BULL FIGHT, SEVILLE, SPAIN. The bull fight is the national sport of Spain. The sport has been described as a tragedy in three acts. First, the bull is let out and goaded to fury by the lances of the mounted picadores. If a picador is thrown or his horse is wounded the chulos rush in and attract the bull by waving their cloaks in front of him, saving themselves, if need be, by leaping over the palisade which encloses the circus. When the bull begins to flag the chulos attack him with barbed darts, called banderillas, which they stick into his neck. The third act introduces the matador, who enters alone. He holds in his right hand a naked sword, in his left a muleta or small stick with a piece of scarlet silk attached. The bull rushes blindly at the muleta. The matador, if he be skillful, plunges the sword into the left shoulder and the animal drops dead. Sometimes, however, he misses his first aim and then he has to try again. Sometimes he is wounded or even killed and then a new matador appears on the scene.
THE ALHAMBRA, GRANADA, SPAIN. Alhambra means the “Red Castle.” This fortress and palace of the ancient Moorish kings—“the pride of Granada and the boast of Spain”—is a vast and irregular collection of buildings built of bricks slightly reddened. The principal building was begun in 1248 and finished in 1314. Here the Moorish kings lived, surrounded by their court and nobility, a total population of some forty thousand souls. Its degradation dates from the day of the Castilian conquest, for the alterations and restorations made by the Spanish kings were without judgment. Philip V, early in the eighteenth century, was its last royal occupant. After his desertion the place was allowed to fall into decay until 1862, when the Spanish government took it in charge. Happily, the most important portions still exist, and present a bewildering array of pavilions, courts, colonnades, fountains, baths, gilded ceilings and every kind of Oriental decoration.
CORDOVA, SPAIN. This is one of the most ancient and picturesque of Spanish towns. Its walls, built on a Roman foundation with Moorish superstructure, inclose a large area, dotted with Roman and Moorish remains. Chief among the latter is the cathedral, which looms up almost in the centre of our picture. It dates from the eighth century, and was formerly a mosque. Authorities generally agree that it is the finest specimen of a Moorish mosque in all Europe. The southern suburb communicates with the town by means of an ancient bridge across the River Guadalquiver, whose sixteen arches exhibit the usual combination of Moorish and Roman architecture. At one end of the bridge is an elevated statue of the patron saint, St. Raphael, whose effigy abounds all through the city. Our picture is taken from the southern suburb.
ROCK OF GIBRALTAR, SPAIN. An inaccessible rock, buttressed by an impregnable fortress, which juts out from the southern extremity of Spain, in Andulasia, gives to the English, who hold it, the virtual command of the Mediterranean. The rock is fourteen hundred and thirty feet high at its highest point; its length, from north to south, about three miles; its circumference about six. It is mainly composed of compact limestone and dense gray marble, varied by beds of red sandstone and tissues of osseous breccia. The north face is almost perpendicular, but the east side is full of tremendous precipices. It came into possession of the English by conquest during the war of the succession in 1704. Since then they have spent immense sums in its fortification, with so much success that they have retained it against the combined efforts of France and Spain. From the sea the rock presents a grim enough aspect with its immense cannon, its piles of balls and bombs, and its apparent lack of vegetation. But a closer view shows patches of fruit trees, together with a great variety of odoriferous shrubs.
MONTE CARLO, MONACO—THE CASINO. Monaco is a small principality on the Mediterranean, ruled by Prince Albert, of Monaco. It is chiefly famous for the notorious Casino at the small town of Monte Carlo, where alone in Europe public gaming is authorized by law. The first stone of the Casino was laid in 1858, and gambling tables had existed in Monaco two years previous to that date, but it was not till 1860, when M. Blanc, expelled from Homburg, took possession of the place, that Monte Carlo began to be famous. The gaming establishment is now in the hands of a joint stock company, with a capital of 15,000,000 francs, who leased the ground from the prince. It employs nearly one thousand people and is annually visited by about four hundred thousand visitors. The inhabitants of Monaco are not allowed at the tables. Their good will, however, is secured by their exemption from taxation and by the flood of paying visitors who are attracted hither. Monte Carlo is in itself a place of exquisite beauty, natural and artificial.
