The piety of their ministers had, however, secreted, and borne away in safety, the most precious of those tokens of divine interposition whose efficacy had been established by the performance of countless miracles supported by the unquestionable testimony of the Fathers of the Church. Transported by reverent hands from every part of the kingdom, these consecrated objects were now collected in fastnesses impregnable to the enemies of Christ. Where, therefore, could the devout believer better hope for security and happiness than under the protection of holy souvenirs which had received the oblations and the prayers of successive generations of his ancestors? The wars and revolutions of more than a thousand years have not diminished the feeling of popular veneration attaching to these mementos of the martyrs, which, enshrined in quaint and costly reliquaries of crystal and gold, are still exhibited in the Cathedral of Oviedo. Engrossed with the cares which necessarily attended the establishment of a new religion and the organization of a new government, the first viceroys of Spain took no notice of the embryotic state which was gradually forming in the northwestern corner of the Peninsula. Their scouting parties, which had penetrated to the borders of the Asturias, had long since acquainted them with the severity of the climate and the general sterility of the soil. No booty, save, perhaps, some sacred vessels and a few flocks of sheep, was there to tempt the avarice of the marauder. Domiciled in the genial regions of the South, whose natural advantages continually recalled the voluptuous countries of the Orient, the Moor instinctively shrank from contact with the piercing winds and blinding tempests of the mountains far more than from an encounter with the uncouth and warlike savages who defended this inhospitable land. Musa had already entered Galicia at the head of his troops when he was recalled to Damascus by the peremptory mandate of the Khalif; and foraging parties had, on different occasions, ravaged many of the settlements of the Basques; but as yet the Moslem banners had never waved along the narrow pathways leading into the Asturian solitudes, nor had the echoes of the Moorish atabal resounded from the stupendous walls which protected the surviving remnant of the Visigothic monarchy and the last hope of Christian faith and Iberian independence.