that about five hundred Mexicans fell, a number which shows that the defense of the Texans was indeed fierce and bloody.

The history of our country does not show any incident of greater bravery or more heroic selfsacrifice, and it is hardly to be conceived that such a defense will ever be excelled. This was no disciplined force fighting under trained officers, but a group of simple, manly men, not agreeing in all things, but united with the one idea of fighting against cruelty and oppression. On the Capitol grounds at Austin, Texas, a monument was erected in 1891 to the heroes of the Alamo. On it is this inscription:

"Thermopyla had her messenger of defeat: The Alamo had none."

THE ALHAMBRA

WASHINGTON IRVING

NOTE, The Alhambra is now a beautiful ruin, but at one time it was the great fortified palace of the Moors and the place where they made their last stand against the Christian Spaniards. From its beautiful courts the Moorish defenders were at last driven, and with their departure the Mohammedan faith ceased as a power in Europe.

The palace occupied but a portion of the space within the walls of the fortress, which in the time of the Moors was capable of containing an army of forty thousand men. The walls, studded with towers, stretch irregularly round the whole crest of a lofty hill that overlooks the city and forms a spire of the Sierra Nevada or Snowy Mountains.

After the kingdom had passed into the hands of the Christians, the castle was occasionally inhabited by the Castilian monarchs. Early in the eighteenth century, however, it was abandoned as a court residence, its beautiful walls became desolate, and some of them fell to ruin, the gardens were destroyed, and the fountains ceased to play.

In 1829 Washington Irving lived for some time within the walls of the Alhambra and studied its history and the legends of Spain. These he has embodied in a charming book,

from which we draw a description of the Alhambra. Irving is writing of his first visit.

E now found ourselves in a deep, narrow ravine, filled with beautiful groves, with a steep avenue and various footpaths winding through it, bordered with stone seats and ornamented with fountains. To our left, we beheld the towers of the Alhambra beetling above us; to our right, on the opposite side of the ravine, we were equally dominated by rival towers on a rocky eminence. These, we were told, were the Torres Vermejos, or Vermilion towers, so called from their ruddy hue. No one knows their origin. They are of a date much anterior to the Alhambra. Some suppose them to have been built by the Romans; others, by some wandering colony of Phoenicians. Ascending the steep and shady avenue, we arrived at the foot of a huge square Moorish tower, forming a kind of barbican, through which passed the main entrance to the fortress. This portal is called the Gate of Justice, from the tribunal held within its porch during the Moslem domination, for the immediate trial of petty causes; a custom common to the Oriental nations, and occasionally alluded to in the sacred Scrip

tures.

The great vestibule, or porch of the gate, is formed by an immense Arabian arch of the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the

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tower. On the keystone of this arch is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the vestibule, on the keystone of the portal, is engraven, in like manner, a gigantic key. Those who pretend to some knowledge of Mohammedan symbols affirm that the hand is the emblem of doctrine, and the key

of faith; the latter, they add, was emblazoned on the standard of the Moslems when they subdued Andalusia, in opposition to the Christian emblem of the cross.

It was a tradition handed down from the oldest inhabitants, and which our informant had from his grandfather, that the hand and key were magical devices on which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it was a great magician, and, as some believed, had sold himself to the devil, and had laid the whole fortress under a magic spell. By this means it had remained standing for several hundred years, in defiance of storms and earthquakes, while almost all the other buildings of the Moors had fallen to ruin and disappeared. The spell, the tradition went on to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach

down and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed.

After passing through the barbican we ascended a narrow lane, winding between walls, and came on an open esplanade within the fortress, called the Plaza de los Algibes, or Place of the Cisterns, from great reservoirs which undermine it, cut in the living rock by the Moors, for the supply of the fortress. Here, also, is a well of immense depth, furnishing the purest and coldest of water, another monument of the delicate taste of the Moors, who were indefatigable in their exertions to obtain that element in its crystal purity.