Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/433

I THE SPANISH ARABS. 289 authors agree in attesting, that, at a later period, chapter it could send forth fifty thousand warriors from its . '. gates. This statement will not appear exagger- ated, if we consider that the native population of the city was greatly swelled by the influx of the ancient inhabitants of the districts lately con- quered by the Spaniards. On the summit of one of the hills of the city was erected the royal for- tress or palace of the Alhambra, which was capa- ble of containing within its circuit forty thousand men. ^^ The light and elegant architecture of this edifice, whose magnificent ruins still form the most interesting monument in Spain for the contempla- tion of the traveller, shows the great advancement of the art since the construction of the celebrated mosque of Cordova. Its graceful porticoes and colonnades, its domes and ceilings, glowing with tints, which, in that transparent atmosphere, have lost nothing of their original brilliancy, its airy halls, so constructed as to admit the perfume of surrounding gardens and agreeable ventilations of the air, and its fountains, which still shed their coolness over its deserted courts, manifest at once the taste, opulence, and Sybarite luxury of its proprietors. The streets are represented to have been narrow, many of the houses lofty, with tur- rets of curiously wrought larch or marble, and with cornices of shining metal, " that glittered like stars through the dark foliage of the orange groves " ; and the whole is compared to " an enamelled vase, 24 L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 169. VOL. I. 37