It has two branches which form an obtuse angle with the city. At the commencement of the angle it becomes a grand object. Its two rows of arcades rise majestically above each other, and the spectator is surprised at its gigantic height, and the It has stood 1600 years. lightness of its piers. Nor can we pass by the extensive works at Grenada, though of comparatively modern date, for supplying, with Arabian magnificence, the waters of the various baths, fountains, and apartments of the famed Alhambra. The Square of Cisterns encloses numerous reservoirs, kept constantly filled with water by an aqueduct from a neighboring hill, distant two or three miles. The largest of these reservoirs or cisterns, is 102 feet long and 56 wide, enclosed by a wall six feet thick, and protected by an arch forty-seven and a half feet high in the centre. There are two openings, or ventilators, to this cistern, three and a half feet in diameter, and carried up several feet above the surface, for the admission of air and light.

From these cisterns the water was distributed as desired. The grand fountain in the Court of the Lions was thus fed. The fountain was in the centre of this magnificent court. Twelve lions support on their backs an alabaster basin, richly decorated, elevated above which was a smaller basin. A great volume of water rose through pipes into the upper basin, which fell into that below, and was thence conducted through the mouth of the lions, to a black marble reservoir, from which, as a fountain head, the water was distributed in marble channels to different apartments.