Following the bed of a river, he enters a ravine; up and up climbs the road bordered by steep declivities until at last it reaches a wall--a _cul-de-sac_ the French would call it--rising perpendicularly ahead of him. Half-way up, and on a platform, stands a solitary church; near by a small cave, with an authentic (?) image of the Virgin of Battles and two old sepulchres, is at first hidden from sight behind a protruding mass of rock. The guide or cicerone then explains to the tourist the origin of Spanish history in the middle ages, buried in the legends, of which the following is a short extract. Pelayo, the son of Doña Luz and Duke Favila, who, as we have seen, was killed by Witiza in Tuy, fled from Toledo to the north of Spain, living among the savage inhabitants of Asturias. A few years later, when Rodrigo, who was king at the time, and by some strange coincidence Pelayo's cousin as well, lost the battle of Guadalete and his life to boot, the Arabs conquered the whole peninsula and placed in Gijon, a seaport town of Asturias, a garrison under the command of one Munuza. The latter fell desperately in love with Pelayo's sister Hermesinda, whom he had met in the village of Cangas. Wishing to get the brother out of the way, he sent him on an errand to Cordoba, expecting him to be assassinated on the road. But Pelayo escaped and returned in time to save his sister; mad with wrath and swearing eternal revenge, he retreated to the mountainous vales of Asturias, bearing Hermesinda away with him. He was joined by many refugee Christians dissatisfied with the Arab yoke, and aided by them, made many a bold incursion into the plains below, and grew so daring that at length Munuza mustered an army two hundred thousand (!) strong and set out to punish the rebel. Up a narrow pass between two high ridges went the pagan army, paying little heed to the growing asperity and savageness of the path it was treading. Suddenly ahead of the two hundred thousand a high sheet of rock rose perpendicularly skywards; on a platform Pelayo and his three hundred warriors, who somehow or other had managed to emerge from a miraculous cave where they had found an effigy of the Virgin of Battles, made a last stand for their lives and liberties. Immediately a shower of stones, beams, trunks, and what not was hurled down into the midst of the heathen army by the three hundred warriors. Confusion arose, and, like frightened deer, the Arabs turned and fled down the path to the vale, pushing each other, in their fear, into the precipice below. Then the Virgin of Battles arose, and wishing to make the defeat still more glorious, she caused the whole mountain to slide; an avalanche of stones and earth dragged the remnants of Munuza's army into the ravine beneath. So great was the slaughter and the loss of lives caused by this defeat, that "for centuries afterward bones and weapons were to be seen in the bed of the river when autumn's heat left the sands bare."