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Pinnacle of the Cathedral 91 Interior of the Cathedral 97 Patio de las Doncellas 111 In the Garden of the Alcázar 125 Cancela of the Casa Pilatos 133 The Guardian Angel (Murillo) facing 172 The Conception (Murillo) facing 178 The Road to Calvary (Valdés Leal) facing 180 Saint Hugo in the Refectory (Zurbaran) facing 182 The Crucifixion (Montañes) facing 186 Minaret of San Marcus 190 Puerta de Santa Maria 195 Patio del Casa Murillo 203 Amphora 212 Patio del Colegio, San Miguel 215 The Golden Tower 223 A Roof Garden 238 Arms of Seville 241 Plan of City (not available) facing 268

The Story of Seville

CHAPTER I

Romans, Goths and Moors

'The sound, the sight

Of turban, girdle, robe, and scimitar

And tawny skins, awoke contending thoughts

Of anger, shame and anguish in the Goth.'

Robert Southey, Roderick.

SEVILLE the sunny, the gem of Andalusia, is a city in the midst of a vast garden. Within its ancient walls, the vine, the orange tree, the olive, and the rose flourish in all open spaces, while every patio, or court, has its trellises whereon flowers blossom throughout the year. Spreading palms overshadow the public squares and walks, and the banks of the brown Guadalquivir are densely clothed with an Oriental verdure.

The surrounding country of the Province of Sevilla, La Tierra de Maria Santisima, is flat, and in the neighbourhood of the city sparsely wooded. On the low hills of Italica and San Juan de Aznalfarache, the Hisn-al-Faradj of the Moors, olive groves cover many thousands of acres. The plain is a parterre of wide grain fields, and meadows of rife grass, divided by straight white roads, with their trains of picturesque mule teams and waggons, and their rows of tall, straight trees. Here and there the cold grey cactus serves as a fence, but there is no other kind of hedgerow.

Far away, across the yellow wheatfields, and beyond the vine-clad slopes of the middle distance, rise the huge shoulders and purple peaks of wild sierras.

The Guadalquivir, rolling and eddying in a wide bed, takes its tint from the light soil and sand, and is always turbid, as though in spate. Below Seville, on the left bank of the river, stretch the great salt marshes, or Marismas, haunted by the stork, the heron, and innumerable wildfowl. Here, among the arms of the tidal water, the cotton plant is cultivated. Winter floods are a source of danger to Seville, especially when a south-west wind is blowing and the tide ascending the river. Then the Guadalquivir overflows its banks and deluges the town and the flat land, drowning live stock and destroying buildings. In 1595 and 1626 occurred two of the worst floods, or avenidas, on record. The flood of 1626 washed away the foundations of about three thousand houses.

It is probable that the southern kingdom of Andalusia derived its name from the Vandals, who overran the country after the Roman occupation. The region was then known as