Giron and Pacheco. The first
Count of Montalban married a daughter of D. Ladron de Guevara,
proprietor, _a propos_ of castles, of that of Guevara, in the
neighbourhood of Vitoria, constructed in an extremely singular form. The
centre tower appears intended to imitate the castles of a chess-board.
It is situated on the southern declivity of the chain of mountains, a
branch of the Pyrenees, which separates the province of Guipuscoa from
those of Navarre and Alava.

On the opposite descent of the chain another fortress existed in remote
times. Both were strongholds of robbers, whose descendants derived their
family name, Ladron (robber) from their ancestors' profession. In a
document signed by D. Garcia Ramirez, King of Navarre in 1135, D. Ladron
de Guevara, governor of Alava, figures among the grandees of the
kingdom; the descendants were afterwards called lords of Onate, and the
castle is at present the property of the Count de Onate, a grandee of
the first class. From its occupying a point _strategique_ of
considerable importance, commanding the plain of Alava, and the high
road as it enters the valley of Borunda, it has been in recent times
occupied by the Carlists, and fortified.

Montalban belongs at present to the Count of Fuensalida. It is
completely ruinous, but the outer wall is almost entire; and one of two
lofty piles of building, in the form of bastions, which flanked the
entrance, is in sufficient preservation to allow the apartments to be
recognised. Their floors were at a height of about eighty feet from the
ground; and the mass of masonry which supported them, is pierced by an
immense gothic arch reaching to the rooms. The opposite corresponding
mass remains also with its arch; but the upper part which contained
rooms, no longer exists. On this, the entrance side, the approach is
almost level, and the defence consisted of a narrow and shallow moat;
but the three other sides, the fortress being of a quadrangular form,
look down into a deep ravine, through which a river, issuing from the
left, passes down two sides of the castle, and makes for the valley of
the Tagus, which river is seen at a distance of five or six miles.

The precipice at the furthest side descends perpendicularly, and is
composed of rocks in the wildest form. The river below leaps from rock
to rock, and foams through a bed so tormented, that, although owing to
its depth of at least five hundred feet from the foundations of the
castle,