Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 41263-h.htm or 41263-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/41263/pg41263-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41263/41263-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
http://archive.org/details/mediterraneanits00bonnrich
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
The original text includes Greek characters that have been
replaced with transliterations in this text-file version.
THE MEDITERRANEAN
[Illustration]
THE MEDITERRANEAN
Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins
by
T. G. BONNEY, E. A. R. BALL, H. D. TRAILL, GRANT ALLEN,
ARTHUR GRIFFITHS AND ROBERT BROWN
Illustrated with Photogravures
New York
James Pott & Company
1907
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, 1
Portals of the ancient world--Bay of Tangier at sunrise--
Tarifa--The Rock of Gibraltar--Wonders of its
fortifications--Afternoon promenade in the Alameda Gardens--
Ascending the Rock--View from the highest point--The Great
Siege--Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the
Moorish coast--The rock of many names.
II. ALGIERS, 28
"A Pearl set in Emeralds"--Two distinct towns; one ancient,
one modern--The Great Mosque--A Mohammedan religious
festival--Oriental life in perfection--The road to Mustapha
Supérieur--A true Moorish villa described--Women praying to
a sacred tree--Excessive rainfall.
III. MALAGA, 42
A nearly perfect climate--Continuous existence of thirty
centuries--Granada and the world-renowned Alhambra--Systems
of irrigation--Vineyards the chief source of wealth--Esparto
grass--The famous Cape de Gatt--The highest peak of the
Sierra Nevada--Last view of Granada.
IV. BARCELONA, 61
The flower market of the Rambla--Streets of the old town--
The Cathedral of Barcelona--Description of the Columbus
monument--All Saints' Day in Spain--Mont Tibidaho--Diverse
centers of intellectual activity--Ancient history--
Philanthropic and charitable institutions.
V. MARSEILLES, 94
Its Greek founders and early history--Superb view from the
sea--The Cannebière--The Prado and Chemin de la Corniche--
Château d'If and Monte-Cristo--Influence of the Greeks in
Marseilles--Ravages by plague and pestilence--Treasures of
the Palais des Arts--The Chapel of Nôtre Dame de la Garde--
The new Marseilles and its future.
VI. NICE, 124
The Queen of the Riviera--The Port of Limpia--Castle Hill--
Promenade des Anglais--The Carnival and Battle of Flowers--
Place Masséna, the center of business--Beauty of the
suburbs--The road to Monte Carlo--The quaintly picturesque
town of Villefranche--Aspects of Nice and its environs.
VII. THE RIVIERA, 145
In the days of the Doges--Origin of the name--The blue bay
of Cannes--Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat--Historical
associations--The Rue L'Antibes--The rock of Monaco--"Nôtre
Dame de la Roulette"--From Monte Carlo to Mentone--San
Remo--A romantic railway.
VIII. GENOA, 160
Early history--Old fortifications--The rival of Venice--
Changes of twenty-five years--From the parapet of the
Corso--The lower town--The Genoese palazzi--Monument to
Christopher Columbus--The old Dogana--Memorials in the
Campo Santo--The Bay of Spezzia--The Isola Palmeria--Harbor
scenes.
IX. THE TUSCAN COAST, 192
Shelley's last months at Lerici--Story of his death--Carrara
and its marble quarries--Pisa--Its grand group of
ecclesiastical buildings--The cloisters of the Campo Santo--
Napoleon's life on Elba--Origin of the Etruscans--The ruins
of Tarquinii--Civita Vecchia, the old port of Rome--Ostia.
X. VENICE, 220
Its early days--The Grand Canal and its palaces--Piazza of
St. Mark--A Venetian funeral--The long line of islands--
Venetian glass--Torcello, the ancient Altinum--Its two
unique churches.
XI. ALEXANDRIA, 234
The bleak and barren shores of the Nile Delta--Peculiar
shape of the city--Strange and varied picture of Alexandrian
street life--The Place Mehemet Ali--Glorious panorama from
the Cairo citadel--Pompey's Pillar--The Battle of the Nile--
Discovery of the famous inscribed stone at Rosetta--Port
Said and the Suez Canal.
XII. MALTA, 267
"England's Eye in the Mediterranean"--Vast systems of
fortifications--Sentinels and martial music--The Strada
Reale of Valletta--Church of St. John--St. Elmo--The
Military Hospital, the "very glory of Malta"--Citta
Vecchia--Saint Paul and his voyages.
XIII. SICILY, 295
Scylla and Charybdis--Messina, the chief commercial center
of Sicily--The magnificent ruins of the Greek Theater at
Taormina--Omnipresence of Mt. Etna--Approach to Syracuse--
The famous Latomia del Paradiso--Girgenti, the City of
Temples--Railway route to Palermo--Mosaics--Cathedral and
Abbey of Monreale--Monte Pellegrino at the hour of sunset.
