By referring to a map of Spain you will find the Asturias in the far north, all of four hundred miles from the scene of the disastrous battle; and here it was, in the mountain valleys, surrounded by frowning peaks and gloomy gorges, that Pelayo the Cave King, first ruler of the Goths after their defeat, established his little kingdom. Living at first in caves, then in rude habitations of earth and stone, the hardy mountaineers gradually gathered in hamlets and villages, and in a few years were strong enough to resist the forces that finally penetrated to their abode. With their backs against the mountain walls, from the brinks of dizzy precipices, they hurled down rocks and trees upon the invading Africans, and drove them back to ravage the more fertile plains below. Pelayo the Cave King is said to have been the son of a noble Goth who was banished by Witica, but who returned to serve Roderick as sword–bearer on the fatal field of Guadalete. Little is known of his career, and by some he is treated as a myth; but the Spaniards believe in his existence, and in recent years one of Spain’s most powerful battleships received the name of this first king who stemmed the tide of Moorish conquest. To the Asturias was later united Galicia, in the extreme northwest of Spain, then Leon farther south; the Moslems soon encountered opposition in Navarra, to the east of Leon, in Aragon, still farther toward the eastern coast, and finally in Catalonia, where the Counts of Barcelona fought the Saracens in their ancient seaport founded by the father of Hannibal. The story of the reconquest of Spain—in its first stages at least—is long and complicated, involving the development of no less than six separate provinces: Aragon, Catalonia, Navarra, Asturias, Castile, and Leon, stretching across the country from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. But, without descending to wearisome detail in the narration of the feuds and fights of petty kings and chiefs, we should note, first of all, that the first stand against the Moslems was in the north. There, with their castled towns and hamlets defended by the almost inaccessible mountain ranges, the Goths drew valour and might from the difficulties of their situation, and soon were developed scores and hundreds of heroes, whose sole occupation was war; fighting often among themselves, but always ready to unite against the common enemy, the hated Moslem.