gular course
across the heavens, was to be seen, a brilliant star, from Gibraltar.
Obeying the stellar call, Tarik landed in Spain and moved northwards at
the head of his irresistible, fanatic hordes. The star continued its
northerly movement, visible one fine night from the Arab tents pitched
on the plains between Poitiers and Tours. The next night, however, it
was no longer visible, and Charles Martel drove the invading Moors back
to the south.

Centuries went by and Sohail appeared ever lower down on the southern
horizon. One night it was only visible from Granada, and then Spain saw
it no more. That same day--'twas in the fifteenth century--Boabdil el
Chico surrendered the keys of Granada, and the Arabs fled, obeying the
retreating star's call.

To-day they are waiting in the north of Africa for Sohail to move once
again to the north: when she does so, they will rise again as a single
man, and regain their passionately loved Alhambra, their beautiful
kingdom of Andalusia.

Tradition is fond of showing us a nucleus of fervent Christian patriots
obliged by the invading Arab hordes to retire to the north-western
corner of the Iberian peninsula. Here they made a stand, a last glorious
stand, and, gradually increasing in strength, they were at last able to
drive back the invader inch by inch until he fled across the straits to
trouble Iberia no more.

Nothing is, however, less true. The noblemen and monarchs of Galicia,
Leon, and Oviedo--later of Castile, Navarra, and Aragon--were so many
petty lords who, fighting continually among themselves, ruled over
fragments of the defeated Visigothic kingdom. At times they called in
the Arab enemy--to whom in the early centuries they paid a yearly
tribute--to help them against the encroachments of their brother
Christians. Consequently they lacked that spirit of patriotism and of
national ambition which might have justified their claims to be called
monarchs or rulers of Spain.

The Church was no better. Its bishops were independent princes who ruled
in their dioceses like sovereigns in their palaces; they recognized no
supreme master, not even the Pope, whose advice was ignored, and whose
orders were disobeyed.

It was not until the twelfth or thirteenth century that the Christian
incursions into Moorish territory took the form of patriotic crusades,
in which fervent Christians burnt with the holy desire of weeding out of
the peninsula the Saracen infidel.

This holy cr