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Updated: June 6, 2025
But Pelayo rode in silence, for he revolved in his mind the portentous words of the hermit; and the daughter of the merchant ever and anon stole looks at him full of tenderness and admiration, and deep sighs betrayed the agitation of her bosom. At length they came to the foot of the mountains, where the forests and the rocks terminated, and an open and secure country lay before the travellers.
When the repast was over, Pelayo offered to conduct the merchant and his family through the defiles of the mountains, lest they should be molested by any of the scattered band of robbers. The bodies of the slain marauders were buried, and the corpse of the servant was laid upon one of the horses captured in the battle.
While these preparations were making, a work of two hours, the men labored in silence, and the French, thronging their gangways, looked on in equal silence. "Never, since I came into the world," writes the chaplain, "did I know such a stillness." It was broken at length by a trumpet from the deck of the "San Pelayo." A French trumpet answered.
Pelayo, however, was visited by no such wandering of the mind; but, wrapping himself in his mantle, slept soundly by the fountain under the tree. At midnight, when every thing was buried in deep repose, he was awakened from his sleep and beheld the hermit before him, with the beams of the moon shining upon his silver hair and beard.
The great Spanish heroes, the Cid, Bernardo del Carpo, and Pelayo, are to this day a vital part of the belief and poetry of the lower classes in Spain, and are revered as they were hundreds of years ago.
"By my faith," replied Pelayo, "thou wilt find the game more readily roused than taken: have at thee for a villain!" So saying, he put spurs to his horse, and ran full speed upon him. The Gascon, not expecting so sudden an attack from a single horseman, was taken by surprise.
The men who have ventured to support the common-sense view are speedily stormed into silence or timid self-defence. The sword of Guzman is brandished in the Chambers, the name of Pelayo is invoked, the memory of the Cid is awakened, and the proposition goes out in a blaze of patriotic pyrotechnics, to the intense satisfaction of the unthinking and the grief of the judicious.
The year was 717, six years after the landing of the Arabs and the defeat of the Goths. Thus ended perhaps the most decisive battle in the history of Spain. With it new Spain began. The cave of Covadonga is still a place of pilgrimage for the Spanish patriot, a stairway of marble replacing the ladder used by Pelayo and his men. We may tell what followed in a few words.
He hastily couched his lance, but it merely glanced on the shield of Pelayo, who sent his own through the middle of his breast, and threw him out of his saddle to the earth. One of the other robbers made at Pelayo, and wounded him slightly in the side, but received a blow from the sword of the latter, which cleft his skull-cap, and sank into his brain.
These were headed by one Garret Van Horne, a gigantic Dutchman, the Pelayo of the New-Netherlands. Under his guidance, they retreated across the bay and buried themselves among the marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the followers of Pelayo among the mountains of Asturias, when Spain was overrun by its Arabian invaders.
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