From the Pass of Alhedin (3,300 feet), between Granada and Alpujarra, we look down upon one of the most charming panoramas of the world. It was here that Boabdil, the fugitive Moorish king, beheld for the last time the smiling plains of his kingdom, and hence the spot is known as the “Last Sigh of the Moor,” or the “Hill of Tears.” From the highest summits of the sierra, however, the prospect is exceedingly grand. Standing upon the Picacho de la Veleta, we see Southern {398} Spain spread out beneath our feet, with its fertile valleys, rugged rocks, and russet-coloured wilds. Looking south, across the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the mountains of Barbary loom out in the distance, and sometimes we are even able to hear the murmuring of the waves as they beat against the coast.
The mountains around these giants of Granada are very inferior to them in height. The country in the north, which is bounded by the valleys of the Genil, Guadiana Menor, and Guadalquivir, is occupied by an upland intersected by deep ravines, and rising now and then into distinct mountain chains, such as the Sierra Magina (7,047 feet) and Sierra de Jabalcuz, near Jaen (1,800 feet); the chain Alta Coloma, farther south, with its wild pass, Puerto de Arenas, between Jaen and Granada; and the Sierra Susana, close to Granada, which extends westward to the mountain mass of the Parapanda, the great prophet of the husbandmen of the Vega:—
“Cuando Parapanda se pone la montera,
Llueve, aunque Dios no lo quisiera.”
(“When Parapanda puts on his cap it rains, though God may not wish it.”)
The mountains extending along the coast are cut up by transverse valleys into several distinct masses. The Sierra de Gata, in the south-east, is a detached mountain mass, pierced by several extinct volcanoes. Farther west rises the Sierra Alhamilla, the torrents of which are so rich in garnets that the huntsmen use them instead of shot. Crossing a rivulet, we reach the superb Sierra de Gádor (7,620 feet), consisting of schists.
The Contraviesa (6,218 feet), which separates the Alpujarras from the Mediterranean, rises so steeply from the coast that even sheep can hardly climb it. The Sierra de Almijara, beyond the narrow valley of the Guadalfeo, and its western continuation, the Sierra de Alhama (7,003 feet), present similar features. The mountains on the other side of the Pass of Alfarnate or de los Alazores (2,723 feet) constitute the exterior rampart of an ancient lake bed, bounded in the north by an irregular swelling of ground known as Sierra de Yeguas. The road from Málaga to Antequera crosses that rampart in the famous Pass of El Torcal (4,213 feet), the fantastically shaped rocks of which bear some resemblance to the ruins of an extensive city. Archæologists have discovered there some of the most curious prehistoric remains of Iberia.
To the west of the basin of Málaga, drained by the Guadalhorce, the emissary of the ancient lake referred to above, the mountains again increase in height, and in the Sierra de Tolox attain an elevation of 6,430 feet. Snows remain here throughout the winter. From the Tolox mountain chains ramify in all directions. The Sierra Bermeja (4,756 feet) extends to the south-west, its steep promontories being washed by the waves of the sea; the wild “Serrania” de Ronda (5,085 feet) extends westward, and is continued in the mountain mass of San Cristóbal (5,627 feet), which sends branches southward as far as the Capes of Trafalgar and Tarifa. The rock of Gibraltar (1,408 feet), which rises so proudly at the entrance of the Mediterranean, is a geological outlier attached to the mainland by a strip of sand thrown up by the waves of the ocean.
