The most barren and inaccessible part of this secluded region at the time of the Moslem conquest was that embraced by the modern principality of the Asturias. A formidable barrier of lofty peaks, whose passes readily eluded the eye of the stranger, blocked the way of a hostile army. Within this wall a diversified landscape of mountain and valley presented itself, with an occasional village, whose huts, clustered upon a hill-side or straggling along some narrow ravine, indicated the presence of a settlement of shepherds or husbandmen. These dwellings, whose counterparts are to be seen to-day in the wildest districts of the Asturias and Galicia, were rude hovels constructed of stones and unhewn timbers, thatched with straw, floored with rushes, and provided with a hole in the roof to enable the smoke to escape. Their walls and ceilings were smeared with soot and grease, and every corner reeked with filth and swarmed with vermin. The owners of these habitations were, in appearance and intelligence, scarcely removed from the condition of savages. They dressed in sheepskins and the hides of wild beasts, which, unchanged, remained in one family for many generations. The salutary habit of ablution was never practised by them. Their garments were never cleansed, and were worn as long as their tattered fragments held together. Their food was composed of nutritious roots and herbs and of the products of the chase, a diet sometimes varied by vegetables, whose seeds had been imported from the south, and by a coarse bread made from the meal of chestnuts and acorns. Total ignorance of the courtesies and amenities of social life prevailed; privacy was unknown; and the peasant entered the hut of his neighbor without fear or ceremony. An independent political organization existed in each of these communities, whose isolated situation, extreme poverty, and primitive manners dispensed with the necessity for the complicated and expensive machinery of government. Old age, as among many nations in the infancy of their existence, was a title to authority and respect, and the elevation of an individual to a certain degree of power was not unusual when he had distinguished himself among his fellows for skill in hunting or valor in warfare. Christian missionaries had, centuries before, carried the precepts of the Gospel into the depths of this wilderness, and chapels and altars, where the idolatrous practices of Druidical superstition were strangely mingled with the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic ritual, attested the persistence of a faith which had existed for ages. Many of the personal habits and social customs of the Iberians, while well deserving the attention of the antiquary, were of such a nature as to preclude description. Under these manifold disadvantages were now to be laid the foundations of an empire destined to embrace the richest portions of two great continents; to extend its language, its ideas, its