After all he was not
born in Cordova (as I had supposed till an hour ago), but in the little
city of Montilla, five stations away on the railroad to the Malaga, and
now more noted for its surpassing sherry than for the greatest soldier
of his time. To have given its name to Amontillado is glory enough for
Montilla, and it must be owned that Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de
Montilla would not sound so well as the title we know the hero by, when
we know him at all. There may be some who will say that Cordova merits
remembrance less because of him than because of Columbus, who first came
to the Catholic kings there to offer them not a mere kingdom, but a
whole hemisphere. Cordova was then the Spanish headquarters for the
operations against Granada, and one reads of the fact with a luminous
sense which one cannot have till one has seen Cordova.
VIII
After our visits to the mosque and the bridge and the museum there
remained nothing of our forenoon, and we gave the whole of the earlier
afternoon to an excursion which strangers are expected to make into the
first climb of hills to the eastward of the city. The road which reaches
the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets
of Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good
horses and their owner's mercy to them.
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