On the morning of a beautiful July day, in the year 711, the beginning of an era most notable in the annals of Spain, the hostile armies faced each other near Lake La Janda, upon the rolling plains of Medina-Sidonia. The Moors, flushed with the uniform success which had hitherto attended their arms, relying upon the dissensions of the enemy as much as upon their own valor, and impatient for the conflict, appeared in glittering mail, wearing snowy turbans, and equipped with sword and lance; while over their shoulders was suspended the Arabian bow, whose shafts, like those of the Parthian, made the archer all the more formidable in retreat. The Moorish general, after performing the rites of his faith, addressed his soldiers in a few stirring and well-chosen words. With consummate skill, he availed himself of the strongest passions which control humanity,--avarice, military glory, the love of woman, the priceless rewards of religious constancy. He revealed to them a dream, in which the Prophet had announced that the issue of the conflict would be favorable to the adherents of Islam, and which portended the confusion of the infidel. He placed before them their desperate position, where defeat implied annihilation, and victory was the only hope. He exhorted them to banish all thought of fear, and to rely upon their courage tested upon many fields of battle. He pictured in burning language the attractions of the country and the matchless charms of the Gothic houris who inhabited it. He repeated the passages of the Koran which promised that all the martyrs who fell in battle would at once receive the reward of their devotion amidst the ineffable delights of Paradise.