Aragon

Aragon, sometimes called Arragonia, now a captaincy-general of Spain, is bounded on the north by the Pyrenees, west by Navarre and Castile, south by Valencia, and east by Catalonia. It contains three provinces, viz. Huesca, Teruel, and Saragossa, and its chief town is Saragossa. The river Ebro, flowing south-east, cuts it into two nearly equal parts. The upper half includes some of the highest summits of the Pyrenees, and mountains covered with forests skirt and indent the country on almost every side. In the centre there are stony and sandy plains, though water is abundantly supplied by the Ebro, the Guadalaviar, the Tagus, the Xucar, the Gallego, and the Aragon. It has an area of 17,976 square miles. The products are fruit, grain, saffron, hemp, flax, and sheep are reared in large numbers. The mineral wealth is great, but not exploited. Little is manufactured except coarse, woollens, cordage, leather, wine, oil, and soda. Aragon was a part of the Roman Hispania Tarraconensis, and was wrested from Carthage about 200 B.C. The Goths succeeded the Romans in 470 A.D., and were expelled by the Moors in 714. The kings of Navarre, recovering the territory, made it into a dependent country, and so it remained till 1035. For the next four centuries Aragon was a separate kingdom, but in 1479 Ferdinand came to the throne, and having married Isabella of Castile united the two realms.