The country is reminiscent essentially of the days of chivalry. Perhaps the ruined strongholds and the dark gorges are still haunted by the knights, who have driven away all other ghosts and will not let us think of anyone but them. The Romans were once here, and at Munda, as every schoolboy knows, Cæsar defeated with great slaughter the army led by the sons of Pompey. That town has now been identified with Ronda, the romantic capital of this most romantic region. Here the people have not forgotten Rome. They will show you a cave where in the semi-darkness you descry awful forms in stone, seeming like a ghostly and gigantic choir of monks. These are the Roman priests turned to stone upon the downfall of their gods, those of the people who cherish tradition will tell you. [Illustration: MALAGA--PACKING LEMONS] The town itself you will not find very interesting, though the escutcheons displayed over every second or third house in one quarter will evoke some reflections on departed glory and the fall of the mighty. In some such _solar_ our novelists Seton Merriman and Mr. Mason have laid the scenes of leading episodes in their two charming romances. Ronda has had a stirring past. She shared in all the vicissitudes of Granada, and towards the end of the long agony of the Reconquest was the scene of constant and ferocious border warfare. It was here that Mohammed V. received the head of his rival Abu Saïd, who had been put to death at Seville by Pedro the Cruel. The town was taken by the army of Ferdinand and Isabella on May 22, 1485. The people of the surrounding mountains were deeply attached to the creed of Islam, and rose in revolt in 1501 against their Christian oppressors. Before they were crushed they inflicted a severe blow on their adversaries, completely wiping out a force under Don Alonso de Aguilar. Westward, on the other side of the high mountains, lies Zahara, the capture of which one December night by Mulai Hasan was the signal for the last crusade against the Spanish Moors of Granada.