The sheath of this little arm is made of crimson velvet richly embroidered with gold thread, and hanging from it is a large tassel of gold cord and crimson silk. The chape and mouth are silver-gilt, profusely decorated, and the latter of these pieces is embellished with circular devices of a lightish green enamel, in addition to the chasing. The small, plain knife, also preserved among the spoil, was carried in this sheath, together with the dagger.[123] [123] To-day the craft of finely decorating arms is not forgotten in Morocco. "A silversmith advanced to show a half-completed silver-sheathed and hafted dagger, engraved with pious sentences, as, "God is our sufficiency and our best bulwark here on earth," and running in and out between the texts a pattern of a rope with one of the strands left out, which pattern also ran round the cornice of the room we sat in, and round the door, as it runs round the doors in the Alhambra and the Alcazar, and in thousands of houses built by the Moors, and standing still, in Spain. The dagger and the sheath were handed to me for my inspection, and on my saying that they were beautifully worked, the Caid said keep them, but I declined, not having anything of equal value to give in return."--Cunninghame Graham; _Mogreb-El-Acksa_, p. 234. [Illustration: XLVIII WAR HARNESS OF CHARLES THE FIFTH (_Royal Armoury, Madrid_)] The Royal Armoury at Madrid is often thought by foreigners[124] to contain a representative collection of the arms, offensive and defensive, used by the Spanish people through all their mediæval and post-mediæval history. This is not so. Although it is the choicest and the richest gallery in Europe, the Armería Real was formed almost entirely from the _cámaras de armas_ or private armouries of Charles the Fifth and of his son, and is, as Mélida describes it, "a splendid gallery of royal arms," dating, with very few exceptions, from the sixteenth century.