everywhere.
Hannibal's legions passed through Roman Salmantica on their victorious
march to Rome, and the city soon afterwards became a military station in
the province of Lusitania. Plutarch praises the valor of her women. Age
after age generals have built her bridges and the towers and walls that
surround the valley and the three hills, on one of which stands her
supreme mediaeval creation.

From the eighth century Salamanca became an apple of discord between
Moslem bands and the forces of early Castilian kings, Crescent and Cross
constantly supplanting each other on her turrets. Not until the latter
half of the eleventh century, in the days of