eak
off the negotiations, and to bury themselves beneath the ruins of the
city rather than suffer their desolate and deserted homes to be
profaned by the intruding foot of the spoiler.

The wretched Moslem prince hastened therefore to deliver the keys of
the city, and of the fortresses of the Albazin and the Alhambra, into
the hands of Ferdinand.

Entering no more, after this mournful ceremony, within the walls where
he no longer retained any authority, Boabdil took his melancholy
journey, accompanied by his family and a small number of followers, to
the petty dominions which were now all that remained to him of the once
powerful and extensive empire of his ancestors.

{196}

When the cavalcade reached an eminence from which the towers of Grenada
might still be discerned, the wretched exile turned his last sad
regards upon the distant city, amid ill-suppressed tears and groans.
"_You do well_," said Aixa, his mother, "_to weep like a woman for the
throne you could not defend like a man!_"

But the now powerless Boabdil could not long endure existence as a
subject in a country where he had reigned as a sovereign: he crossed
the Mediterranean to Africa, and there he ended his days on the
battle-field.

Ferdinand and Isabella made their public entrance into Grenada on the
1st of January, 1492, through double ranks of soldiers, and amid the
thunder of artillery. The city seemed deserted; the inhabitants fled
from the presence of the conquerors, and concealed their tears and
their despair within the innermost recesses of their habitations.

The royal victors repaired first to the grand mosque, which was
consecrated as a Christian church, and where they rendered thanks to
God for the brilliant success that had crowned their arms. While the
sovereigns fulfilled this pious duty, the Count de Tendilla, the new
governor {197} of Grenada, elevated the triumphant cross, and the
standards of Castile and St. James, on the highest towers of the
Alhambra.

Thus fell this famous city, and thus perished the power of the Moors of
Spain, after an existence of seven hundred and eighty-two years from
the first conquest of the country by Tarik.

It may now be proper briefly to remark upon the principal causes of the
extinction of the national independence of the kingdom of Grenada.

The first of these arose from the peculiar character of the Moors: from
that spirit of inconstancy, that love of novelty, and that unceasing
inqui