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The fiery cavaliers of Granada, eager to renew those forays into the Christian lands in which they had formerly delighted, concerted an irruption to the north, into the territory of Jaen, to harass the country about Quezada.
In performing this operation, the handkerchief happened to be folded into double, treble, or quadruple, and it was found that an exact impress of the Saviour’s visage was indelibly stamped on every fold! These portraits, they say, have been preserved, and are certainly venerated as sacred relics in different places. One is exhibited in Rome, another in Padua, and a third in Jaen, in Andalusia.
They were situated on the frontiers of the kingdom of Granada, about four leagues from Jaen, in a deep, narrow, and rugged valley surrounded by lofty mountains. On each side of the stream rise two vast rocks, nearly perpendicular, within a stone's throw of each other, blocking up the gorge of the valley.
Soon King Fernando was in the saddle again, riding away toward the south, leading a great host of knights, and one Moorish town after another fell into their hands. While besieging Jaen, Fernando learned of his father's death, which had occurred suddenly.
His territories extended from the frontier of Jaen along the borders of Murcia to the Mediterranean, and reached into the centre of the kingdom. On the northeast he held the cities of Baza and Guadix, situated in the midst of fertile regions. He had the important seaport of Almeria also, which at one time rivalled Granada itself in wealth and population.
Humboldt, in his "Views of Nature," says: "There is hardly any physiognomical character of exotic vegetation that produces a more singular and ineffaceable impression on the mind of the traveller than an arid plain, densely covered with columnar or candelabra-like stems of Cactuses, similar to those near Cumana, New Barcelona, Cora. and in the province of Jaen de Bracamoros."
This group occupies the vast territory between Guancabamba, Avayaca, Ona and the ruined towns of Zamora and Loyola, between latitude 5 1/2 and 3 1/4 degrees. Eastward, in the direction of the Rio Santiago and the Rio de Chamaya, two tributary streams of the Amazon, the mountains lower rapidly: between San Felipe, Matara, and Jaen de Bracamoros, they are not more than 500 or 300 toises.
It is of a totally different pattern and style of ornament from the modern Moorish weapons, being inlaid in a very clever and tasteful manner. To the antiquary the most interesting part of Granáda is the Albaycin, the quarter lying highest up the valley of the Darro, originally peopled by refugees from the town of Baeza away to the north, beyond Jaen the Baïseeïn.
It did not include the Moorish frontier toward Jaen, which was to remain open for the warlike enterprises of either nation; neither did it prohibit sudden attacks upon towns and castles, provided they were mere forays, conducted furtively, without sound of trumpet or display of banners or pitching of camps or regular investment, and that they did not last above three days.*
There reigned at this time a careless security along the frontier of Jaen. The alcaydes of the Christian fortresses were confident of the friendship of Boabdil el Chico, and they fancied his uncle too distant and too much engrossed by his own perplexities to think of molesting them.
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