500 Unexplored Spain 
From this spot—still poetically called El Ultimo Suspiro del 
Moro—the Sierra Nevada stretches away some forty miles to the 
eastward with an averge depth of ten miles, and includes within 
that area the four loftiest altitudes in all this mountain-spangled 
Peninsula of Spain. The chief points in the Pyrenees, nevertheless, 
run them fairly close, as shown in the following table :— 
Greatest ALTITUDES IN FEET 
Sterra Nevada. Pyrenees. 
Mulahacen . 11,781 | Pico de Nethou 11 168 
Picacho de la Veleta 11,597 | Monte de Posets 11,046 
Alcazdba : 11,356 | Monte Perdido 10,994 
Cerro de los Machos 11,205 
Col de la Veleta 10,826 
By way of comparison it may be added that the next greatest 
elevations in Spain are :— 
Picos de Europa (described in Chap. XXVIIT.) 10,046 feet 
Sierra de Grédos (already described) 8,700 ,, 
Curiously all the loftiest elevations occur outside the great 
central table-lands of Spain, the highest point of which latter is 
the last-quoted Sierra de Grédos. 
Adjoining the Sierra Nevdda on the south, and practically 
filling the entire space between it and the Mediterranean, lie the 
Alpuxarras, covering some fourteen miles by ten. The Alpuxarras 
are of no great elevation (4000 to 5000 feet), and are separated from 
their giant neighbours by the Valle de Lecrin, the entrance to 
which bears the poetic name of El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, as 
just described. 
Here is a Spanish appreciation of Nevada :— 
Compare this with northern mountains—Alps or Pyrenees: the tone, 
the colours, the ambient air differentiate this southern range. Snow, 
it is true, surmounts all alike, but here the very sky flashes radiant 
(rutilante) in its azure intensity contrasted with the cold blue of glacier-ice. 
‘Here, in lower latitude, the rocks appear rather scorched by a torrid sun 
than lashed by winter rain and hibernal furies. The valleys present a 
semi-tropical aspect, resulting from the industry of old-time Moors, who, 
ever faithful to the precepts of the Koran, introduced every such species 
of exotic fruit or herb as was calculated to flourish and enrich the land.’ 
The main chain of the Sierra Nevdda constitutes one of the 
1 La Alpujarra, by Don Pedro A. de Alarcén (4th edition, Madrid, 1903). 
