and descant to you for hours upon its perfections and its romantic
history. To me this wondrous pile has become _familiar_; I have seen
it at all hours of the day, and have visited it in the enchantment
of moonlight; and never will pass from my memory the pleasant hours
I have spent within its sacred precincts; I shall remember them and
those who shared them with me--forever. A few days since we made up a
party and rode out to the famous town of Santa Fe, in the delightful
Vega, about eight miles away. We were all dressed in the gay costume
of Andalusia, and presented, as you may imagine, a picturesque
appearance; my companions were lively fellows, and we had a great
deal of sport on the way. Santa Fe is now a dilapidated place, but
its associations make it well deserving a visit. It was built by
Ferdinand, during the memorable siege of Grenada; it was here that
Boabdil signed the capitulation of his city; and it was from this
spot, too, that Columbus was dispatched on his mission of discovering
a new world. The rich and fertile Vega, as we rode with the speed of
the wind over it, seemed to me like a fairy land--so luxuriant
the vegetation--so rich the meadows and fields of waving grain--so
exquisite the variety of cottages, and villages, and groves, dotting
so vast a plain--so pure and transparent the atmosphere, that the most
distant objects are as clearly defined as those nearest us. Imagine
so lovely a landscape--thirty miles in length by twenty-five in width,
surrounded by tremendous mountains,--those of the Sierra Nevada,
rising back of Grenada to the height of thirteen thousand feet above
the level of the sea, their summits covered by a dazzling mantle
of snow: imagine this, and you will have some faint idea of this
beautiful Eden of Spain. It is worth a long pilgrimage to gaze but
for one moment upon it, particularly from the Torre de la Vela of the
Alhambra, whence I have beheld it, both in the bright, gay sunshine,
and through the solemnly beautiful night, illumined by the stars and