ROUND THE WORLD ON A MAN-OF-WAR.
The Mediterranean—White, blue, green, purple Waters—Gibraltar—Its
History—Its first Inhabitants the Monkeys—The Moors—The Great
Siege preceded by thirteen others—The Voyage of Sigurd to the Holy
Land—The Third Siege—Starvation—The Fourth Siege—Red-hot balls
used before ordinary Cannon-balls—The Great Plague—Gibraltar
finally in Christian hands—A Naval Action between the Dutch and
Spaniards—How England won the Rock—An Unrewarded Hero—Spain’s
attempts to regain It—The Great Siege—The Rock itself and its
Surroundings—The Straits—Ceuta, Gibraltar’s Rival—The Saltness of
the Mediterranean—“Going aloft”—On to Malta.
In this and following chapters, we will ask the reader to accompany us in
imagination round the world, on board a ship of the Royal Navy, visiting
_en route_ the principal British naval stations and possessions, and a few
of those friendly foreign ports which, as on the Pacific station, stand in
lieu of them. We cannot do better than commence with the Mediterranean, to
which the young sailor will, in all probability, be sent for a cruise
after he has been thoroughly “broken in” to the mysteries of life on board
ship, and where he has an opportunity of visiting many ports of ancient
renown and of great historical interest.
The modern title applied to the sea “between the lands” is not that of the
ancients, nor indeed that of some peoples now. The Greeks had no special
name for it. Herodotus calls it “this sea;” and Strabo the “sea within the
columns,” that is, within Calpe and Abyla—the fabled pillars of
Hercules—to-day represented by Gibraltar and Ceuta. The Romans called it
variously _Mare Internum_ and _Mare Nostrum_, while the Arabians termed it
_Bahr Rüm_—the Roman Sea. The modern Greeks call it _Aspri Thalassa_—the
White Sea; it might as appropriately be called blue, that being its
general colour, or green, as in the Adriatic, or purple, as at its eastern
end: but they use it to distinguish it from the “Sea of Storms”—the Black
Sea. The Straits—“the Gate of the Narrow Passage,” as the Arabians
poetically describe it, or the _Gut_, as it is termed by our prosaic
sailors and pilots—is the narrow portal to a great inland sea with an area
of 800,000 miles, whose shores are as varied in character as are the
peoples who own them. The Mediterranean is salter than the ocean, in spite
of the great rivers which enter it—the Rhone, Po, Ebro, and Nile—and the
innumerable smaller streams and torrents.(68) It has other physical and
special characteristics, to be hereafter considered.
The political and social events which have been mingled with its history
are interwoven with those of almost every people on the face of the globe.
We shall see how much our own has been shaped and involved. It was with
the memory of the glorious deeds of British seamen and soldiers that
Browning wrote, when sailing through the Straits:—
“Nobly, nobly, Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish, ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray;
‘Here, and here, did England help me—how can I help England?’—say
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turns to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.”
And the poet is almost literally correct in his description, for within
sight, as we enter the Straits of Gibraltar, are the localities of
innumerable sea and land fights dating from earliest days. That grand old
Rock, what has it not witnessed since the first timid mariner crept out of
the Mediterranean into the Atlantic—the _Mare Tenebrosum_,—the “sea of
darkness” of the ancients? Romans of old fought Carthaginian galleys in
its bay; the conquering Moors held it uninterruptedly for six hundred
years, and in all for over seven centuries; Spain owned it close on two
and a half centuries; and England has dared the world to take it since
1704—one hundred and seventy-three years ago. Its very armorial bearings,
which we have adopted from those given by Henry of Castile and Leon, are
suggestive of its position and value: a castle on a rock with a key
pendant—the key to the Mediterranean. The King of Spain still includes
Calpe (Gibraltar) in his dominions; and natives of the place, Ford tells
us, in his “Handbook to Spain,” are entitled to the rights and privileges
of Spanish birth. It has, in days gone by, given great offence to French
writers, who spoke of _l’ombrageuse puissance_ with displeasure.
“Sometimes,” says Ford, “there is too great a _luxe de canons_ in this
fortress _ornée_; then the gardens destroy ‘wild nature;’ in short, they
abuse the red-jackets, guns, nursery-maids, and even the monkeys.” The
present colony of apes are the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants
of the Rock. They have held it through all vicissitudes.
