whole of learned Europe hangs, I desire to relate a little tale. It will
do no prejudice to the interesting question of the correct locality of
Monda.

I had hired a guide and a couple of horses at Cordova, and had
started on my way with no luggage save a few shirts, and Caesar's
_Commentaries_. As I wandered, one day, across the higher lands of the
Cachena plain, worn with fatigue, parched with thirst, scorched by a
burning sun, cursing Caesar and Pompey's sons alike, most heartily, my
eye lighted, at some distance from the path I was following, on a little
stretch of green sward dotted with reeds and rushes. That betokened the
neighbourhood of some spring, and, indeed, as I drew nearer I perceived
that what had looked like sward was a marsh, into which a stream, which
seemed to issue from a narrow gorge between two high spurs of the Sierra
di Cabra, ran and disappeared.

If I rode up that stream, I argued, I was likely to find cooler water,
fewer leeches and frogs, and mayhap a little shade among the rocks.

At the mouth of the gorge, my horse neighed, and another horse,
invisible to me, neighed back. Before I had advanced a hundred paces,
the gorge suddenly widened, and I beheld a sort of natural amphitheatre,
thoroughly shaded by the steep cliffs that lay all around it. It was
impossible to imagine any more delightful halting place for a traveller.
At the foot of the precipitous rocks, the stream bubbled upward and fell
into a little basin, lined with sand that was as white as snow. Five or
six splendid evergreen oaks, sheltered from the wind, and cooled by the
spring, grew beside the pool, and shaded it with their thick foliage.
And round about it a close and glossy turf offered the wanderer a better
bed than he could have found in any hostelry for ten leagues round.