soldan--a work greatly esteemed by
the learned and containing much curious information. It is entitled "De
Legatione Babylonica."

CHAPTER LXXVII.

HOW QUEEN ISABELLA DEVISED MEANS TO SUPPLY THE ARMY WITH PROVISIONS.

It has been the custom to laud the conduct and address of King Ferdinand
in this most arduous and protracted war, but the sage Agapida is more
disposed to give credit to the counsels and measures of the queen, who,
he observes, though less ostensible in action, was in truth the
very soul, the vital principle, of this great enterprise. While King
Ferdinand was bustling in his camp and making a glittering display with
his gallant chivalry, she, surrounded by her saintly counsellors in the
episcopal palace of Jaen, was devising ways and means to keep the king
and his army in existence. She had pledged herself to keep up a supply
of men and money and provisions until the city should be taken. The
hardships of the siege caused a fearful waste of life, but the supply of
men was the least difficult part of her undertaking. So beloved was
the queen by the chivalry of Spain that on her calling on them for
assistance not a grandee or cavalier that yet lingered at home but
either repaired in person or sent forces to the camp; the ancient
and warlike families vied with each other in marshalling forth their
vassals, and thus the besieged Moors beheld each day fresh troops
arriving before their city, and new ensigns and pennons displayed
emblazoned with arms well known to the veteran warriors.

But the most arduous task was to keep up a regular supply of provisions.
It was not the army alone that had to be supported, but also the
captured towns and their garrisons; for the whole country around them
had been ravaged, and the conquerors were in danger of starving in the
midst of the land they had desolated. To transport the daily supplies
for such immense numbers was a gigantic undertaking in a country where
there was neither water conveyance nor roads for carriages. Everything
had to be borne by beasts of burden over rugged and broken paths of
mountains and through dangerous defiles exposed to the attacks and
plunderings of the Moors.

The wary and calculating merchants accustomed to supply the army shrank
from engaging at their own risk in so hazardous an undertaking. The
queen therefore hired fourteen thousand beasts of burden, and ordered
all the wheat and barley to be brought up in Andalusia and in the
do