es was heard in cool silvery continuity the gurgle and plash
of streams which, issuing from mountain snows, had wound their loitering
way through fields of violets and forget-me-nots to the "large and
spacious plaine" of the Vega. The fairy palace of the Alhambra, the
Acropolis that once held forty thousand defenders of the faith, crowns
and encircles the hill. From its watch-tower the nightingales pour forth
lovers' songs, plaintive and passionate, heightening the enchantment of
a scene unsurpassed in natural loveliness and the charm of a romantic
past.

The hillsides undulating from the vermilion ramparts of the Alhambra are
clad with graceful elms, with orange and pomegranate trees bearing deep
red and golden fruit and with the mulberry's glistening olive green.
Here and there are open spaces between the groves; fields of roses and
lilies. The Darro and the Xenil flow by the foot of the hill, and from
their banks for almost thirty miles stretches the Vega. At the base of
the fortress, between the rivers, lies the city of Granada,--

The artist's and the poet's theme,
The young man's vision, the old man's dream,--
Granada, by its winding stream,
The City of the Moor.

Out on the plain the settlement becomes gradually sparser, the houses
more scattered. White stucco walls are interspersed with plots of green
garden, the ochre houses are smaller shining patches amid the
yellow-flowering fig-cactus and the regularly planted olive groves,
until finally the eye must search for the farmhouse hidden among
vineyards, orchards and waving fields of corn. The gleaming villas and
farmhouses still look as they did to the Moor, like "oriental pearls set
in a cup of emeralds."

The endless plain, once the fertile bosom of fourteen cities,
innumerable strong castles and high watch-towers, is shut in from the
outside world like a very Garden of Eden, by the mountain walls of the
Alpujarras and Sierra Alhama. Far away on the horizon the barrier is
broken at a single point, the Loja gorge. This was once guarded by
sentinels ever on the watch for the distant gleam of Christian lances to
light the fires that signaled approaching danger to the distant citadel.
Most Spanish cities were densely built within high walls, but Granada
felt so secure in her mountain fortress that her dwellings were strewn
broadcast over the plain. Behind the walls of the Alhambra, on a second
slope wooded with cypress, the brilliant towers of