About the Book
Excerpt from The Queens of Aragon: Their Lives and Times Moorish invaders, who were only too willing to leave so forbidding a territory to the undisturbed possession of the Christian population, yet it is, at the same tune, to those towering, though protective heights, that Aragon is indebted for that lack Of moisture which 1s her great misfortune. She is compensated, however, for her preponderance of wild and arid countryside, by the picturesque and fertile cases which blossom along banks of her rivers, of which the Ebro is the chief. Flowing in a south-easterly direction through the province, it receives, from the north, the tributary waters of the Arba, Gallego, and Cinca, near whose head waters is the district of Sobrarbe. The other Of Aragon are the Esera, which forms the boundary between Aragon and Catalonia, the Noguera Ribagor zana, the Noguera Pallares, and the Segre. From the south, the J alon and J iloca flow to mingle their waters with those of the Ebro, the former flowing by Calatayud, famous in antiquity for its swords, whilst its richly wooded banks are alternately fringed with orchards and olive groves. The Imperial Canal, cut in 1529, and the Royal Canal of Tauste, serve to still further redeem the arid soil from the brand of sterility. So that, here and there, the traveller in Aragon, now, as in the infancy of the kingdom of Ramiro I, comes with delight and refreshment upon such smiling valleys as those of Almunia, where Nature, as one such traveller has said, seems to have displayed, upon a carpet of the finest verdure, all the treasures of foliage, fruit, and flowers, oak, beech, pine, chestnut, juniper, cherry, nut, peach, and almond; or the chain of orchards of Borja, Balaguer, and Teruel. In the teeth of discourage ment of drought and extremes of climate, Aragon yields rich crops of wheat, saffron, maize, madder, rice, liquorice, flax, sumach, oil, and hemp, while the merino wool of its pastures still preserves its ancient reputation. The mineral wealth of the province includes lead, zinc, calamine, lignite, jet, and salt. Much of the economic future of his little kingdom. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
