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Estevan, the Onor of a Conde, who is at present Vice-King of Peru; on the 19th, we came out of the Sierra Morena, and lodged that night at la Torre de Juan-Abad; on the 20th we lay at La Membrilla, and there stayed all day on Monday and Tuesday; the 22nd at Villarta: here rises the river Guadiana, that goes under ground seven leagues before.
An edict in Pompey's name published there, C. iii. 102 Anartes, a people of Germany, Walachians, Servians, or Bulgarians, bordering upon the Hercynian Forest, G. vi. 25 Anas, a river of Spain, the Guadiana, or Rio Roydera, bounding that part of Spain under the government of Petreius, C. i. 38
On the other side come those whose country is watered with the crystal streams of Betis, shaded with olive trees; those who bathe their limbs in the rich flood of the golden Tagus; those whose mansions are laved by the profitable stream of the divine Genil; those who range the verdant Tartesian meadows; those who indulge their luxurious temper in the delicious pastures of Xerez; the wealthy inhabitants of La Mancha, crowned with golden ears of corn; the ancient offspring of the Goths, cased in iron; those who wanton in the lazy current of Pisuerga; those who feed their numerous flocks in the ample plains where the Guadiana, so celebrated for its hidden course, pursues its wandering race; those who shiver with extremity of cold on the woody Pyrenean hills or on the hoary tops of the snowy Apennines, in a word, all that Europe includes within its spacious bounds, half a world in an army."
The Gehon is obviously the Guadiana, which begins with a "G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia, is incontestably the Euphrates, of which the initial letter is "E." But a Scotsman appears who demonstrates in his turn that the garden of Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is to be believed that in a few centuries this opinion will make its fortune.
Now indeed do I know that all the pleasures of this life pass away like a shadow and a dream, or fade like the flower of the field. O ill-fated Montesinos! O sore-wounded Durandarte! O unhappy Belerma! O tearful Guadiana, and ye O hapless daughters of Ruidera who show in your waves the tears that flowed from your beauteous eyes!"
The peasant who cultivates his little field, or tends his flock on the right bank of the Guadiana, is, in all his habits and notions, a different being from the peasant who pursues similar occupations on its left bank; the first is a genuine Portuguese, the last is a genuine Spaniard.... They cordially detest one another; insomuch that their common wrongs and their common enmity to the French were not sufficient, even at this time, to eradicate the feeling.
"It was not, however, by the striking diversity of private character alone which subsisted between them, that we were made sensible, as soon as we had passed the Guadiana, that a new nation was before us. The Spaniards received us with a degree of indifference to which we had not hitherto been accustomed.
And the fourth thing is, that I have ascertained the source of the river Guadiana, heretofore unknown to mankind." "You are right," said Don Quixote; "but I should like to know, if by God's favour they grant you a licence to print those books of yours-which I doubt to whom do you mean dedicate them?" "There are lords and grandees in Spain to whom they can be dedicated," said the cousin.
And then he goes on to say: The cousin was amazed as well at Sancho's boldness as at the patience of his master, and concluded that the good temper the latter displayed arose from the happiness he felt at having seen his lady Dulcinea, even enchanted as she was; because otherwise the words and language Sancho had addressed to him deserved a thrashing; for indeed he seemed to him to have been rather impudent to his master, to whom he now observed, "I, Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha, look upon the time I have spent in travelling with your worship as very well employed, for I have gained four things in the course of it; the first is that I have made your acquaintance, which I consider great good fortune; the second, that I have learned what the cave of Montesinos contains, together with the transformations of Guadiana and of the lakes of Ruidera; which will be of use to me for the Spanish Ovid that I have in hand; the third, to have discovered the antiquity of cards, that they were in use at least in the time of Charlemagne, as may be inferred from the words you say Durandarte uttered when, at the end of that long spell while Montesinos was talking to him, he woke up and said, 'Patience and shuffle. This phrase and expression he could not have learned while he was enchanted, but only before he had become so, in France, and in the time of the aforesaid emperor Charlemagne.
At six o'clock then in the evening of the 4th, on a fresh mount, I turned my back on the doomed fortress, and crossing the Guadiana by the horse ferry above Elvas, struck into the Alemtejo. On the 6th I reached Castello Branco and found the position of the Allies sufficiently serious.
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