Gibraltar.
Unwritten Links of Travel--Departure from Southampton--The Bay of
Biscay--Cintra--Trafalgar--Gibraltar at Midnight--Landing--Search for a
Palm-Tree--A Brilliant Morning--The Convexity of the
Earth--Sun-Worship--The Rock.
------"to the north-west, Cape St. Vincent died away,
Sunset ran, a burning blood-red, blushing into Cadiz Bay.
In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray."
Browning.
Gibraltar, _Saturday, November_ 6, 1852.
I leave unrecorded the links of travel which connected Messina and
Gibraltar. They were over the well-trodden fields of Europe, where little
ground is left that is not familiar. In leaving Sicily I lost the
Saracenic trail, which I had been following through the East, and first
find it again here, on the rock of Calpe, whose name, _Djebel el-Tarik_
(the Mountain of Tarik), still speaks of the fiery race whose rule
extended from the unknown ocean of the West to "Ganges and Hydaspes,
Indian streams." In Malta and Sicily, I saw their decaying watch-towers,
and recognized their sign-manual in the deep, guttural, masculine words
and expressions which they have left behind them. I now design following
their footsteps through the beautiful _Belàd-el-Andaluz_, which, to the
eye of the Melek Abd-er-rahmàn, was only less lovely than the plains of
Damascus.
While in Constantinople, I received letters which opened to me wider and
richer fields of travel than I had already traversed. I saw a possibility
of exploring the far Indian realms, the shores of farthest Cathay and the
famed Zipango of Marco Polo. Before entering on this new sphere of
experiences, however, it was necessary for me to visit Italy, Germany, and
England. I sailed from Messina to Leghorn, and travelled thence, by way of
Florence, Venice, and the Tyrol, to Munich. After three happy weeks at
Gotha, and among the valleys of she Thüringian Forest, I went to London,
where business and the preparation for my new journeys detained me two or
three weeks longer. Although the comforts of European civilization were
pleasant, as a change, after the wild life of the Orient, the autumnal
rains of England soon made me homesick for the sunshine I had left. The
weather was cold, dark, and dreary, and the oppressive, sticky atmosphere
of the bituminous metropolis weighed upon me like a nightmare. Heartily
tired of looking at a sun that could show nothing brighter than a red
copper disk, and of breathing an air that peppered my face with particles
of soot, I left on the 28th of October. It was one of the dismalest days
of autumn; the meadows of Berkshire were flooded with broad, muddy
streams, and the woods on the hills of Hampshire looked brown and sodden,
as if slowly rotting away. I reached Southampton at dusk, but there the
sky was neither warmer nor clearer, so I spent the evening over a coal
fire, all impatience for the bright beloved South, towards which my face
was turned once more.
The _Madras_ left on the next day, at 2 P.M., in the midst of a cheerless
rain, which half blotted out the pleasant shores of Southampton Water, and
the Isle of Wight. The _Madras_ was a singularly appropriate vessel for
one bound on such a journey as mine. The surgeon was Dr. Mungo Park, and
one of my room-mates was Mr. R. Crusoe. It was a Friday, which boded no
good for the voyage; but then my journey commenced with my leaving London
the day previous, and Thursday is a lucky day among the Arabs. I caught a
watery view of the gray cliffs of the Needles, when dinner was announced,
but many were those (and I among them) who commenced that meal, and did
not stay to finish it.
Is there any piece of water more unreasonably, distressingly, disgustingly
rough and perverse than the British Channel? Yes: there is one, and but
one--the Bay of Biscay. And as the latter succeeds the former, without a
pause between, and the head-winds never ceased, and the rain continually
poured, I leave you to draw the climax of my misery. Four days and four
nights in a berth, lying on your back, now dozing dull hour after hour,
now making faint endeavors to eat, or reading the feeblest novel ever
written, because the mind cannot digest stronger aliment--can there be a
greater contrast to the wide-awake life, the fiery inspiration, of the
Orient? My blood became so sluggish and my mind so cloudy and befogged,
that I despaired of ever thinking clearly or feeling vividly again. "The
winds are rude" in Biscay, Byron says. They are, indeed: very rude. They
must have been raised in some most disorderly quarter of the globe. They
pitched the waves right over our bulwarks, and now and then dashed a
bucketful of water down the cabin skylight, swamping the ladies' cabin,
and setting scores of bandboxes afloat. Not that there was the least
actual danger; but Mrs. ---- would not be persuaded that we were not on
the brink of destruction, and wrote to friends at home a voluminous
account of her feelings. There was an Irishman on board, bound to Italy,
with his sister. It was his first tour, and when asked why he did not go
direct, through France, he replied, with brotherly concern, that he was
anxious his sister should see the Bay of Biscay.
This youth's perceptions were of such an emerald hue, that a lot of wicked
Englishmen had their own fun out of him. The other day, he was trying to
shave, to the great danger of slicing off his nose, as the vessel was
rolling fearfully. "Why don't you have the ship headed to the wind?" said
one of the Englishmen, who heard his complaints; "she will then lie
steady, and you can shave beautifully." Thereupon the Irishman sent one of
the stewards upon deck with a polite message to the captain, begging him
to put the vessel about for five minutes.
Towards noon of the fifth day, we saw the dark, rugged mountains that
guard the north-western corner of the Spanish Peninsula. We passed the Bay
of Corunna, and rounding the bold headland of Finisterre, left the
Biscayan billows behind us. But the sea was still rough and the sky
clouded, although the next morning the mildness of the air showed the
change in our latitude. About noon that day, we made the Burlings, a
cluster of rocks forty miles north of Lisbon, and just before sunset, a
transient lifting of the clouds revealed the Rock of Cintra, at the mouth
of the Tagus. The tall, perpendicular cliffs, and the mountain slopes
behind, covered with gardens, orchards, and scattered villas and hamlets,
made a grand though dim picture, which was soon hidden from our view.