XIV. NAPLES, 325
The Bay of Naples--Vesuvius--Characteristic scenes of street
life--The _al fresco_ restaurants--Chapel of St. Januarius--
Virgil's Tomb--Capri, the Mecca of artists and lovers of the
picturesque--The Emperor Tiberius--Description of the Blue
Grotto--The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento--
Amalfi--Sorrento, "the village of flowers and the flower of
villages"--The Temples of Pæstum.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
CAPRI.--The Marina Grande _Frontispiece_
PAGE
GIBRALTAR.--View from the Old Mole 14
ALGIERS.--Government Square and the Street, La Marine 28
ALGIERS.--Interior of the Governor's Palace 36
MALAGA.--General View from Castle 52
BARCELONA.--View of Harbor 70
MARSEILLES.--Panorama of the Old Port 98
NICE.--Promenade des Anglais 132
THE RIVIERA.--San Remo 158
GENOA.--The Doria Palace--Garden and Doorway 172
THE TUSCAN COAST.--Pisa--Cathedral Square and Monuments 198
VENICE.--The Piazza of St. Mark 226
ALEXANDRIA.--General View of the City 240
ALEXANDRIA.--Scene on Canal 260
MALTA.--General View 274
SICILY.--View of Taormina and Mt. Etna 298
NAPLES.--Panorama from Virgil's Tomb 334
The Mediterranean
I
THE PILLARS OF HERCULES
Portals of the ancient world--Bay of Tangier at sunrise--Tarifa--The
Rock of Gibraltar--Wonders of its fortifications--Afternoon promenade
in the Alameda Gardens--Ascending the Rock--View from the highest
point--The Great Siege--Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the
Moorish coast--The rock of many names.
The "Pillars of Hercules!" The portals of the Ancient World! To how many a
traveller just beginning to tire of his week on the Atlantic, or but
slowly recovering, it may be, in his tranquil voyage along the coasts of
Portugal and Southern Spain, from the effects of thirty unquiet hours in
the Bay of Biscay, has the nearing view of this mighty landmark of history
brought a message of new life! That distant point ahead, at which the
narrowing waters of the Strait that bears him disappear entirely within
the clasp of the embracing shores, is for many such a traveller the
beginning of romance. He gazes upon it from the westward with some dim
reflection of that mysterious awe with which antiquity looked upon it from
the East. The progress of the ages has, in fact, transposed the center of
human interest and the human point of view. Now, as in the Homeric era,
the Pillars of Hercules form the gateway of a world of wonder; but for us
of to-day it is within and not without those portals that that world of
wonder lies. To the eye of modern poetry the Atlantic and Mediterranean
have changed places. In the waste of waters stretching westward from the
rock of Calpe and its sister headland, the Greek of the age of Homer found
his region of immemorial poetic legend and venerable religious myth, and
peopled it with the gods and heroes of his traditional creed. Here, on the
bosom of the wide-winding river Oceanus, lay the Islands of the
Blest--that abode of eternal beauty and calm, where "the life of mortals
is most easy," where "there is neither snow nor winter nor much rain, but
ocean is ever sending up the shrilly breezes of Zephyrus to refresh man."
But for us moderns who have explored this mighty "river Oceanus," this
unknown and mysterious Atlantic to its farthest recesses, the glamor of
its mystery has passed away for ever; and it is eastward and not westward,
through the "Pillars of Hercules," that we now set our sails in search of
the region of romance. It is to the basin of the Mediterranean--fringed
with storied cities and venerable ruins, with the crumbling sanctuaries of
a creed which has passed away, and the monuments of an art which is
imperishable--that man turns to-day. The genius of civilization has
journeyed far to the westward, and has passed through strange experiences;
it returns with new reverence and a deeper awe to that _enclave_ of
mid-Europe which contains its birthplace, and which is hallowed with the
memories of its glorious youth. The grand cliff-portal which we are
approaching is the entrance, the thoughtful traveller will always feel, to
a region eternally sacred in the history of man; to lands which gave birth
to immortal models of literature and unerring canons of philosophic truth;
to shrines and temples which guard the ashes of those "dead but sceptered
sovereigns" who "rule our spirits from their urns."
As our vessel steams onward through the rapidly narrowing Straits, the eye
falls upon a picturesque irregular cluster of buildings on the Spanish
shore, wherefrom juts forth a rocky tongue of land surmounted by a tower.
It is the Pharos of Tarifa, and in another half hour we are close enough
to distinguish the exact outlines of the ancient and famous city named of
Tarif Ibn Malek, the first Berber sheikh who landed in Spain, and itself,
it is said--though some etymologists look askance at the derivation--the
name-mother of a word which is little less terrible to the modern trader
than was this pirate's nest itself to his predecessor of old times. The
arms of Tarifa are a castle on waves, with a key at the window, and the
device is not unaptly symbolical of her mediæval history, when her
possessors played janitors of the Strait, and merrily levied
blackmail--the irregular _tariff_ of those days--upon any vessel which
desired to pass. The little town itself is picturesquely situated in the
deepest embrace of the curving Strait, and the view looking westward--with
the lighthouse rising sharp and sheer against the sky, from the jutting
cluster of rock and building about its base, while dimly to the left in
the farther distance lie the mountains of the African coast, descending
there so cunningly behind the curve that the two continents seem to touch
and connect the channel into a lake--is well worth attentive study. An
interesting spot, too, is Tarifa, as well as a picturesque--interesting at
least to all who are interested either in the earlier or the later
fortunes of post-Roman Europe. It played its part, as did most other
places, on this common battle-ground of Aryan and Semite, in the secular
struggle between European Christendom and the Mohammedan East. And again,
centuries later, it was heard of in the briefer but more catastrophic
struggle of the Napoleonic wars. From the day when Alonzo Perez de Guzman
threw his dagger down from its battlements in disdainful defiance of the
threat to murder his son, dragged bound before him beneath its walls by
traitors, it is a "far cry" to the day when Colonel Gough of the 87th (the
"Eagle-Catchers") beat off Marshal Victor's besieging army of 1,800
strong, and relieved General Campbell and his gallant little garrison; but
Tarifa has seen them both, and it is worth a visit not only for the sake
of the ride from it over the mountains to Algeciras and Gibraltar, but for
its historical associations also, and for its old-world charm.
