The woman listened attentively, with her hands devoutly clasped, until the prayer was finished, and then gazed at me seemingly with astonishment, but uttered no word by which I could gather that she was pleased or displeased with what I had said.  I now bade the family farewell, and having mounted my mule, set forward to Arroyolos.

CHAPTER VII

The Druids’ Stone—­The Young Spaniard—­Ruffianly Soldiers—­Evils of War—­Estremoz—­The Brawl—­Ruined Watch Tower—­Glimpse of Spain—­Old Times and New.

After proceeding about a league and a half, a blast came booming from the north, rolling before it immense clouds of dust; happily it did not blow in our faces, or it would have been difficult to proceed, so great was its violence.  We had left the road in order to take advantage of one of those short cuts, which, though possible for a horse or a mule, are far too rough to permit any species of carriage to travel along them.  We were in the midst of sands, brushwood, and huge pieces of rock, which thickly studded the ground.  These are the stones which form the sierras of Spain and Portugal; those singular mountains which rise in naked horridness, like the ribs of some mighty carcass from which the flesh has been torn.  Many of these stones, or rocks, grew out of the earth, and many lay on its surface unattached, perhaps wrested from their bed by the waters of the deluge.  Whilst toiling along these wild wastes, I observed, a little way to my left, a pile of stones of rather a singular appearance, and rode up to it.  It was a druidical altar, and the most perfect and beautiful one of the kind which I had ever seen.  It was circular, and consisted of stones immensely large and heavy at the bottom, which towards the top became thinner and thinner, having been fashioned by the hand of art to something of the shape of scollop shells.  These were surmounted by a very large flat stone, which slanted down towards the south, where was a door.  Three or four individuals might have taken shelter within the interior, in which was growing a small thorn tree.

I gazed with reverence and awe upon the pile where the first colonies of Europe offered their worship to the unknown God.  The temples of the mighty and skilful Roman, comparatively of modern date, have crumbled to dust in its neighbourhood.  The churches of the Arian Goth, his successor in power, have sunk beneath the earth, and are not to be found; and the mosques of the Moor, the conqueror of the Goth, where and what are they?  Upon the rock, masses of hoary and vanishing ruin.  Not so the Druids’ stone; there it stands on the hill of winds, as strong and as freshly new as the day, perhaps thirty centuries back, when it was first raised, by means which are a mystery.  Earthquakes have heaved it, but its copestone has not fallen; rain floods have deluged it, but failed to sweep it from its station; the burning