All Around, Beneath These Flights Of Benches, Are Vaulted
Excavations From Whence The Combatants, Part Human Part Bestial,
Darted Forth By Their Several Doors.
I spent many hours in this
singular place, forcing my way through the wild fennel and
brushwood into the caverns, now the haunts of adders and other
reptiles, whose hissings I heard.
Having sated my curiosity, I
left the ruins, and returning by another way, reached a place where
lay the carcass of a horse half devoured; upon it, with lustrous
eyes, stood an enormous vulture, who, as I approached, slowly
soared aloft till he alighted on the eastern gate of the
amphitheatre, from whence he uttered a hoarse cry, as if in anger
that I had disturbed him from his feast of carrion.
Gomez had not hitherto paid a visit to Seville: when I arrived he
was said to be in the neighbourhood of Ronda. The city was under
watch and ward: several gates had been blocked up with masonry,
trenches dug, and redoubts erected, but I am convinced that the
place would not have held out six hours against a resolute attack.
Gomez had proved himself to be a most extraordinary man, and with
his small army of Aragonese and Basques had, within the last four
months, made the tour of Spain. He had very frequently been hemmed
in by forces three times the number of his own, in places whence
escape appeared impossible, but he had always battled his enemies,
whom he seemed to laugh at.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 227 of 809
Words from 63421 to 63673
of 222596