We have taken it, as we propose also to take Tangier, a little out of its
turn; for the voyaging visitor to Gibraltar is not very likely to take
either of these two places on his way. It is more probable that he will
visit them, the one by land and the other by sea, from the Rock itself.
But Tangier in particular it is impossible to pass without a strong desire
to make its acquaintance straightway; so many are the attractions which
draw the traveller to this some-time appanage of the British Crown, this
African _pied à terre_, which but for the insensate feuds and factions of
the Restoration period might be England's to-day. There are few more
enchanting sights than that of the Bay of Tangier as it appears at
sunrise to the traveller whose steamer has dropped down the Straits in
the afternoon and evening hours of the previous day and cast anchor after
nightfall at the nearest point off shore to which a vessel of any draught
can approach. Nowhere in the world does a nook of such sweet tranquillity
receive, and for a season, quiet, the hurrying waters of so restless a
sea. Half a mile or so out towards the center of the Strait, a steamer
from Gibraltar has to plough its way through the surface currents which
speed continually from the Atlantic towards the Pillars of Hercules and
the Mediterranean beyond. Here, under the reddening daybreak, all is calm.
The blue waters of the bay, now softly flushing at the approach of
sunrise, break lazily in mimic waves and "tender curving lines of creamy
spray" upon the shining beach. To the right lies the city, spectral in the
dawn, save where the delicate pale ivory of some of its higher houses is
warming into faintest rose; while over all, over sea and shore and city,
is the immersing crystal atmosphere of Africa, in which every rock, every
ripple, every housetop, stands out as sharp and clear as the filigree work
of winter on a frosted pane.
Nothing in Tangier, it must be honestly admitted, will compare with the
approach to it by its incomparable bay. In another sense, too, there is
nothing here or elsewhere which exactly resembles this "approach," since
its last stage of all has to be performed alike for man and woman--unless
man is prepared to wade knee-deep in the clear blue water--on the back of
a sturdy Moor. Once landed, he will find that the picturesqueness of
Tangier, like that of most Eastern cities, diminishes rather than
increases on a nearer view. A walk through its main street yields nothing
particularly worthy of note, unless it be the minaret of the
Djama-el-Kebir, the principal mosque of the city. The point to which every
visitor to Tangier directs his steps, or has them directed for him, is the
Bab-el-Sok, the gate of the market place, where the scene to be witnessed
at early morning presents an unequaled picture of Oriental life. Crouching
camels with their loads of dates, chaffering traders, chattering women,
sly and servile looking Jews from the city, fierce-eyed, heavily armed
children of the desert, rough-coated horses, and the lank-sided mules,
withered crones squatting in groups by the wayside, tripping damsels
ogling over the _yashmak_ as they pass, and the whole enveloped in a
blinding, bewildering, choking cloud of such dust as only Africa, "_arida
nutrix_," can produce--such dust as would make the pulverulent particles
of the dryest of turnpikes in the hottest of summers, and under the most
parching of east winds, appear by comparison moist and cool, and no more
than pleasingly titillatory of the mouth and nostrils--let the reader
picture to himself such a scene with such accessories, and he will know
what spectacle awaits him at early morning at the Bab-el-Sok of Tangier.
But we must resume our journey eastward towards the famous "Rock." There
at last it is! There "dawns Gibraltar grand and gray," though Mr. Browning
strains poetic license very hard in making it visible even "in the dimmest
north-east distance," to a poet who was at that moment observing how
"sunset ran one glorious blood-red recking into Cadiz Bay." We, at any
rate, are far enough away from Cadiz before it dawns upon us in all its
Titanic majesty of outline; grand, of course, with the grandeur of Nature,
and yet with a certain strange air of human menace as of some piece of
Atlantean ordnance planted and pointed by the hand of man. This
"armamental" appearance of the Rock--a look visible, or at any rate
imaginable in it, long before we have approached it closely enough to
discern its actual fortifications, still less its artillery--is much
enhanced by the dead flatness of the land from which its western wall
arises sheer, and with which by consequence it seems to have no closer
physical connection than has a gun-carriage with the parade ground on
which it stands. As we draw nearer this effect increases in intensity. The
surrounding country seems to sink and recede around it, and the Rock
appears to tower ever higher and higher, and to survey the Strait and the
two continents, divided by it with a more and more formidable frown. As we
approach the port, however, this impression gives place to another, and
the Rock, losing somewhat of its "natural-fortress" air, begins to assume
that resemblance to a couchant lion which has been so often noticed in it.
