Cordova has a more African look than any other town in Andalusia. Its streets, or rather its lanes, with their confused, irregular pavement, that resembles the dry bed of some mountain torrent, are all strewn with the short straw which falls from the loads of the different asses, and have nothing about them which reminds you of the manners and customs of Europe. You walk on between interminable chalk-coloured walls, diversified at rare intervals by a few windows defended with rails and bars; while the only persons that you meet are some repulsive-looking beggar, some devotee enveloped in black, or some _majo_, who passes with the rapidity of lightning on his brown horse with white harness, causing thousands of sparks to fly up from the flints of the road. If the Moors could come back, they would not have much trouble in making themselves at home. The idea that many people have, perhaps, formed, when thinking of Cordova, that it is a town with Gothic houses, and carved, open spires, is completely wrong. The universal use of whitewash imparts a uniform tint to all the buildings, fills up the architectural lines, effaces all their delicate ornamentation, and does not allow you to read their age. Thanks to whitewash, the wall which has been erected a century cannot be distinguished from that which was erected yesterday. Cordova, which was formerly the centre of Arabian civilization, is at present nothing more than a confused mass of small, white houses, above which rise a few mangrove-trees, with their metallic green foliage, or some palm-tree, with its branches spread out like the claws of a crab; while the whole town is divided into a number of separate blocks by narrow passages, where it would be a difficult matter for two mules to pass abreast. All life seems to have deserted this great body, formerly animated by the active circulation of Moorish blood; there is nothing of it left save the white, calcined skeleton. But Cordova still possesses its Mosque, which is without a rival in the whole world, and quite new, even for those travellers who have had an opportunity of admiring the marvels of Arabian architecture at Granada or Seville.