These men of the Sobrarbe and the desert have been too ruthlessly hardened by their world to receive the juices of spirit. Like a steel mirror, they reflected for an hour the suns of Italy, of Araby and Spain. This is the greatness of Aragon--a swift reflection in which affluent worlds were fused in the reflector and took on the form of the reflector’s contour. But the worlds swung past, life shifted: the light no longer fell on Aragon. Its surface becomes dull once more, and unillumined. _CHAPTER V_ _CASTILE_ _a._ _The Castle of the Cid_ _b._ _The Stones of Wisdom_ _c._ _The Water Bridge_ _d._ _The Miracle of El Greco_ _e._ _The Tomb_ _a._ _The Castle of the Cid_ The valley of the Ebro is a vein of green, deep within wastes of earth and tiers of mountain. Northward the Solana, sudden as a fort, stands before the snow-clad Pyrenees. Southward the sierras of Aragon and Castile are walls of flint upon a yellow floor. Slender and sinuous, the Ebro leads up to the head of Spain. This way came the Romans, met by the nut-hard Aragonese and the Basques of Navarre. Here the Visigoths were fought and were absorbed. When the Arabs faced north of Andalusia, they veered to the east: and the Ebro was their path back to Spain’s center. Commerce and nurture went this way: but were the servants of War. Signs of War still mark the valley for its own. Encased in desert and rock, the towns rise above the plethoric vineyards like parts of the stone world. War has brought the desert ranges down and has made cities of them. The Valley, pressing up through Aragon, through Navarre to Castile, is clad in armor of rock towns. So weighted, it could not keep pace with the world. It was great when mountains were barriers and when a river was a highway. It has remained as the past sealed it. North of Zaragoza no great city lies within the valley. It has become an agricultural, above all a viticultural center. Haro, Logroño, are towns of the wine-growers. But even when new houses are put up, they are made of the eternal rock--the warlike rock of the past. At Miranda the invader leaves the Ebro, and stands at the climax of Castile. The south is a breakage of treeless moor. In the crevices of heights, small towns hide, and church steeples are indistinguishable from the rock. But the earth mellows. Angles are replaced by curves. Wheatfields plaid the rolling slopes of hills. There are dingles, copses. This is the head of Old Castile--the part of the hard land where men lived best, and where they first united against the Moslem to call themselves Castilians. This is Burgos: _La cabeza de Castilla_. * * * * *