Yet alas! for the so-called famous "leonine aspect" of the famous height,
or alas! at least for the capricious workings of the human imagination!
For while to the compiler of one well-reputed guidebook, the outlines of
Gibraltar seem "like those of a lion asleep, and whose head, somewhat
truncated, is turned towards Africa as if with a dreamy and steadfast deep
attention;" to another and later observer the lion appears to have "his
kingly head turned towards Spain, as if in defiance of his former master,
every feature having the character of leonine majesty and power!" The
truth is, of course, that the Rock assumes entirely different aspects,
according as it is looked at from different points of view. There is
certainly a point from which Gibraltar may be made, by the exercise of a
little of Polonius's imagination, to resemble some couchant animal with
its head turned towards Africa--though "a head somewhat truncated," is as
odd a phrase as a "body somewhat decapitated"--and contemplating that
continent with what we may fancy, if we choose, to be "dreamy and
steadfast attention." But the resemblance is, at best, but a slender one,
and a far-fetched. The really and strikingly leonine aspect of Gibraltar
is undoubtedly that which it presents to the observer as he is steaming
towards the Rock from the west, but has not yet come into full view of the
slope on which the town is situated. No one can possibly mistake the lion
then. His head is distinctly turned towards Spain, and what is more, he
has a foot stretched out towards the mainland, as though in token of his
mighty grasp upon the soil. Viewed, however, from the neutral ground, this
Protean cliff takes on a new shape altogether, and no one would suppose
that the lines of that sheer precipice, towering up into a jagged
pinnacle, could appear from any quarter to melt into the blunt and massive
curves which mark the head and shoulders of the King of Beasts.
At last, however, we are in the harbor, and are about to land. To land!
How little does that phrase convey to the inexperienced in sea travel, or
to those whose voyages have begun and ended in stepping from a
landing-stage on to a gangway, and from a gangway on to a deck, and
_vice-versâ_! And how much does it mean for him to whom it comes fraught
with recollections of steep descents, of heaving seas, of tossing
cock-boats, perhaps of dripping garments, certainly of swindling boatmen!
There are disembarkations in which you come in for them all; but not at
Gibraltar, at least under normal circumstances. The waters of the port are
placid, and from most of the many fine vessels that touch there you
descend by a ladder, of as agreeable an inclination as an ordinary flight
of stairs. All you have to fear is the insidious bilingual boatman, who,
unless you strictly covenant with him before entering his boat, will have
you at his mercy. It is true that he has a tariff, and that you might
imagine that the offense of exceeding it would be punished in a place like
Gibraltar by immediate court-martial and execution; but the traveller
should not rely upon this. There is a deplorable relaxation of the bonds
of discipline all over the world. Moreover, it is wise to agree with the
boatmen for a certain fixed sum, as a salutary check upon undue
liberality. Most steamers anchor at a considerable distance from the
shore, and on a hot day one might be tempted by false sentiment to give
the boatman an excessive fee.
Your hosts at Gibraltar--"spoiling" as they always are for the sight of
new civilian faces--show themselves determined from the first to make you
at home. Private Thomas Atkins on sentry duty grins broad welcome to you
from the Mole. The official to whom you have to give account of yourself
and your belongings greets you with a pleasant smile, and, while your
French or Spanish fellow-traveller is strictly interrogated as to his
identity, profession, purpose of visit, &c., your English party is passed
easily and promptly in, as men "at home" upon the soil which they are
treading. Fortunate is it, if a little bewildering, for the visitor to
arrive at midday, for before he has made his way from the landing-place to
his hotel he will have seen a sight which has few if any parallels in the
world. Gibraltar has its narrow, quiet, sleepy alleys as have all Southern
towns; and any one who confined himself to strolling through and along
these, and avoiding the main thoroughfare, might never discover the
strangely cosmopolitan character of the place. He must walk up Waterport
Street at midday in order to see what Gibraltar really is--a conflux of
nations, a mart of races, an Exchange for all the multitudinous varieties
of the human product. Europe, Asia, and Africa meet and jostle in this
singular highway. Tall, stately, slow-pacing Moors from the north-west
coast; white-turbaned Turks from the eastern gate of the Mediterranean;
thick-lipped, and woolly-headed negroids from the African interior;
quick-eyed, gesticulating Levantine Greeks; gabardined Jews, and
black-wimpled Jewesses; Spanish smugglers, and Spanish sailors;
"rock-scorpions," and red-coated English soldiers--all these compose,
without completing, the motley moving crowd that throngs the main street
of Gibraltar in the forenoon, and gathers densest of all in the market
near Commercial Square.
It is hardly then as a fortress, but rather as a great entrepôt of
traffic, that Gibraltar first presents itself to the newly-landed visitor.
