CHAPTER XXX 
THE SIERRA NEVADA 
TuE Sierra Nevada with its striking skylines, crisp and clean-cut 
against an azure background, is yearly surveyed by thousands of 
tourists in southern Spain. The majority content themselves 
with the distant view from the battlements of Alhambra or from 
the summer-palace of Generalife. Few penetrate the alpine 
solitude or scale peaks that look so near yet cost some toil to 
gain. 
We are not ashamed to admit that these glorious sierras have in 
themselves possessed for us attractions that transcend in interest 
the accumulated art-treasures, the store of historic and legendary 
lore that illumine the shattered relics of Moslem rule—of an 
Empire City where during seven centuries the power and faith of 
the Crescent dominated south-western Europe and the focal point 
of mediaeval culture and chivalry. None, nevertheless, can long 
sojourn in Granada wholly uninfluenced by its stirring past, by 
the pathetic story of the fall of Moorish dominion, and the 
words graven on countless stones till they seem to represent the 
very spirit of this land, the words of the founder, King Alhama: 
LA GALIB ILLA ALLAH= Only God is Victor. 
Abler pens have portrayed these things, and we will only 
pause to touch on one dramatic episode—since its scene lies on our 
course to the “high tops’”—when Boabdil, last of the Caliphs, 
paused in his flight across the vega to cast back a final glance 
at the scene of his former greatness and lost empire. ‘‘ You do 
well,” snarled Axia, his mother, “to weep over your kingdom 
like a woman since you could not defend it like a man.” That 
the maternal reproach was undeserved was proved by Boabdil’s 
heroic death in battle, thirty years later, near Fez.’ 
1 Boabdil, we read, was a keen hunter, and during his sojourn at Besmer frequently spent 
weeks at a time among the mountains with his hawks and hounds. 
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