scenes
recorded and gave descriptions of them from different points of view and
with different details. These works were often diffuse and tedious,
and occasionally discolored by the bigotry, superstition, and fierce
intolerance of the age; but their pages were illumined at times with
scenes of high emprise, of romantic generosity, and heroic valor, which
flashed upon the reader with additional splendor from the surrounding
darkness. I collated these various works, some of which have never
appeared in print, drew from each facts relative to the different
enterprises, arranged them in as clear and lucid order as I could
command, and endeavored to give them somewhat of a graphic effect by
connecting them with the manners and customs of the age in which they
occurred. The rough draught being completed, I laid the manuscript aside
and proceeded with the Life of Columbus. After this was finished and
sent to the press I made a tour in Andalusia, visited the ruins of the
Moorish towns, fortresses, and castles, and the wild mountain-passes and
defiles which had been the scenes of the most remarkable events of the
war, and passed some time in the ancient palace of the Alhambra, the
once favorite abode of the Moorish monarchs. Everywhere I took notes,
from the most advantageous points of view, of whatever could serve to
give local verity and graphic effect to the scenes described. Having
taken up my abode for a time at Seville, I then resumed my manuscript
and rewrote it, benefited by my travelling notes and the fresh and vivid
impressions of my recent tour. In constructing my chronicle I adopted
the fiction of a Spanish monk as the chronicler. Fray Antonio Agapida
was intended as a personification of the monkish zealots who hovered
about the sovereigns in their campaigns, marring the chivalry of the
camp by the bigotry of the cloister, and chronicling in rapturous
strains every act of intolerance toward the Moors. In fact, scarce a
sally of the pretended friar when he bursts forth in rapturous eulogy of
some great stroke of selfish policy on the part of Ferdinand, or exults
over some overwhelming disaster of the gallant and devoted Moslems,
but is taken almost word for word from one or other of the orthodox
chroniclers of Spain.

The ironical vein also was provoked by the mixture of kingcraft and
priestcraft discernible throughout this great enterprise, and the
mistaken zeal and self-delusion of many of its most gallant and gene