He is now too close beneath its frowning batteries and dominating walls of
rock to feel their strength and menace so impressive as at a distance; and
the flowing tide of many-colored life around him overpowers the senses and
the imagination alike. He has to seek the outskirts of the town on either
side in order to get the great Rock again, either physically or morally,
into proper focus. And even before he sets out to try its height and
steepness by the ancient, if unscientific, process of climbing it--nay,
before he even proceeds to explore under proper guidance its mighty
elements of military strength--he will discover perhaps that sternness is
not its only feature. Let him stroll round in the direction of the
race-course to the north of the Rock, and across the parade-ground, which
lies between the town and the larger area on which the reviews and
field-day evolutions take place, and he will not complain of Gibraltar as
wanting in the picturesque. The bold cliff, beneath which stands a Spanish
café, descends in broken and irregular, but striking, lines to the plain,
and it is fringed luxuriantly from stair to stair with the vegetation of
the South. Marching and counter-marching under the shadow of this lofty
wall, the soldiers show from a little distance like the tin toys of the
nursery, and one knows not whether to think most of the physical
insignificance of man beside the brute bulk of Nature, or of the moral--or
immoral--power which has enabled him to press into his service even the
vast Rock which stands there beetling and lowering over him, and to turn
the blind giant into a sort of Titanic man-at-arms.
Such reflections as these, however, would probably whet a visitor's desire
to explore the fortifications without delay; and the time for that is not
yet. The town and its buildings have first to be inspected; the life of
the place, both in its military and--such as there is of it--its civil
aspect, must be studied; though this, truth to tell, will not engage even
the minutest observer very long. Gibraltar is not famous for its shops, or
remarkable, indeed, as a place to buy anything, except tobacco, which, as
the Spanish Exchequer knows to its cost (and the Spanish Customs'
officials on the frontier too, it is to be feared, their advantage), is
both cheap and good. Business, however, of all descriptions is fairly
active, as might be expected, when we recollect that the town is pretty
populous for its size, and numbers some 20,000 inhabitants, in addition to
its garrison of from 5,000 to 6,000 men. With all its civil activity,
however, the visitor is scarcely likely to forget--for any length of
time--that he is in a "place of arms." Not to speak of the shocks
communicated to his unaccustomed nerves by morning and evening gun-fire;
not to speak of the thrilling fanfare of the bugles, executed as only the
bugler of a crack English regiment can execute it, and echoed and
re-echoed to and fro, from face to face of the Rock, there is an
indefinable air of stern order, of rigid discipline, of authority whose
word is law, pervading everything. As the day wears on toward the evening
this aspect of things becomes more and more unmistakable; and in the
neighborhood of the gates, towards the hour of gun-fire, you may see
residents hastening in, and non-residents quickening the steps of their
departure, lest the boom of the fatal cannon-clock should confine or
exclude them for the night. After the closing of the gates it is still
permitted for a few hours to perambulate the streets; but at midnight this
privilege also ceases, and no one is allowed out of doors without a
night-pass. On the 31st of December a little extra indulgence is allowed.
One of the military bands will perhaps parade the main thoroughfare
discoursing the sweet strains of "Auld Lang Syne," and the civil
population are allowed to "see the old year out and the new year in." But
a timid and respectful cheer is their sole contribution to the ceremony,
and at about 12.15 they are marched off again to bed: such and so vigilant
are the precautions against treachery within the walls, or surprise from
without. In Gibraltar, undoubtedly, you experience something of the
sensations of men who are living in a state of siege, or of those Knights
of Branksome who ate and drank in armor, and lay down to rest with
corslet laced, and with the buckler for a pillow.
The lions of the town itself, as distinguished from the wonders of its
fortifications, are few in number. The Cathedral, the Garrison Library,
Government House, the Alameda Gardens, the drive to Europa Point exhaust
the list; and there is but one of these which is likely to invite--unless
for some special purpose or other--a repetition of the visit. In the
Alameda, however, a visitor may spend many a pleasant hour, and--if the
peace and beauty of a hillside garden, with the charms of subtropical
vegetation in abundance near at hand, and noble views of coast and sea in
the distance allure him--he assuredly will. Gibraltar is immensely proud
of its promenade, and it has good reason to be so. From the point of view
of Nature and of Art the Alameda is an equal success. General Don, who
planned and laid it out some three-quarters of a century ago,
unquestionably earned a title to the same sort of tribute as was bestowed
upon a famous military predecessor, Marshal Wade. Anyone who had "seen"
the Alameda "before it was made," might well have "lifted up his hands and
blessed" the gallant officer who had converted "the Red Sands," as the
arid desert once occupying this spot was called, into the paradise of
geranium-trees which has taken its place. Its monuments to Elliot and
Wellington are not ideal: the mysterious curse pronounced upon English
statuary appears to follow it even beyond seas; but the execution of the
effigies of these national heroes may, perhaps, be forgotten in the
interest attaching to their subjects. The residents at any rate, whether
civil or military, are inured to these efforts of the sculptor's art, and
have long since ceased to repine. And the afternoon promenade in these
gardens--with the English officers and their wives and daughters, English
nursemaids and their charges, tourists of both sexes and all ages, and the
whole surrounded by a polyglot and polychromatic crowd of Oriental
listeners to the military band--is a sight well worth seeing and not
readily to be forgotten.
