“Far, far away!” For the romantic imagination of Americans living in the second decade of the nineteenth century, these words identified, from the geographical viewpoint, Spain. To the average American, indeed to all but a few, Spain was as close to a terra incognita as there could exist in the Western World, a legendary land of old castles and beautiful landscapes inhabited by lovely dark-eyed maidens, engulfed by a warm climate, religious bigotry, and ignorance. But it was “far, far away,” and to the complacent inhabitants of a new and prosperous country which was politically stable and economically secure, Spain symbolized romantic adventure.