Passing out upon a balcony we looked down upon the _Linderaka_ gardens, which once were the delight of a princess whose name, Linda Raxa, was the same as Pretty Rachel; she became a Christian, and her story, if put into the hands of a skilful manufacturer, would make a beautiful romance, with more truth than is necessary for half a dozen modern historical novels. The dressing-room of the Queen in one of the towers has a look-out upon the surrounding country; the Sierra Nevada, rising 11,000 feet, and so near in this clear atmosphere that it seems close at hand, and one feels the coolness of the snow-cliffs on its sides; there is the house, now a college, where Christians suffered martyrdom under Domitian and Nero; those huts in the hill in front and those holes into the hill itself are the habitations of gypsies, whose home is Spain, and who are very numerous in these parts; the city of Granada itself lies at our feet; once it had more than a thousand towers, and now it has more than 500, and they are monuments of departed glory. Yet there is nothing in the city so mournfully eloquent of human folly and frailty as the ruin in which we are standing. Here is a wide marble slab, pierced with twelve holes, and below the slab is the chamber where the perfume was prepared, and as it ascended the Queen stood over these holes, and was made suitably fragrant! In the days of Esther similar means were evidently in use, and they were probably quite as salutary and agreeable as the modern condensations which in a bag or bottle furnish the necessary facilities for making lovely woman odorous to her friends. Down below was a suite of rooms where the baths for the Sultan and the children were arranged, with pipes for the supply of hot and cold water, as convenient as in “a house with all the modern improvements.” Places for couches, galleries for musicians whose melodies would make the luxury of the bath more enjoyable; the pavement is of white marble, the roof is pierced with holes like stars, and the whole arrangement corresponds with the baths of Turkey and Cairo at the present day. [Illustration: THE VERMILION TOWER.] And the long passage through which we were now conducted led to the dungeons of the castle; most of them are walled up, but one was left open that we might see how short and easy was the mode of disposing of an unhappy victim of jealousy or revenge, who could be built into a recess and find it a dying bed and grave. It was a long subterranean walk till we came out to the governor’s court. Here I saw what I had not supposed to be possible,—a marble slab bent into the shape of a bow by the weight of a wall falling and resting upon it.