But we must pursue our tour round the peninsula of the Rock; and leaving
the new Mole on our right, and farther on the little land-locked basin of
Rosia Bay, we pass the height of Buena Vista, crowned with its barracks,
and so on to the apex of the promontory, Europa Point. Here are more
barracks and, here on Europa Flats, another open and level space for
recreation and military exercises beneath the cliff wall. Doubling the
point, and returning for a short distance along the eastern side of the
promontory, we come to the Governor's Cottage, a cool summer retreat
nestling close to the Rock, and virtually marking the limits of our
exploration. For a little way beyond this the cliff rises inaccessible,
the road ends, and we must retrace our steps. So far as walking or driving
along the flat is concerned, the visitor who has reached the point may
allege, with a certain kind of superficial accuracy, that he has "done
Gibraltar." No wonder that the seasoned globe-trotter from across the
Atlantic thinks nothing of taking Calpe in his stride.
To those, however, who visit Gibraltar in a historic spirit, it is not to
be "done" by any means so speedily as this. Indeed, it would be more
correct to say that the work of a visitor of this order is hardly yet
begun. For he will have come to Gibraltar not mainly to stroll on a sunny
promenade, or to enjoy a shady drive round the seaward slopes of a Spanish
headland, or even to feast his eyes on the glow of Southern color and
the picturesque varieties of Southern life; but to inspect a great
world-fortress, reared almost impregnable by the hand of Nature, and
raised into absolute impregnability by the art of man; a spot made
memorable from the very dawn of the modern period by the rivalries of
nations, and famous for all time by one of the most heroic exploits
recorded in the annals of the human race. To such an one, we say, the name
of Gibraltar stands before and beyond everything for the Rock of the Great
Siege; and he can no more think of it in the light of a Mediterranean
watering-place, with, a romantic, if somewhat limited, sea-front, than he
can think of the farmhouse of La Haye as an "interesting Flemish
homestead," or the Chateau of Hougoumont as a Belgian gentleman's
"eligible country house."
[Illustration]
For him the tour of the renowned fortifications will be the great event of
his visit. Having furnished himself with the necessary authorization from
the proper military authorities (for he will be reminded at every turn of
the strict martial discipline under which he lives), he will proceed to
ascend the Rock, making his first halt at a building which in all
probability he will often before this have gazed upon and wondered at from
below. This is the Moorish Castle, the first object to catch the eye of
the newcomer as he steps ashore at the Mole, and looks up at the houses
that clamber up the western slope of the Rock. Their ascending tiers are
dominated by this battlemented pile, and it is from the level on which it
stands that one enters the famous galleries of Gibraltar. The castle is
one of the oldest Moorish buildings in Spain, the Arabic legend over the
south gate recording it to have been built in 725 by Abu-Abul-Hajez. Its
principal tower, the Torre del Homenaje, is riddled with shot marks, the
scars left behind it by the ever-memorable siege. The galleries, which are
tunneled in tiers along the north front of the Rock, are from two to three
miles in extent. At one extremity they widen out into the spacious crypt
known as the Hall of St. George, in which Nelson was feasted. No arches
support these galleries; they are simply hewn from the solid rock, and
pierced every dozen yards or so by port-holes, through each of which the
black muzzle of a gun looks forth upon the Spanish mainland. They front
the north, these grim watchdogs, and seeing that the plain lies hundreds
of feet beneath them, and with that altitude of sheer rock face between
them and it, they may perhaps be admitted to represent what a witty
Frenchman has called _le luxe et la coquetterie d' imprenable_, or as we
might put it, a "refinement on the impregnable." Artillery in position
implies the possibility of regular siege operations, followed perhaps by
an assault from the quarter which the guns command; but though the Spanish
threw up elaborate works on the neutral ground in the second year of the
great siege, neither then nor at any other time has an assault on the Rock
from its northern side been contemplated. Yet it has once been "surprised"
from its eastern side, which looks almost equally inaccessible; and
farther on in his tour of exploration, the visitor will come upon traces
of that unprecedented and unimitated exploit. After having duly inspected
the galleries, he will ascend to the Signal Tower, known in Spanish days
as El Hacho, or the Torch, the spot at which beacon fires were wont on
occasion to be kindled. It is not quite the highest point of the Rock, but
the view from it is one of the most imposing in the world. To the north
lie the mountains of Ronda, and to the far east the Sierra of the Snows
that looks down on Granada, gleams pale and spectral on the horizon. Far
beneath you lie town and bay, the batteries with their tiny ordnance, and
the harbor with its plaything ships; while farther onward, in the same
line of vision, the African "Pillar of Hercules," Ceuta, looks down upon
the sunlit waters of the Strait.