The Moorish writers were ever enthusiastic over it. With them it was “the
Shining Mountain,” “the Mountain of Victory.” “The Mountain of Taric”(69)
(Gibraltar), says a Granadian poet, “is like a beacon spreading its rays
over the sea, and rising far above the neighbouring mountains; one might
fancy that its face almost reaches the sky, and that its eyes are watching
the stars in the celestial track.” An Arabian writer well describes its
position:—“The waters surround Gibraltar on almost every side, so as to
make it look like a watch-tower in the midst of the sea.”
The fame of the last great siege, already briefly described in these
pages,(70) has so completely overshadowed the general history of the Rock
that it will surprise many to learn that it has undergone no less than
fourteen sieges. The Moors, after successfully invading Spain, first
fortified it in 711, and held uninterrupted possession until 1309, when
Ferdinand IV. besieged and took it. The Spaniards only held it twenty-five
years, when it reverted to the Moors, who kept it till 1462. “Thus the
Moors held it in all about seven centuries and a quarter, from the making
a castle on the Rock to the last sorrowful departure of the remnants of
the nation. It has been said that Gibraltar was the landing-place of the
vigorous Moorish race, and that it was the point of departure on which
their footsteps lingered last. In short, it was the European _tête de
pont_, of which Ceuta stands as the African fellow. By these means myriads
of Moslems passed into Spain, and with them much for which the Spaniards
are wrongfully unthankful. It is said that when the Moors left their
houses in Granada, which they did with, so to speak, everything standing,
many families took with them the great wooden keys of their mansions, so
confident were they of returning home again, when the keys should open the
locks and the houses be joyful anew. It was not to be as thus longed for;
but many families in Barbary still keep the keys of these long ago
deserted and destroyed mansions.”(71) And now we must mention an incident
of its history, recorded in the “Norwegian Chronicles of the Kings,”
concerning Sigurd the Crusader—the Pilgrim. After battling his way from
the North, with sixty “long ships,” King Sigurd proceeded on his voyage to
the Holy Land, “and came to Niörfa Sound (Gibraltar Straits), and in the
Sound he was met by a large viking force (squadron of war-ships), and the
King gave them battle; and this was his fifth engagement with heathens
since the time he came from Norway. So says Halldor Skualldre:—
“‘He moistened your dry swords with blood,
As through Niörfa Sound ye stood;
The screaming raven got a feast,
As ye sailed onwards to the East.’
Hence he went along Sarkland, or Saracen’s Land, Mauritania, where he
attacked a strong party, who had their fortress in a cave, with a wall
before it, in the face of a precipice: a place which was difficult to come
at, and where the holders, who are said to have been freebooters, defied
and ridiculed the Northmen, spreading their valuables on the top of the
wall in their sight. Sigurd was equal to the occasion in craft as in
force, for he had his ships’ boats drawn up the hill, filled them with
archers and slingers, and lowered them before the mouth of the cavern, so
that they were able to keep back the defenders long enough to allow the
main body of the Northmen to ascend from the foot of the cliff and break
down the wall. This done, Sigurd caused large trees to be brought to the
mouth of the cave, and roasted the miserable wretches within.” Further
fights, and he at last reached Jerusalem, where he was honourably received
by Baldwin, whom he assisted with his ships at the siege of Sidon. Sigurd
also visited Constantinople, where the Emperor Alexius offered him his
choice: either to receive six skif-pound (or about a _ton_ of gold), or
see the great games of the hippodrome. The Northman wisely chose the
latter, the cost of which was said to be equal to the value of the gold
offered. Sigurd presented his ships to the Emperor, and their splendid
prows were hung up in the church of St. Peter, at Constantinople.
[Illustration: GIBRALTAR: THE NEUTRAL GROUND.]
In the year 1319, Pedro, Infante of Castile, fought the Moors at Granada.
The latter were the victors, and their spoils were enormous, consisting in
part of forty-three hundredweights of gold, one hundred and forty
hundredweights of silver, with armour, arms, and horses in abundance.
