To reach the summer resort of the Moorish Kings from the Alhambra, the better way is to leave the Palace by the Torre del Picos—Tower of the Peaks, or minarets—and thus approach the tall white towers and long arcades of the Generalife. To wander amidst its gardens and groves in the most sultry season is to enjoy a still more breezy region than that of the Alhambra.
The Generalife is a confluence of waters: the canal of the Darro empties its full virgin stream, and at times boils under evergreen arches through the Acequia Court.[14] In contemplation of its beauty, the present is forgotten in the past; old-world echoes still reverberate through the bemyrtled Courts, where the many flowers which enamel its terraces and aqueducts tranquilly attest that once a garden smiled:
“Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown
Matted and mass’d together, hillocks heap’d
On what were chambers, arch crush’d, column strown
In fragments, chok’d up vaults, and frescos steep’d
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep’d,
Deeming it midnight: Temples, baths, or halls?
Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap’d
From her research hath been, that these are walls—”
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV.
GARDEN OF THE GENERALIFE.
