The sands of Asia are strewn with the ruins of cities once the gorgeous capitals of mighty empires. Here in Spain the followers of the Prophet raised a metropolis as splendid as any of the new Babylons of the East; and its fall has been wellnigh as great as theirs. We need not credit all the assertions of the Arabian writers (for the scribes of that nation, as Cervantes remarks, are not a little addicted to fiction). We can hardly believe that Cordova in its prime contained 300,000 inhabitants, 600 mosques, 50 hospitals, 800 public schools, 900 baths, 600 inns, and a library of 600,000 volumes; but there is evidence enough to satisfy us that this was in the tenth century the most magnificent and populous city in Europe, Byzantium alone excepted. Now it is a small provincial capital, bright, white, and coquettish, utterly without the solemnity and majesty which should invest the seats of vanished empires. Here greatness has been swallowed up in insignificance, not in desolation. The Court of the Khalifas, the Western Mecca, does not lie in lordly ruin like a fallen Colossus, but has sunk into mere pettiness. [Illustration: CORDOVA--ENTRANCE TO THE CITY] Victor Hugo draws, as only he knew how, in a couple of lines, a picturesque sketch of Cordova, but this hardly corresponds to the impressions of the modern traveller. The houses may be old (some of them certainly are), but in their coats of dazzling whitewash they look brand-new. Gautier very sensibly remarks that, thanks to whitewash, the wall which was erected a century ago cannot be distinguished from that which was erected yesterday. Its general application "imparts a uniform tint to all buildings, fills up the architectural lines, effaces all their delicate ornamentation, and does not allow you to read their age." Cordova, which was formerly a centre of Arabian civilization, is now nothing more than a confused mass of small white houses, above which rise a few mangrove trees, with their metallic green foliage, or some palm trees with their branches spread out like the claws of a crab; while the whole town is divided by narrow passages into a number of separate blocks, where it would be difficult for two mules to pass abreast. Such is Cordova to-day, and I doubt very much if its external aspect was a whit more splendid or by any means as pleasing in the days of its glory. Some authors write as if they imagined the Mohammedans built their capitals on the lines of Paris and Washington. A visit to Constantinople or to Cairo would remove that impression. Imagine Cordova covering three or four times its present area, its windows obscured with lattices, its walls less white, its streets filled with a noisy mob of beshawled and beturbaned men--black, brown, and white--with noble mosques and elegant minarets here and there, and you will have a fair picture of the capital of the Western Khalifate.