THE AWAKENING OF SPAIN
Spain would erelong be racked by lawless brigandage or civil strife.
At this moment came Columbus pointing to a new path by which the Spaniard might win glory and riches, and find scope for his valour, his violence, his fiery religious zeal. Tradition pictures the great navigator, grave and dignified, with the rapt eyes of a seer, pleading with the wise and kindly Isabella in one of the beautiful halls of the Alhambra. The Queen was seated on the throne of the Khalifs. Slender columns, walls cut into tracery exquisite as lace, a dome-ceiling azure and white like the midday heaven, but bright with golden stars and moons, formed a strange Arabic setting to the audience which was to bring to the persecutors of the Moors the gift of a New World. Amid such surroundings, the gentle Isabella, with the Moors lying broken beneath her feet, sent forth across the ocean the stern and merciless people whom constant warfare had bred in the sunny land of Spain.