A little farther on is the true highest point of the Rock, 1,430 feet; and
yet a little farther, after a descent of a few feet, we come upon the
tower known as O'Hara's Folly, from which also the view is magnificent,
and which marks the southernmost point of the ridge. It was built by an
officer of that name as a watch tower, from which to observe the movements
of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, which, even across the cape as the crow
flies, is distant some fifty or sixty miles. The extent, however, of the
outlook which it actually commanded has probably never been tested,
certainly not with modern optical appliances, as it was struck by
lightning soon after its completion. Retracing his steps to the northern
end of the height, the visitor historically interested in Gibraltar will
do well to survey the scene from here once more before descending to
inspect the fortifications of the coast line. Far beneath him, looking
landward, lies the flat sandy part of the isthmus, cut just where its neck
begins to widen by the British lines. Beyond these, again, extends the
zone some half mile in breadth of the neutral ground; while yet farther
inland, the eye lights upon a broken and irregular line of earthworks,
marking the limit, politically speaking, of Spanish soil. These are the
most notable, perhaps the only surviving, relic of the great siege. In the
third year of that desperate leaguer--it was in 1781--the Spaniards
having tried in vain, since June, 1779, to starve out the garrison,
resorted to the idea of bombarding the town into surrender, and threw up
across the neutral ground the great earthworks, of which only these ruins
remain. They had reason, indeed, to resort to extraordinary efforts. Twice
within these twenty-four months had they reduced the town to the most
dreadful straits of hunger, and twice had it been relieved by English
fleets. In January, 1780, when Rodney appeared in the Straits with his
priceless freight of food, the inhabitants were feeding on thistles and
wild onions; the hind quarter of an Algerian sheep was selling for seven
pounds ten, and an English milch cow for fifty guineas. In the spring of
1781, when Admiral Darby relieved them for the second time, the price of
"bad ship's biscuits full of vermin"--says Captain John Drinkwater of the
72nd, an actor in the scenes which he has recorded--was a shilling a
pound; "old dried peas, a shilling and fourpence; salt, half dirt, the
sweepings of ships' bottoms, and storehouses, eightpence; and English
farthing candles, sixpence apiece." These terrible privations having
failed to break the indomitable spirit of the besieged, bombardment had,
before the construction of these lines, been resorted to. Enormous
batteries, mounting 170 guns and 80 mortars, had been planted along the
shore, and had played upon the town, without interruption, for six weeks.
Houses were shattered and set on fire, homeless and half-starved families
were driven for shelter to the southern end of the promontory, where again
they were harried by Spanish ships sailing round Europa Point and firing
indiscriminately on shore. The troops, shelled out of their quarters, were
living in tents on the hillside, save when these also were swept away by
the furious rainstorms of that region. And it was to put, as was hoped,
the finishing stroke to this process of torture, that the great
fortifications which have been spoken of were in course of construction
all through the spring and summer of 1781 on the neutral ground. General
Elliot--that tough old Spartan warrior, whose food was vegetables and
water, and four hours his maximum of continuous sleep, and the contagion
of whose noble example could alone perhaps have given heart enough even to
this sturdy garrison--watched the progress of the works with anxiety, and
had made up his mind before the winter came that they must be assaulted.
Accordingly, at three A. M. on the morning of November 27, 1781, he
sallied forth with a picked band of two thousand men--a pair of regiments
who had fought by his side at Minden two-and-twenty years before--and
having traversed the three-quarters of a mile of intervening country in
swift silence, fell upon the Spanish works. The alarm had been given, but
only just before the assailants reached the object of their attack; and
the affair was practically a surprise. The gunners, demoralized and
panic-stricken, were bayoneted at their posts, the guns were spiked, and
the batteries themselves set on fire with blazing faggots prepared for the
purpose. In an hour the flames had gained such strength as to be
inextinguishable, and General Elliot drew off his forces and retreated to
the town, the last sound to greet their ears as they re-entered the gates
being the roar of the explosion of the enemy's magazines. For four days
the camp continued to burn, and when the fire had exhausted itself for
want of materials, the work of laborious months lay in ruins, and the
results of a vast military outlay were scattered to the winds. It was the
last serious attempt made against the garrison by the Spaniards from the
landward side. The fiercest and most furious struggle of the long siege
was to take place on the shore and waters to the west.
