There too, off on the verge of the plain, lies a farm of 4,000 acres which the Spanish government gave to the Duke of Wellington for his expulsion of the French, and his heirs now derive a revenue of some $20,000 annually from the land. And that gap in the mountains is the pass where Moor and Christian, the Cross and Crescent, have encountered each other in murderous fight, when knights in armor met hand to hand, and in protracted battles far more bloody and fierce than in our modern warfare they contended for the possession of this beautiful vale. It is called the _vega_, or the plain, and from the watch-tower on which we are now standing we have the best view of it. Two rivers, like those that watered Paradise, flow across it,—the Darro, which the Moors called Hadaroh and the Romans Calom, and the Genil, which the ancients knew as the river Singilis. This fertile and beautiful plain stretches thirty miles or more away from the city of Granada, like a vast amphitheatre, a prairie sea: now and then a white cluster of houses, a little village, like an island on the surface of this great ocean of corn and wine. The snow-clad heights of Sierra Nevada rise to the bluest of blue heavens that cover it as an infinite dome, and the five-hundred-towered city stands on this rocky height in the midst of this magnificent panorama, the green meadows and vineyards of the _vega_ below, the white-capped mountains around, and the cerulean skies, so pure, so deep, so lovingly bending over and embracing the whole. But the bell on the watch-tower answers a better purpose than merely to ring husbands for the lively Spanish girls. This plain is to be watered by these rivers, and they must be led away from their own banks by artificial channels to the thousands of plantations into which it is divided. But the rivers are not sufficient to allow the continuous flow of water through all these canals for irrigation, and the time and quantity of water are regulated by law. Each man has his water-gate, through which the stream is to come, and the hour when he is to open his gate and when to close is announced from the tower. At the stroke of one, all within a certain distance open their gates, and the water flows in upon their fields, until the bell strikes again, when they close, and the next open theirs, and so the supply is extended from one to another and the whole plain is watered.