On the 4th, we were nearly all day crossing the mouth of the Bay of
Cadiz, and only at sunset saw Cape Trafalgar afar off, glimmering through
the reddish haze. I remained on deck, as there were patches of starlight
in the sky. After passing the light-house at Tarifa, the Spanish shore
continued to be visible. In another hour, there was a dim, cloudy outline
high above the horizon, on our right. This was the Lesser Atlas, in
Morocco. And now, right ahead, distinctly visible, though fifteen miles
distant, lay a colossal lion, with his head on his outstretched paws,
looking towards Africa. If I had been brought to the spot blindfolded, I
should have known what it was. The resemblance is certainly very striking,
and the light-house on Europa Point seemed to be a lamp held in his paws.
The lights of the city and fortifications rose one by one, glittering
along the base, and at midnight we dropped anchor before them on the
western side.
I landed yesterday morning. The mists, which had followed me from England,
had collected behind the Rock, and the sun, still hidden by its huge bulk,
shone upwards through them, making a luminous background, against which
the lofty walls and jagged ramparts of this tremendous natural
fortification were clearly defined. I announced my name, and the length of
time I designed remaining, at a little office on the quay, and was then
allowed to pass into the city. A number of familiar white turbans met me
on entering, and I could not resist the temptation of cordially saluting
the owners in their own language. The town is long and narrow, lying
steeply against the Rock. The houses are white, yellow and pink, as in
Spanish towns, but the streets are clean and well paved. There is a
square, about the size of an ordinary building-lot, where a sort of
market of dry goods and small articles is held The "Club-House Hotel"
occupies one side of it; and, as I look out of my window upon it, I see
the topmost cliffs of the Rock above me, threatening to topple down from a
height of 1,500 feet.
My first walk in Gibraltar was in search of a palm-tree. After threading
the whole length of the town, I found two small ones in a garden, in the
bottom of the old moat. The sun was shining, and his rays seemed to fall
with double warmth on their feathery crests. Three brown Spaniards,
bare-armed, were drawing water with a pole and bucket, and filling the
little channels which conveyed it to the distant vegetables. The sea
glittered blue below; an Indian fig-tree shaded me; but, on the rock
behind, an aloe lifted its blossoming stem, some twenty feet high, into
the sunshine. To describe what a weight was lifted from my heart would
seem foolish to those who do not know on what little things the whole tone
of our spirits sometimes depends.
But if an even balance was restored yesterday, the opposite scale kicked
the beam this morning. Not a speck of vapor blurred the spotless crystal
of the sky, as I walked along the hanging paths of the Alameda. The sea
was dazzling ultra-marine, with a purple lustre; every crag and notch of
the mountains across the bay, every shade of brown or gray, or the green
of grassy patches, was drawn and tinted with a pencil so exquisitely
delicate as almost to destroy the perspective. The white houses of
Algeciras, five miles off, appeared close at hand: a little toy-town,
backed by miniature hills. Apes' Hill, the ancient Abyla, in Africa,
advanced to meet Calpe, its opposing pillar, and Atlas swept away to the
east ward, its blue becoming paler and paler, till the powers of vision
finally failed. From the top of the southern point of the Rock, I saw the
mountain-shore of Spain, as far as Malaga, and the snowy top of one of the
Sierra Nevada. Looking eastward to the horizon line of the Mediterranean,
my sight extended so far, in the wonderful clearness of the air, that the
convexity of the earth's surface was plainly to be seen. The sea, instead
of being a plane, was slightly convex, and the sky, instead of resting
upon it at the horizon, curved down beyond it, as the upper side of a horn
curves over the lower, when one looks into the mouth. There is none of the
many aspects of Nature more grand than this, which is so rarely seen, that
I believe the only person who has ever described it is Humboldt, who saw
it, looking from the Silla de Caraccas over the Caribbean Sea. It gives
you the impression of standing on the edge of the earth, and looking off
into space. From the mast-head, the ocean appears either flat or slightly
concave, and æronauts declare that this apparent concavity becomes more
marked, the higher they ascend. It is only at those rare periods when the
air is so miraculously clear as to produce the effect of _no
air_--rendering impossible the slightest optical illusion--that our eyes
can see things as they really are. So pure was the atmosphere to-day,
that, at meridian, the moon, although a thin sickle, three days distant
from the sun, shone perfectly white and clear.
As I loitered in the Alameda, between thick hedges of ever-blooming
geraniums, clumps of heliotrope three feet high, and luxuriant masses of
ivy, around whose warm flowers the bees clustered and hummed, I could only
think of the voyage as a hideous dream. The fog and gloom had been in my
own eyes and in my own brain, and now the blessed sun, shining full in my
face, awoke me. I am a worshipper of the Sun. I took off my hat to him, as
I stood there, in a wilderness of white, crimson, and purple flowers, and
let him blaze away in my face for a quarter of an hour. And as I walked
home with my back to him, I often turned my face from side to side that I
might feel his touch on my cheek. How a man can live, who is sentenced to
a year's imprisonment, is more than I can understand.
But all this (you will say) gives you no picture of Gibraltar. The Rock is
so familiar to all the world, in prints and descriptions, that I find
nothing new to say of it, except that it is by no means so barren a rock
as the island of Malta, being clothed, in many places, with beautiful
groves and the greenest turf; besides, I have not yet seen the
rock-galleries, having taken passage for Cadiz this afternoon. When I
return--as I hope to do in twenty days, after visiting Seville and
Granada--I shall procure permission to view all the fortifications, and
likewise to ascend to the summit.