Fifty thousand Castilians were slain, and among the captives were the wife
and children of the Infante. Gibraltar, then in the hands of Spain, with
Tarifa and eighteen castles of the district, were offered, and refused for
her ransom. The body of the Infante himself was stripped of its skin, and
stuffed and hung over the gate of Granada.
The third siege occurred in the reign of Mohammed IV., when the Spanish
held the Rock. The governor at that time, Vasco Perez de Meira, was an
avaricious and dishonest man, who embezzled the dues and other resources
of the place and neglected his charge. During the siege, a grain-ship fell
on shore,(72) and its cargo would have enabled him to hold out a long
time. Instead of feeding his soldiers, who were reduced to eating leather,
he gave and sold it to his prisoners, with the expectation of either
getting heavy ransoms for them, or, if he should have to surrender, of
making better terms for himself. It availed him nothing, for he had to
capitulate; and then, not daring to face his sovereign, Alfonso XI., he
had to flee to Africa, where he ended his days.
Alfonso besieged it twice. The first time the Granadians induced him to
abandon it, promising a heavy ransom; the next time he commenced by
reducing the neighbouring town of Algeciras, which was defended with great
energy. When the Spaniards brought forward their wheeled towers of wood,
covered with raw hides, the Moors discharged cannon loaded with _red-hot_
balls. This is noteworthy, for cannon was not used by the English till
three years after, at the battle of Creçy, while it is the first recorded
instance of _red-hot_ shot being used at all.(73) It is further deserving
of notice, that the very means employed at Algeciras were afterwards so
successfully used at the great siege. After taking Algeciras, Alfonso
blockaded Gibraltar, when the plague broke out in his camp; he died from
it, and the Rock remained untaken. This was the epoch of one of those
great pestilences which ravaged Europe. Fifty thousand souls perished in
London in 1348 from its effects; Florence lost two-thirds of her
population; in Saragossa three hundred died daily. The sixth attack on the
part of the King of Fez was unsuccessful; as was that in 1436, when it was
besieged by a wealthy noble—one of the De Gusmans. His forces were allowed
to land in numbers on a narrow beach below the fortress, where they were
soon exposed to the rising of the tide and the missiles of the besieged.
De Gusman was drowned, and his body, picked up by the Moors, hung out for
twenty-six years from the battlements, as a warning to ambitious nobles.
At the eighth siege, in 1462, Gibraltar passed finally into Christian
hands. The garrison was weak and the Spaniards gained an easy victory.
When Henry IV. learned of its capture, he rejoiced greatly, and took
immediate care to proclaim it a fief of the throne, adding to the royal
titles that of Lord of Gibraltar. The armorial distinctions still borne by
Gibraltar were first granted by him. The ninth siege, on the part of a De
Gusman, was successful, and it for a time passed into the hands of a noble
who had vast possessions and fisheries in the neighbourhood. Strange to
say, such were the troubles of Spain at the time, that Henry the
before-named, who was known as “the Weak,” two years after confirmed the
title to the Rock to the son of the very man who had been constantly in
arms against him. But after the civil wars, and at the advent of Ferdinand
and Isabella, there was a decided change. Isabella, acting doubtless under
the advice of her astute husband, whose entire policy was opposed to such
aggrandisement on the part of a subject, tried to induce the duke to
surrender it, offering in exchange the City of Utrera. Ayala(74) tells us
that he utterly refused. His great estates were protected by it, and he
made it a kind of central depôt for his profitable tunny fisheries. He
died in 1492, and the third duke applied to Isabella for a renewal of his
grant and privileges. She promised all, but insisted that the Rock and
fortress must revert to the Crown. But it was not till nine years
afterwards that Isabella succeeded in compelling or inducing the Duke to
surrender it formally. Dying in 1504, the queen testified her wishes as
follows:—“It is my will and desire, insomuch as the city of Gibraltar has
been surrendered to the Royal Crown, and been inserted among its titles,
that it shall for ever so remain.” Two years after her death, Juan de
Gusman tried to retake it, and blockaded it for four months, at the end of
which time he abandoned the siege, and had to make reparation to those
whose property had been injured. This is the only bloodless one among the
fourteen sieges.
In 1540 a dash was made at the town, and even at a part of the fortress,
by Corsairs. They plundered the neighbourhood, burned a chapel and
hermitage, and dictated terms in the most high-handed way—that all the
Turkish prisoners should be released, and that their galleys should be
allowed to take water at the Gibraltar wells. They were afterwards
severely chastised by a Spanish fleet.
