“‘À la jota, jota,
Que viva Aragón,
Y la Pilaríca
De mi corazón.’
“Then,” said the Colonel, “I quietly slipped away. They no longer needed consolation from me, for they remembered that, whatever they had lost, they still had the Pilarica, the beloved of all hearts.”
When the Gurugú was finally taken, an English newspaper correspondent commented on the extraordinary lightness of heart and irresponsible gaiety of these Spanish soldiers, saying that he had actually seen one of them carrying a guitar under his arm as he scrambled up the precipitous slopes that had been the scene of disaster three months earlier. The newspaper man jumped too hastily to his conclusion, for which, however, he may be forgiven, for he could hardly know what the Jota, played on the guitar, may mean to the men of Aragón.
THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT.