Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n A SIBYL OF RONDA DAWN in a garden of Andalusia. . . . To the south, across the Straits of Gibraltar, the faint purple outlines of the Atlas Mountains mark the mysterious coast of Africa. To the north, beyond the green vega, four ranges of clear cut Sierras Gazoulos rise, one behind the other, from gray, vaporous valleys of mist. The only sounds are the rhythmic breaking of waves on the beach; the short breathing of a herd of goats — black, tawny, and white, with coarse hair and fierce, yellow eyes, and the crisp crunch, crunch of their teeth cropping the roadside grass. The night flowers hang their heads and go to sleep, the day flowers lift their faces to the sun; the smell of heliotrope drenched in dew is an unforgetable thing. Breakfast is memorable, too; dates from Morocco, and rich Spanish coffee flavored with cinnamon, served under an arbor of Marechal Neil roses. So began our first day in Spain, at a place theRomans called Portus Albus, and the Moors — they settled here soon after landing on Gibraltar, Jezirat-I-Kadra — " the green island." Can you derive the modern name of Algeciras from that? You must. Our old friend Tarik was here,— witness the great aqueduct he built, that still brings Algeciras his royal gift of water, always the legacy of Roman or of Moor. To-day, Gibraltar is England's key to the Mediterranean; yesterday, Algeciras was the Moors' key to Spain. They held the Peninsula seven hundred years, think of it! — nearly twice as long as white men have held America; then it was wrenched from them, the door was locked against them. Less than three hundred years ago our ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock, but how should we, in New England, feel if the Indians, the Mexicans, or the Canadians rose up and drove us out of our stately cities, our green pastur...