"In an age when all impressions are effaced by the double hammer of civilization and incredulity, it is touching and beautiful to see a people preserve a stable character and immutable beliefs."
I.
Eastward from Jerez, in the direction of the Sierra de Ronda, which rises in a succession of terraces, as if to form a suitable pedestal for the rightly named San Cristóbal, lie the extensive Llanos de Caulina. A bare and uniform road drags itself for two leagues through the palmettoes, and makes a halt at the foot of the first elevation, where a lazy rivulet widens in the sun, and, stagnating in summer, changes its waters into mire.
On the right is seen the castle of Malgarejo, one of the few Moorish edifices that time and his faithful auxiliary in the work of destruction, ignorance, have left standing. Time makes ruins, groups them, crowns them with garlands, and adorns them with verdure, as if he desired to have them for places of recreation and rest; but the barbarian ignorance gives no quarter—his only delight is in dust; his place of repose, the desert waste; his end, nothingness.
The angles of the castle are flanked by four large towers. These, as well as the walls of the whole enclosure, are surmounted by well-formed turrets, perfect still, and without notch or break in their beautiful uniformity. The castle took its name of Malgarejo from a knight of Jerez, by whom its reduction was accomplished in a manner so curious, that we cannot resist the inclination to relate it, for the benefit of those who are unacquainted with the tales of partisan exploits that abound in the annals of Jerez.
In the beginning of the thirteenth century, a hundred and fifty Moors, with their families, occupied the castle. They went clothed in white, according to the custom of their nation, and mounted gray horses. Shut up as they were, they procured their subsistence by foraging the country at night, and carrying to their stronghold whatever booty they could seize.
Malgarejo resolved to get possession of this formidable place. It was surrounded, at that time, by a wide moat. This moat—opened by the Moors for their protection, and afterward serving them for a sepulchre—no longer exists.
The Christian cavalier had a slave that was a most accomplished horseman, and to him he promised liberty if he would swear to devote himself to the proposed undertaking. The slave, agreeing, was entrusted by his master with a mare of singular agility, and was directed to train her to leap a ditch, which was to be enlarged, by degrees, to the width of the one that surrounded the Saracen castle.
This being accomplished, Malgarejo called together his followers, disguised them as Moors, caused them to cover their horses with white cloths, and, one night, when the garrison had sallied out upon a raid, approached the fortress. Those within, taking his host for the one they were expecting, viewed its approach without suspicion. When the Christians came nearer, they saw their mistake, and would have raised the bridge, but the slave of Malgarejo had already leaped the moat, and cut the cords, so that it could not be lifted; and the Jerezanos made themselves masters of the castle.
The sight of this stronghold, over which the destroyer Time has passed leaving as little trace as would the footstep of a bird, transports the beholder to the past with such vividness of illusion, that he is surprised not to see the pennon of the half-moon fluttering above its towers, and misses a snowy turban from behind every one of its turrets. No fitter place could be found for the representation of a fight or of a tournament between Moors and Christians.