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DISASTER AND RETREAT.

scale the mountain and sell our lives dearly, instead of remaining to be tamely butchered here. No man, be he friend or foe, yet ever saw the back of the GrandMaster of Santiago!"

In this race of honor no one hangs back. The meanest foot-soldier contends with the proudest knight. Emblazonry is nothing against personal prowess at times like these. MAN is every thing. The standard of the Grand-Master is lost-the standard-bearer with it: standard, steed and rider have all gone down over a precipice, and passed from crag to crag, mutilated, disfigured, disjointed, are dashed to atoms in the valley. The affrighted men-at-arms stand aghast; banner nor trumpet can they be made to follow longer. The Grand-Master, as pious as Æneas, raises his hands to heaven: "Oh God!" exclaimed he, 66 great is thine anger this day against thy servants. Our shortcomings have moved at last thy long endurance. Thou hast made the scum of the earth the instruments of thy vengeance, and hast exalted the infidel over the picked soldiery of Castile. From Thy wrath, and not from peasants and boors, do I now fly."

No sooner had the Master of Santiago turned his horse, than his troops scattered in every direction. Many were lost in the mountains, many fell by the sword of the avenging pursuers; some were taken prisoners, a few escaped with the sad story of disgrace.

Such was one of the many occurrences which made these places famous in the olden times; and which now shine with all their original luster in the revivifying pages of Irving.

My friend Josè had never heard of the Master of Santiago, nor had he ever read the tales of America's pleasantest author. Indeed, though much imbued with Españolism, he had never read the works of Spanish

writers. I repeated some sayings of Sancho Panza to him, as a reply to some proverb of his own. He knew Sancho very well, he told me. He was an arrièro, and went between Ronda and Seville-un hombre de bien sin duda, but he had never thought him very intelligent. I asked him if he had never read Don Quixote ? "No," he said; "but he had an uncle by his mother's side, who had, and told him about him. He was a great warrior, and had won a battle against the Moriscoes." After this I did not attempt to draw Josè out on literary subjects, for they were evidently not in his line. He had, however, read men to some advantage -a knowledge, I am told, more useful to the children of this world than many books. As to them, he frankly avowed he could not read them without his eyes being affected. "It was the reason," he said, " he had asked me to read the inscriptions on the crosses." This ophthalmia, as I may have said before, is not uncommon in Spain, and arises from want of proper treatment of the eyes in early youth.

66

As we approached Ronda we saw crowds hastening toward its walls. We passed many of both sexes with whom we exchanged the " Vaya usted con Dios—God be with you." This salutation is seldom first proffered to a stranger, and never unreturned. The girls were more ruddy of countenance, and more vigorous than those generally on the sea coast. The bracing air of these mountainous regions gave the hue of health to their features, and a springing elasticity to their gait.

This mountain-range of Ronda is the first land made by ships on the Atlantic bound to Cadiz. It rises in a series of serrated ridges to the clouds. The town itself clings to a rock, which is gidled by the waters of the Guadiaro, and is only accessible by means of a narrow precipitous road which the Moorish castle completely

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66

A THING OF BEAUTY."

enfilades. The demon of Arabian or German story who was to obey the behests of the person that raised him up, and to be harmless so long as he was employed, should have been directed to lay out Ronda. One would think the undertaking might have baffled his powers, and given to his employer a perpetuity of enjoyment. It puzzles comprehension, and distracts thought-so wild, so chaotic, so fearful is its aspect! It was one of Nature's dreams, while she was suffering from the night-mare! For not she, in her most fantastic humor, could have conceived such a waking reality. The tajo, or chasm, has no prototype or copy; for such features are never repeated. From the old Moorish mills in the valley below, where I took my first view of the chasm, and its attendant wonders, to the bridge which, six hundred feet above, arches the chasm, every where around you, above, beneath, in repose or action, Nature's gorgeous ecstasies clothe themselves in beauty. The features of the storm-scarred rocks, cloud-capped and solemn, bespeak your earliest sympathies; the vast abyss, whose bottom no eye can penetrate, and whose origin no mind can reconcile, sonorous with the mass of waters, whose unseen struggles strike the ear like the deep roar of angry lions; the river as it bursts its rocky prison, where for some time it has been an untamed and unyielding captive, and rushes impetuously and rejoicingly into sun-light and liberty, like a fabled knight of old, breaking from the power of some enchantment; the suspended arch, high in the heavens, and so light as to seem but a rainbow against the sky; the frowning walls of the rock-built city; the moss-grown turrets, and the dizzy ramparts; the savage fastnesses and robber-holds in neighboring cliffs; the noise, the motion, the life in air, in earth, and in the waters under the earth-make