THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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the praises of their heroes and their fair women. Prizes were awarded for these poems, which w'ere written in golden letters and suspended in their chapel of worship, the Caaba at Mecca, which contained the black stone—the object of the religious devotion of the Arabs from a very ancient period. This stone they believed to have been handed down from Heaven to Abraham by the angel Gabriel.

Beneath a canopy of molten brass outstretched in eternal serenity, lay the desert “ dreary, vast and silent,” which, changed in a moment by wild tornadoes to a scene of fury, was reflected in the aspect of her children. Alternating from mysterious tran­quillity to reckless rage, their faces showed a corresponding conflict of calm and tem­pest. Their fine, Oriental features and melancholy eyes gave silent token of their sense of isolation, and completed the spell of their wild and vigorous minstrelsy.

For thousands of years Arabia was a land of religious freedom. All religious sects, Jews, Firewvorshipers and Christians were tolerated within its borders; Jewish colonies were formed by emigrants, who found entrance after the destruction of Jeru­salem by the Romans, and who made many proselytes. About the year 600 A. D. Christianity had penetrated to the heart of Arabia, through Syria on the one hand and Abyssinia on the other. Besides these two, other religious sects, remnants of more ancient ones prevailed. Itw r as left for Mohammed to teach a new faith, which should dispense with idolatry on the one hand, as with Judaism and Christianity on the other. These various sects became a unit by the acceptance of the new faith, and under the banner of the crescent Mohammed led them to the conquest of the ancient w r orld.

The introduction of the doctrine of Mohammed forms the grand epoch in Arabian history, and brings it into close connection with that of Spain. The creed of Mohammed was contained in the w r ell-knowm symbol of Islam, “There is no god but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God;” and his express precept w r as “to prop­agate by fire and sword, throughout the four quarters of the globe the new Unitarian faith of Arabia.”

Like a match dropped on oil, this appeal to mankind for spiritual and tem­poral authority, fired the fanaticism of the Arabs, and like a mighty conflagration they swept over the northern states of Africa, and formed a new r and powerful empire, which took the name of Saracen. This name is by mediaeval Christian authors supposed to be derived from Sarai, the wife of Abraham, by others from the Arab saraca (to steal), or from the Hebrew sarak (poor), but the opinion which now pre­vails is that it came from the Greek sareknoi (eastern people), from which the Romans derived their word Saraceni. As they spread over Morocco, then called Mauritania, they took the name of Moors, from mauri, meaning dark. When the Arabs or Saracen conquerors invaded Spain, they w^ere, naturally enough, called Moors, so that in Spanish history the terms Arabs, Saracens and Moors are synonymous. In the short space of eighty years after the death of Mohammed, they had passed like a fiery tornado over Northern Africa, and had extended their domains from Egypt to India and from Lisbon to Samarcand. In the meanwhile, Christianity, falling like drops of fertilizing rain, was making a fruitful harvest in Northern and Southern Europe,

In Spain, the cross confronted the crescent. Visigoths or Western Goths, who were in possession, defied the Moors for its dominion. The treachery of one man betrayed the Gothic cause. Count Julian, a Visigothic noble of Spain, irritated by the treatment he had received from his sovereign, the tyrant Roderic, secretly dis­patched a messenger to Musa, the governor of Africa and invited the Moors into Spain, Roderic, more familiarly known as “The last of the Visigoths,” whose tragic downfall has supplied the theme for poets, romancers and historians, was hated by" his people, and during the battle, wEich continued seven days on the banks of the Guadalete, a portion of his forces, as had been previously arranged, deserted to the Moors.

The Goths w^ere finally routed with immense slaughter, but the victory of the Moors was purchased at the expense of sixteen thousand lives. The renowned rock