The few French troopers who had escaped fled to Seville, reported the affair, and (wrongly) incriminated the villagers of Almonte--precisely as those worthies had foreseen. The General commanding at Seville ordered that Almonte should be razed to the ground and its inhabitants beheaded--that being the penalty decreed by Murat for any shedding of French blood. A detachment of dragoons, despatched to Almonte, had already taken prisoner the mayor, the priests, and all the chief inhabitants preparatory to their execution. In this grave situation they bethought themselves to pray to the Virgin of Rocío, promising that if she would rescue them from their deadly peril, they would institute a new pilgrimage to her shrine for thanksgiving.
Already the detachment of French soldiers detailed to carry out the executions had reached Pilas, a village within six leagues of Almonte, when, by mere coincidence, a handful of Spanish troops flung themselves against the French positions at Seville. The French, thinking that their assailants must be the forerunners of a larger army, hurriedly recalled all their outposts, including those commissioned to destroy Almonte!
Thus the wretched Alcalde and his fellow-prisoners were saved; for, their innocence of the "crime" being presently established, the town was let off with a fine. Since then, in accordance with the promise made 100 years ago, the whole of Almonte repairs every 7th of August to the shrine of Nuestra Señora del Rocío.
[Illustration: PRAYING MANTIS (_Mantis religiosa_)]
From Seville to the Atlantic the great river Guadalquivír pursues its course through seventy miles of alluvial mud-flats entirely of its own construction. The whole of this viewless waste (in winter largely submerged) is technically termed the marisma; but its upper regions, slightly higher-lying, have proved amenable to a limited dominion of man, and nowadays comprise (besides some rich corn-lands) broad pasturages devoted to grazing, and which yield _Toros bravos_, that is, fighting-bulls of breeds celebrated throughout Spain, as providing the popular champions of the Plaza.
It is not of these developed regions that we treat, but of the Lower Delta, which still remains a wilderness, and must for centuries remain so--a vast area of semi-tidal saline ooze and marsh, extending over some forty or fifty miles in length, and spreading out laterally to untold leagues on either side of the river.