The Fate of ‘“ Monte Cristo” 309 
which had been struck by one of the Guardias’ bullets. His body 
was tied upon a donkey and with difficulty, owing to the extreme 
g 
roughness of the country, conveyed to the valley below whence it 
was taken to Ronda and exposed in the market-place for some days, 
in order to assure all concerned of the fact of his death. But it is 
hard to convince some people, and not least, my old friends of the 
sierra, for to this day it is said and popularly believed that the man 
the Guardias slew was not Cristo at all, who they assert had made 
arrangements involving certain pecuniary considerations to get 
another man captured in his place, he undertaking to leave the 
district for good and all. Of the truth or falsity of this tale it is 
obviously impossible to determine, but only a few months since 
when I asked a man who looked as if he might have been a disciple 
of Cristo how the latter fared, he smiled and with a wave of his 
hand replied genially ‘‘ He is well, he’s gone to the north.” 
It would be impossible for me to attempt to describe the fascina- 
tion which this forbidding region exercises over me and equally 
over those I have taken through it. I have seen it under all con- 
ditions ; of a summer’s day when the sun’s rays strike on the rocks 
around and make the valleys a very inferno, or in mid-winter, 
either in the rainy season when every valley contains a roaring 
torrent or again in hard frost when even the quick-running streams 
are frozen over and the ice on deep pools will carry the weight of 
a man. Never were there such vicissitudes of temperature and 
climate. 
In early spring the small patches of cultivation, rich brown soil 
or vivid green pasture, usually with a delicate setting of pink 
blossoms around their edges where the almond trees flourish, are 
seen hundreds of feet below, surrounded by the eternal almost 
white crags. Later in the season the more sheltered hillsides are 
a blaze of colour with crimson peonies which grow in great profusion 
amid the limestone. 
