There the royal _contadores_ were not long in ascertaining the number of the exiles. It amounted to thirty-five hundred. That of the women, who were soon to follow, was much greater.[175] The names, the ages, and the occupations of the men were all carefully registered. The following day they were marched into the great square before the hospital, where they were distributed into companies, each under a strong escort, to be conducted to their various places of destination. These, far from being confined to Andalusia, reached into New Castile. In this arrangement we may trust that so much respect was paid to the dictates of humanity, as not to separate those of the same kindred from one another. But the chroniclers give no information on the subject; probably regarding details of this sort, in regard to the fallen race, as below the dignity of history.
It was on the twenty-fifth of June, 1569, that, bidding a sad farewell to the friends and companions of their youth, from whom they were now to be for ever parted, they set forth on their doleful pilgrimage. The morning light had broken on the red towers of the Alhambra, as the bands of exiles, issuing from the gates of their beloved capital, the spot dearest to them upon earth, turned their faces towards their new homes,--homes which many of them were destined never to behold. The government, with shameful indifference, had neglected to provide for the poor wanderers the most common necessaries of life. Some actually perished of hunger by the way. Others, especially those accustomed from infancy to a delicate nurture, sank down and died of fatigue. Some were seized by the soldiers, whose cupidity was roused by the sight of their helplessness, and were sold as slaves. Others were murdered by their guards in cold blood.[176] Thus reduced far below their original number, they reached their appointed places, there to linger out the remainder of their days in the midst of a population who held them in that abhorrence with which a good Catholic of the sixteenth century regarded "the enemies of God."[177]
But the evils which grew out of this stern policy of the government were not wholly confined to the Moriscoes. This ingenious people were so far superior to the Spaniards in the knowledge of husbandry, and in the various mechanical arts, that they formed the most important part of the population of Granada. The only art in which their rivals excelled them was that which thrives at the expense of every other--the art of war. Aware of this, the government had excepted some of the best artisans in the capital from the doom of exile which had fallen on their countrymen, and they had accordingly remained in the city. But their number was too small to produce the result desired; and it was not long before the quarter of the town which had been occupied by the Moriscoes exhibited a scene of woeful desolation. The light and airy edifices, which displayed in their forms the fantastic graces of Arabian architecture, fell speedily into decay. The parterres and pleasure-grounds, filled with exotics, and glowing in all the exuberance of southern vegetation, became a wilderness of weeds; and the court-yards and public squares, where tanks and sparkling fountains, fed by the streams of the Sierra Nevada, shed a refreshing coolness over the atmosphere in the sultriest months of summer, were soon converted into a melancholy heap of rubbish.