Mementos of Boabdil.
WHILE my mind was still warm with the subject of the unfortunate
Boabdil, I set forth to trace the mementos of him still existing in
this scene of his sovereignty and misfortunes. In the Tower of
Comares, immediately under the Hall of Ambassadors, are two vaulted
rooms, separated by a narrow passage; these are said to have been
the prisons of himself and his mother, the virtuous Ayxa la Horra;
indeed, no other part of the tower would have served for the
purpose. The external walls of these chambers are of prodigious
thickness, pierced with small windows secured by iron bars. A narrow
stone gallery, with a low parapet, extends along three sides of the
tower just below the windows, but at a considerable height from the
ground. From this gallery, it is presumed, the queen lowered her son
with the scarfs of herself and her female attendants during the
darkness of the night to the hillside, where some of his faithful
adherents waited with fleet steeds to bear him to the mountains.
Between three and four hundred years have elapsed, yet this scene of
the drama remains almost unchanged. As I paced the gallery, my
imagination pictured the anxious queen leaning over the parapet;
listening, with the throbbings of a mother's heart, to the last echoes
of the horses' hoofs as her son scoured along the narrow valley of the
Darro.
I next sought the gate by which Boabdil made his last exit from
the Alhambra, when about to surrender his capital and kingdom.
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