of his province; but in the following year, after the fall of the strong city of Baza, he bowed, as he himself expressed it, to the will of Allah, and surrendered all the places in his possession, including Almeria and Guadix, to the Catholic sovereigns. Mohammed XIII., as he is styled by Moorish historians, retired to Algeria, where he died, years afterwards, in indigence and obscurity. There remained now, of all the Moorish dominions in Europe, but the single city of Granada, of which Mohammed XII., Boabdil, was at last undisputed sovereign. He formed the manly resolution to sell his hard-won crown as dearly as possible. He sallied from Granada, took Alhendin and Marchena by assault, and laid waste the country in possession of the Christians. Summoned by Ferdinand and Isabel to surrender the city in accordance with an alleged treaty, he replied, and probably with truth, that his proud and exasperated subjects would not permit him to do so. The population of Granada was swollen by refugees from all parts of the kingdom to thrice its normal figure. The Spanish king perceived that the surest method to reduce it was by blockade. With 20,000 men, including some of the first chivalry of all Europe, he entered the Vega, and built the town of Santa Fé, almost at the gates of the threatened city. This permanent establishment of the Infidels on their native soil plunged the Moors into profound gloom. No ray of hope remained to the unfortunate Boabdil. The city endured the horrors of a famine. The Spanish fleet precluded all hope of supplies from Africa, towards which country the wretched people still turned in expectation of help. The negotiations for the capitulation which the Sultan most reluctantly entered upon in October 1491, had to be conducted, through fear of the populace, with profound secrecy. Indeed, at the last moment, Boabdil, in danger of his life, besought Ferdinand to accelerate his entrance into the city. On January 2, 1492, accordingly, the Moorish king, attended by fifty horsemen, surrendered the keys to the Catholic sovereigns on the banks of the Genil, passing on to the domain allotted him by the conquerors in the rocky Alpujarras. The story of his stopping to gaze for the last time on his former kingdom, and of the rebuke administered to him by his mother, is well known. We are not told whether his eye caught the gleam of the great silver cross hoisted over the Alhambra by Cardinal Mendoza by way of signal to the Spanish host that the occupation of Granada was completed and that the dominion of Islam in Spain was for ever at an end.