It was very cold, for Ronda is high in the mountains
which hem it round and tower far above it. We had already had our first
glimpse of their summits from our own windows, but it was from the
terrace outside the reading-room that we felt their grandeur most after
we had drunk our coffee: we could scarcely have borne it before. In
their presence, we could not realize at once that Ronda itself was
a mountain, a mere mighty mass of rock, cleft in twain, with chasmal
depths where we saw pygmy men and mules creeping out upon the valley
that stretched upward to the foot of the Sierra. Why there should ever
have been a town built there in the prehistoric beginning, except that
the rock was so impossible to take, and why it should have therefore
been taken by that series of invaders who pervaded all Spain--by the
Phoenicians, by the Carthaginians, by the Romans, by the Goths, by the
Moors, by the Christians, and after many centuries by the French, and
finally by the Spaniards again--it would not be easy to say. Among its
many conquerors, the Moors left their impress upon it, though here
as often as elsewhere in Spain their impress is sometimes merely a
decoration of earlier Roman work. There remains a Roman bridge which
the Moors did not make over into the likeness of their architecture, but
built a bridge of their own which also remains and may be seen from the
magnificent structure with which the Spaniards have arched the abyss
where the river rushes writhing and foaming through the gorge three
hundred feet below. There on the steps that lead from the brink, the eye
of pity may still see the files of Christian captives bringing water up
to their Moslem masters; but as one cannot help them now, even by the
wildest throe, it is as well to give a vain regret to the architect of
the Spanish bridge, who fell to his death from its parapet, and then
push on to the market hard by.

II

You have probably come to see that market because you have read in your
guide-books that the region round about Ronda is one of the richest in
Spain for grapes and peaches and medlars and melons and other fruits
whose names melt in the mouth. If you do not find in the market the
abundance you expect of its picturesqueness you must blame the lateness
of the season, and go visit the bull-ring, one of the most famous in the
world, for Ronda is not less noted for its _toreros_ and _aficionados_
than for its vineyards and orchards. But here again the