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232 DAYS IN THE SUN
Granada is held to be one of the loveliest places in
the whole world. The city lies at the point where the
Sierra Nevada puts forth its foothills, a bundle of rays
extending toward the Vega like gigantic roots that
have come up out of the ground. The new section of
the city has spread placidly over the plain with its
spacious horizontal streets and lines of elms (ala-
medas), or is wedged in between the hills, following
the valleys and riverbeds, and terminating in thin lines
extending far into the Sierra. The older part of the
city has not been able to make itself so comfortable.
These ancient quarters still bear the marks of having
been built in insecure times, when the houses clung for
protection to the steep mountain ridges. There they
still stand, a densely packed mass, like a flock of
frightened mountain goats. So have they stood for
many peaceful centuries still spying out the enemy in a
sort of petrified panic.
Steep staircase streets lead through the city, with
traces of Moorish times meeting your eyes everywhere.
Here, a great vaulted cistern covered with glazed til-
ing; there the ruins of a little mosque or an arched
gate built to break the force of a hostile onslaught.
In the city walls are fragments of stucco arches rest-
ing upon marble columns, and now and again your eye
wanders into a still perfect Moorish courtyard.
In some places the slope becomes too sharp to be
negotiated by staircases and the path is then obliged
to assume a long zigzag rise. It has been impossible
to build houses except on the inside of the zigzag,
where they may use the mountain for a back. The
outer edge of the path is a white railing and a file of
slender cypresses topped by an ocean of blue. As you
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