King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

182
MILITARY ORDERS
Ucl&s
The
gateway of
the hills
Like the other great seats and strong-
holds of the Orders, Ucles is reared upon a
grand site. The castle tops a low hill-crest,
looking over the wide brown plain to the
mountains that encompass the Castilian
upland, straight towards where, unsleep-
ing, like a chained lioness, Cuenca still
couches in the gateway of the hills. Of the
castle two brown towers and a curtain wall
rise against the twilight sky from far,
and battlements and ruins break the clear
light, and two or three enclosed chambers
yet stand that have been cloven or nibbled
away here and there, and have harboured
a few sheep in the wilderness. Just below,
the huge cold mass of the sixteenth-
century convent and church spread out
four-square like a grimmer and lonelier
Escorial: the road winds and turns, com-
ing up from below, beneath its grey
monotonous flanks; and before the huge
portal, with flanking towers, pediment and
buttresses, lies only a narrow parvis on
top of enormous substructures. All day I
had been travelling towards it, first in a
train, then through a town in fiesta, lastly
HISPANIC NOTES