And here the first work we meet with is one that was rather compiled under his direction, than written by himself. It is called “The Great Conquest beyond Sea,” and is an account of the wars in the Holy Land, which then so much agitated the minds of men throughout Europe, and which were intimately connected with the fate of the Christian Spaniards still struggling for their own existence in a perpetual crusade against misbelief at home. It begins with the history of Mohammed, and comes down to the year 1270; much of it being taken from an old French version of the work of William of Tyre, on the same general subject, and the rest from other less trustworthy sources. But parts of it are not historical. The grandfather of Godfrey of Bouillon, its hero, is the wild and fanciful Knight of the Swan, who is almost as much a representative of the spirit of chivalry as Amadis de Gaul, and goes through adventures no less marvellous; fighting on the Rhine like a knight-errant, and miraculously warned by a swallow how to rescue his lady, who has been made prisoner. Unhappily, in the only edition of this curious work,--printed in 1503,--the text has received additions that make us doubtful how much of it may be certainly ascribed to the time of Alfonso the Tenth, in whose reign and by whose order the greater part of it seems to have been prepared. It is chiefly valuable as a specimen of early Spanish prose.[61] [61] La Gran Conquista de Ultramar was printed at Salamanca, by Hans Giesser, in folio, in 1503. That additions are made to it is apparent from Lib. III. c. 170, where is an account of the overthrow of the order of the Templars, which is there said to have happened in the year of the Spanish era 1412; and that it is a translation, so far as it follows William of Tyre, from an old French version of the thirteenth century, I state on the authority of a manuscript of Sarmiento. The Conquista begins thus:-- “Capitulo Primero. Como Mahoma predico en Aravia: y gano toda la tierra de Oriente. “En aql. tiēpo q̄ eraclius emperador en Roma q̄ fue buē Xpiano, et mātuvo gran tiēpo el imperio en justicia y en paz, levantose Mahoma en tierra de Aravia y mostro a las gētes necias sciēcia nueva, y fizo les creer q̄ era profeta y mensagero de dios, y que le avia embiado al mundo por saluar los hombres qēle creyessen,” etc.