And so after all it is to the "line-wall"--to that formidable bulwark of
masonry and gun-metal which fringes the town of Gibraltar from the Old
Mole to Rosia Bay--that one returns as to the chief attraction from the
historical point of view, of the mighty fortress. For two full miles it
runs, zigzagging along the indented coast, and broken here and there by
water-gate or bastion, famous in military story. Here, as we move
southward from the Old Mole, is the King's Bastion, the most renowned of
all. Next comes Ragged Staff Stairs, so named from the heraldic insignia
of Charles V.; and farther on is Jumper's Battery, situated at what is
held to be the weakest part of the Rock, and which has certainly proved
itself to be so on one ever memorable occasion. For it was at the point
where Jumper's Battery now stands that the first English landing-party set
foot on shore; it was at this point, it may be said, that Gibraltar was
carried. The fortunes of nomenclature are very capricious, and the
name of Jumper--unless, indeed, it were specially selected for its
appropriateness--has hardly a better right to perpetuation in this fashion
than the name of Hicks. For these were the names of the two gallant
officers who were foremost in their pinnaces in the race for the South
Mole, which at that time occupied the spot where the landing was effected;
and we are not aware that history records which was the actual winner. It
was on the 23rd of July, 1704, as all the world knows, that these two
gallant seamen and their boats' crews made their historic leap on shore;
and after all, the accident which had preserved the name of one of them is
not more of what is familiarly called a "fluke" than the project of the
capture itself, and the retention of the great fortress when captured. It
is almost comic to think that when Sir George Rooke sailed from England,
on the voyage from which he returned, figuratively speaking, with the key
of the Mediterranean in his pocket, he had no more notion of attacking
Gibraltar than of discovering the North-West Passage. He simply went to
land England's candidate for the Spanish throne, "King Charles III.," at
Lisbon; which service performed, he received orders from the English
Government to sail to the relief of Nice and Villa Franca, which were
supposed to be in danger from the French, while at the same time he was
pressed by Charles to "look round" at Barcelona, where the people, their
aspirant-sovereign thought, were ready to rise in his favor. Rooke
executed both commissions. That is to say, he ascertained that there was
nothing for him to do in either place--that Barcelona would not rise, and
that Nice was in no danger of falling; and the admiral accordingly dropped
down the Mediterranean towards the Straits--where he was joined by Sir
Cloudesley Shovel with another squadron--with the view of intercepting the
Brest Fleet of France, which he had heard was about to attempt a junction
with that of Toulon. The Brest Fleet, however, he found had already given
him the slip, and thus it came about that on the 17th of July these two
energetic naval officers found themselves about seven leagues to the east
of Tetuan with nothing to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the
attack on Gibraltar was decreed as the distraction of an intolerable
ennui. The stronghold was known to be weakly garrisoned, though, for that
time, strongly armed; it turned out afterwards that it had only a hundred
and fifty gunners to a hundred guns, and it was thought possible to carry
the place by a _coup-de-main_. On the 21st the whole fleet came to anchor
in Gibraltar Bay. Two thousand men under the Prince of Hesse were landed
on what is now the neutral ground, and cut off all communication with the
mainland of Spain. On the 23rd Rear-Admirals Vanderdussen and Byng (the
father of a less fortunate seaman) opened fire upon the batteries, and
after five or six hours' bombardment silenced them, and Captain Whittaker
was thereupon ordered to take all the boats, filled with seamen and
marines, and possess himself of the South Mole Head. Captains Jumper and
Hicks were, as has been said, in the foremost pinnaces, and were the first
to land. A mine exploded under their feet, killing two officers and a
hundred men, but Jumper and Hicks pressed on with their stout followers,
and assaulted and carried a redoubt which lay between the Mole and the
town. Whereupon the Spanish Governor capitulated, the gates on the side of
the isthmus were thrown open to the Prince of Hesse and his troops, and
Gibraltar was theirs. Or rather it was not theirs, except by the title of
the "man in possession." It was the property of his Highness the Archduke
Charles, styled his Majesty King Charles III. of Spain, and had he
succeeded in making good that title in arms, England should, of course,
have had to hand over to him the strongest place in his dominions, at the
end of the war. But she profited by the failure of her protégé. The war of
the Spanish Succession ended in the recognition of Philip V.; and almost
against the will of the nation--for George I. was ready enough to give it
up, and the popular English view of the matter was that it was "a barren
rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge"--Gibraltar remained on
her hands.
Undoubtedly, the King's Bastion is the center of historic military
interest in Gibraltar, but the line-wall should be followed along its
impregnable front to complete one's conception of the sea defenses of the
great fortress. A little farther on is Government House, the quondam
convent, which now forms the official residence of the Governor; and
farther still the landing-place, known as Ragged Staff Stairs. Then
Jumper's Bastion, already mentioned; and then the line of fortification,
running outwards with the coast line towards the New Mole and
landing-place, returns upon itself, and rounding Rosia Bay trends again
southward towards Buena Vista Point. A ring of steel indeed--a coat of
mail on the giant's frame, impenetrable to the projectiles of the most
terrible of the modern Titans of the seas. The casemates for the artillery
are absolutely bomb-proof, the walls of such thickness as to resist the
impact of shots weighing hundreds of pounds, while the mighty arches
overhead are constructed to defy the explosion of the heaviest shells. As
to its offensive armament, the line-wall bristles with guns of the largest
caliber, some mounted on the parapet above, others on the casemates nearer
the sea-level, whence their shot could be discharged with the deadliest
effect at an attacking ship.
He who visits Gibraltar is pretty sure, at least if time permits, to visit
Algeciras and San Roque, while from farther afield still he will be
tempted by Estepona. The first of these places he will be in a hurry,
indeed, if he misses; not that the place itself is very remarkable, as
that it stands so prominently in evidence on the other side of the bay as
almost to challenge a visit. Add to this the natural curiosity of a
visitor to pass over into Spanish territory and to survey Gibraltar from
the landward side, and it will not be surprising that the four-mile trip
across the bay is pretty generally made. On the whole it repays; for
though Algeciras is modern and uninteresting enough, its environs are
picturesque, and the artist will be able to sketch the great rock-fortress
from an entirely new point, and in not the least striking of its aspects.