From Andujar the country is very uninteresting, more of a grazing country, where we see immense herds of cattle, sheep, horses, and goats, with picturesque shepherds minding them. The men wear short trousers, opened several inches at the ankle, showing the untanned leathern buskin, (as is seen in the old pictures of Philip II.'s time,) a red sash, and the black hat turned up all around. Presently we come upon the Guadalquivir, upon which Cordova is situated, and which is crossed here by a bridge of black marble. We drive up the cool, shady streets, catching glimpses, through open doors and curtains, of the little paradise within--the marble courts, with fountain, and orange-trees, and flowers, and vines--a vestige of the old Moorish time. In fact, everything here so preserves its Arabic character that one is transported six centuries back, into the palmy days of the Kalifs, when this city was said to have contained half a million of inhabitants, 200,000 houses, 60,000 palaces, 700 mosques, 900 baths, 50 hospitals, and a public library of 600,000 volumes. Of all these glories only the mosque remains to show by its magnificence that these accounts cannot be exaggerated. {209} Saturday, September 19. We hasten to see the mosque, (the cathedral now,) and, entering a low door-way in the wall which surrounds it, you find yourself in a beautiful oriental court, with fountains, and rows of tall palms, and ancient orange trees and cypress. This is called "the court of ranges." Open colonnades surround the court on all sides save one, from which twenty doors once opened into the mosque; only one of these is now open. Enter this, and you find yourself in a forest of pillars--a thousand are yet left--of every hue and shade, no two alike, of jasper, and verde antique, and porphyry, and alabaster, and every colored marble, fluted, and spiral; and over these, rises arch upon arch overlapping each other. These divide the mosque into twenty-nine aisles from north to south, and nineteen from west to east; intersecting each other in the most harmonious and beautiful manner. The Moors brought these pillars from the ancient temples of Rome, and Nismes, and Carthage. The mosque was built in the eighth century, by Abd El Rahman, who aimed to make it rival those of Damascus and Bagdad. It is said he worked upon it an hour every day with his own hand, and it is certain that it ranked in sanctity with the "Caaba" of Mecca, and the great mosque of Jerusalem. Ten thousand lamps illuminated it at the hour of prayer; the roof was made of arbor vitae, which is considered imperishable, and was burnished with gold. The chapel, where is the holy of holies--where was kept the Koran--gives one an idea of what the ornaments of the whole must have been. Here the carvings are of the most exquisite fineness, like patterns of lace; the gold enamel, the beautiful mosaics, are as bright as if made yesterday. In the holy of holies--a