[52] Algarbe, or Algarbia, in Arabic signifies the west, as Axarkia is the east, Algufia the north, and Aquibla the south. This will serve to explain some of the geographical names on the peninsula which are of Arabian origin. [53] Faxardo, Corona, Gothica, t. i. p. 492. Joan. Mar. de Reb. Hisp. l. vi. c. 27. [54] Conde, p. i. c. 17. [55] Cron. Gen. de Alonzo el Sabio, p. 3. Joan. Mar. de Reb. Hisp. lib. vi. c. 27. Conde, p. i. cap. 19. LEGEND OF COUNT JULIAN AND HIS FAMILY. LEGEND OF COUNT JULIAN AND HIS FAMILY. In the preceding legends is darkly shadowed out a true story of the woes of Spain. It is a story full of wholesome admonition, rebuking the insolence of human pride, and the vanity of human ambition, and showing the futility of all greatness that is not strongly based on virtue. We have seen, in brief space of time, most of the actors in this historic drama disappearing, one by one, from the scene, and going down, conqueror and conquered, to gloomy and unhonoured graves. It remains to close this eventful history, by holding up as a signal warning the fate of the traitor, whose perfidious scheme of vengeance brought ruin on his native land. Many and various are the accounts given in ancient chronicles of the fortunes of Count Julian and his family; and many are the traditions on the subject still extant among the populace of Spain, and perpetuated in those countless ballads sung by peasants and muleteers, which spread a singular charm over the whole of this romantic land. He who has travelled in Spain in the true way in which the country ought to be travelled; sojourning in its remote provinces; rambling among the rugged defiles and secluded valleys of its mountains; and making himself familiar with the people in their out-of-the-way hamlets, and rarely visited neighbourhoods, will remember many a group of travellers and muleteers, gathered of an evening around the door or the spacious hearth of a mountain venta, wrapped in their brown cloaks, and listening with grave and profound attention to the long historic ballad of some rustic troubadour, either recited with the true _ore rotundo_ and modulated cadences of Spanish elocution, or chanted to the tinkling of a guitar. In this way, he may have heard the doleful end of Count Julian and his family recounted in traditionary rhymes, that have been handed down from generation to generation. The particulars, however, of the following wild legend are chiefly gathered from the writings of the pseudo Moor, Rasis: how far they may be safely taken as historic facts, it is impossible now to ascertain; we must content ourselves, therefore, with their answering to the exactions of poetic justice.