uley Abul Hassan with trouble
and disaster at home, his evil genius prompted him to an enterprise
which involved him in tenfold danger from abroad. The reader has already
been apprised of a singular clause in the truce existing between the
Christians and the Moors, permitting hasty dashes into each other's
territories and assaults of towns and fortresses, provided they were
carried on as mere forays and without the parade of regular warfare. A
long time had elapsed, however, without any incursion of the kind on
the part of the Moors, and the Christian towns on the frontiers had, in
consequence, fallen into a state of the most negligent security. In an
unlucky moment Muley Abul Hassan was tempted to one of these forays by
learning that the fortress of Zahara, on the frontier between Ronda and
Medina Sidonia, was but feebly garrisoned and scantily supplied, and
that its alcayde was careless of his charge. This important post was
built on the crest of a rocky mountain, with a strong castle perched
above it upon a cliff, so high that it was said to be above the flight
of birds or drift of clouds. The streets and many of the houses were
mere excavations wrought out of the living rock. The town had but one
gate, opening to the west and defended by towers and bulwarks. The only
ascent to this cragged fortress was by roads cut in the rock, so rugged
in many places as to resemble broken stairs. In a word, the impregnable
security of Zahara had become so proverbial throughout Spain that a
woman of forbidding and inaccessible virtue was called a Zaharena. But
the strongest fortress and sternest virtue have weak points, and require
unremitting vigilance to guard them: let warrior and dame take warning
from the fate of Zahara.

CHAPTER IV.

EXPEDITION OF MULEY ABUL HASSAN AGAINST THE FORTRESS OF ZAHARA.

In the year of our Lord one thousand four hundred and eighty-one, and
but a night or two after the festival of the most blessed Nativity, the
inhabitants of Zahara were sunk in profound sleep the very sentinel had
deserted his post, and sought shelter from a tempest which had raged for
three nights in succession, for it appeared but little probable that an
enemy would be abroad during such an uproar of the elements. But evil
spirits work best during a storm. In the midst of the night an uproar
rose within the walls of Zahara more awful than the raging of the
storm. A fearful alarm-cry, "The Moor! the Moor!" resounded through