AN EQUIVOCAL INTRODUCTION.

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a view which no eye has seen, nor has it entered into the heart of man to conceive. Without seeing Ronda, I might have been happy; having seen it, I have a possession, "a joy forever!" It is the complement of my existence.

The lively notes of the castanet, the gay mazes of the boléro, and the quick glancing of twinkling feet welcomed Josè and myself to Ronda, and as we threaded its tortuous and narrow streets, festive dresses, and the shouts of revelry accompanied us. "Que buena moza!" said I to Josè; "what a pretty girl that is tripping along there with the old caballero." "Muy hinchada, que tono se da!" she is very proud, and gives herself great airs," replied Josè. "I will make you see others muy guápitas-uncommonly nice." "Hola! Señor Don Josè, que tal?-What's the news, Josè ?"-exclaimed a man "dressed to kill" en majo. Josè exchanged salutations and embraces and then introduced me: 66 uno de mes amigos," he said to his companion. "Es hombre tan formal come nosotros— a friend of mine, and as well-bred as we are.” Whereupon his friend and I embraced, and I invited them into the posada that we might take una copita, in sanction of the acquaintance. Josè took a side-opportunity to tell me his friend was engaged in the funcion de toros -a very good sort of a person, barring that he was tunánte y embustéro, an incorrigible liar.

The bull-functionary had a great power of talk, and his natural talent in that direction excited by two or three copitas of aguardiente made him as garrulous as a vieja-old woman. In vain Josè, who wanted to say something, and I who wished to inquire something, essayed to interpose. The turbid gush of his conversation broke down, or overleaped our frail barriers, and carried every thing before it to the Dead Sea of oblivion.

For I am confident that neither he nor his auditors could have recalled to mind next morning scarcely a word of this reckless waste of speech. But that we cut off communication with the reservoir that fed this noisy stream, he might have run on till time mingled with eternity. His funcion was, of course, the Aaron's rod of his topics, and Cuchares the refrain of his theme. His arrival the day before-his appearance on the Alameda-his sanitary condition-his inimitable prowessthe number of bulls he would kill, etc., etc., he commented upon, enlarged upon, and, I hoped, would sleep upon. But no! if he shut his eyes, he could not his mouth; and I feared that even, if he slept, he would still talk and talk of Cuchares. Josè, however, who perceived that the effects of a hard day's journey were telling upon me, as I had given incoherent drowsy answers to some of the functionary's assertions two or three times, finally got him out of the posada, and left me to "tired nature's sweet restorer."

CHAPTER XXVII.

VIEW FROM THE MOORISH TOWER-LA CASA DEL REY MORO-THE FAIR-BULLFIGHT-ALAMEDA-MOONLIT SCENERY HOG-FUNCION-FRUIT-WILD BOAR

HUNT.

THE sun rises early on these mountain heights, but never found me laggard. I sallied forth to embrace the untainted air, and catch Nature, if possible, en déshabille. Slight clouds, like bonnets de nuit, or nightcaps, covered the tops of the old wrinkled crags; and white mists still lay like specks upon the lowland glens. Yet man was moving. Coming into Ronda from every side I beheld rustic crowds in their holiday attireviejos, viéjas, niños, y niñas-old men, old women, little boys and little girls-all ruddy with health. For so pure is the air of these mountains that the glow of health is on every cheek, and no one dies from disease, but, like ripened fruit, drops quietly to the ground. Longevity is chronic here, and the only fatal complaint: En Ronda los hombres a ochenta son pollones-men of eighty years at Ronda are mere chickens.

My mind full of the Moors and of their still wondrous edifices, unhurt by time or more remorseless man, before these altars of Nature where they worshiped, where mosque was distant, and the muezzin called to instant prayer, I could hardly refrain from repeating their azala, or earliest morning supplication. The God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, was also the God of Mohammed, and was and is alike accessible to the

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votaries of either faith. I went to the Moorish tower that hangs over the mighty chasm-that production of the earth in throes-and felt sick as I looked below. It requires hardened nerves to gaze, unmoved, upon such a fearful fall. How is it that on such occasions we feel a half-inclination, an impulsive thought, to cast ourselves beneath? Some German writer has said: "Hast thou never trod the verge of a fearful precipice and wished to throw thyself below? If not, thou hast never loved!" Whether this be so, or whether the converse of the proposition be rather true: "If thou hast ever loved, and hast ever trod the verge of a frightful precipice, thou must have wished to throw thyself below"-I leave to others better qualified to judge to decide. One thing seems incontestible from uncontradicted experience-that among the many mysteries of that greatest mystery, the human heart, is a vehement impulse, amounting often to a monomaniac intensity, to encounter, at whatever hazard, a frightful, and therefore fascinating peril.

I visited afterward la casa del Rey Moro, the house of the Moorish king, built some eight centuries since by Muhamad Ben Muhamad Aben Ismail Aben Abed, a monarch with a long name, which should have gone "to the barber's with his beard." Condé says of him: "This prince was of singularly beautiful person, but was the slave of his passions, and as cruel as he was voluptuous; even in the time of his father he maintained a precious harem of seventy slaves, exquisite in beauty, selected from different countries and maintained at immense cost." When he became king, "he extended his harem to the number of eight hundred damsels, all entertained for his own delights." As there is a much larger number of females than males born into the world, some contend that nature as well

as Mohammed authorizes polygamy. However that may be, let us see what Condé writes further about the long-named caliph: "He was somewhat tainted with impiety, or at least had obtained the reputation of being but slightly attached to his religion, and in all the five-and-twenty fortresses of his lordship, he caused but one aljama to be erected; but on the other hand he gave command that a most beautiful palace of pleasure should be constructed in Ronda, and placed therein such a train of servants as sufficed to maintain it in perpetual readiness for his use." He had a singular taste in one respect: "He assembled within a magnificent recess a rich treasure of singular and beautifully decorated cups, garnished with gold and jacinth, emeralds and rubies; the bowls of these cups were made from the skulls of such great personages, his enemies, as he had destroyed with his own hand and sword.” This was reviving a custom that I supposed had become obsolete with the Scandinavians, the followers of Odin and Thor, who were for a long time "short" of crockery or silver.

From this house I descended to the river by means of a stair-case cut out of the solid rock. There I found a grotto, which I afterward learned from Condé had been formed by Christian captives about the middle of the fourteenth century. It must have been a hard task for them, but no harder than they in return imposed upon the Moors when they had captured and enslaved them. It is to be remembered that during the wars that raged almost uninterruptedly for seven centuries between Moslem and Christian, prisoners on either side incapable of ransoming themselves were condemned to severe and almost hopeless bondage. "The Catholic kings," Ferdinand and Isabella, devoted thousands of the unhappy Moors, whose only crime had been attach