In the wars between the Dutch and Spaniards a naval action occurred, in
the year 1607, in the port of Gibraltar, which can hardly be omitted in
its history. The great Sully has described it graphically when speaking of
the efforts of the Dutch to secure the alliance of his master, Henry IV.
of France, in their wars against Philip of Spain. He says: “Alvares
d’Avila, the Spanish admiral, was ordered to cruise near the Straits of
Gibraltar, to hinder the Dutch from entering the Mediterranean, and to
deprive them of the trade of the Adriatic. The Dutch, to whom this was a
most sensible mortification, gave the command of ten or twelve vessels to
one of their ablest seamen, named Heemskerk, with the title of
vice-admiral, and ordered him to go and reconnoitre this fleet, and attack
it. D’Avila, though nearly twice as strong as his enemy, yet provided a
reinforcement of twenty-six great ships, some of which were of a thousand
tons burden, and augmented the number of his troops to three thousand five
hundred men. With this accession of strength he thought himself so secure
of victory that he brought a hundred and fifty gentlemen along with him
only to be witnesses of it. However, instead of standing out to sea, as he
ought to have done, he posted himself under the town and castle of
Gibraltar, that he might not be obliged to fight but when he thought
proper.
“Heemskerk, who had taken none of these precautions, no sooner perceived
that his enemy seemed to fear him than he advanced to attack him, and
immediately began the most furious battle that was ever fought in the
memory of man. It lasted eight whole hours. The Dutch vice-admiral, at the
beginning, attacked the vessel in which the Spanish admiral was, grappled
with, and was ready to board her. A cannon-ball, which wounded him in the
thigh soon after the fight began, left him only a hour’s life, during
which, and till within a moment of his death, he continued to give orders
as if he felt no pain. When he found himself ready to expire, he delivered
his sword to his lieutenant, obliging him and all that were with him to
bind themselves by an oath either to conquer or die. The lieutenant caused
the same oath to be taken by the people of all the other vessels, when
nothing was heard but a general cry of ‘Victory or Death!’ At length the
Dutch were victorious; they lost only two vessels, and about two hundred
and fifty men; the Spaniards lost sixteen ships, three were consumed by
fire, and the others, among which was the admiral’s ship, ran aground.
D’Avila, with thirty-five captains, fifty of his volunteers, and two
thousand eight hundred soldiers, lost their lives in the fight; a
memorable action, which was not only the source of tears and affliction to
many widows and private persons, but filled all Spain with horror.”(75)
[Illustration: MOORISH TOWER AT GIBRALTAR.]
England won Gibraltar during the War of the Succession, when she was
allied with Austria and Holland against Spain and France. The war had
dragged on with varied results till 1704, when it was determined to attack
Spain at home with the aid of the Portuguese. The commanders of the allied
fleets and troops—_i.e._, the Landgrave George of Hesse-Darmstadt, Sir
George Rooke, Admiral Byng, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Admiral Leake, and the
three Dutch admirals—determined to attack Gibraltar, believed to be weak
in forces and stores. On the 21st of July, 1704, the fleet, which
consisted of forty-five ships, six frigates, besides fire and bomb-ships,
came to an anchor off the Rock, and landed 5,000 men, so as to at once cut
off the supplies of the garrison. The commanders of the allied forces
sent, on the morning after their arrival, a demand for the surrender of
Gibraltar to the Archduke Charles, whose claims as rightful King of Spain
they were supporting. The little garrison(76) answered valiantly; and had
their brave governor, the Marquis Diego de Salinas, been properly backed,
the fortress might have been Spain’s to-day. The opening of the contest
was signalised by the burning of a French privateer, followed by a furious
cannonading: the new and old moles were speedily silenced, and large
numbers of marines landed. The contest was quite unequal, and the besieged
soon offered to capitulate with the honours of war, the right of retaining
their property, and six days’ provisions. The garrison had three days
allowed for its departure, and those, as well as the inhabitants of the
Rock, who chose, might remain, with full civil and religious rights. Thus,
in three days’ time the famous fortress fell into the hands of the allies,
and possession was taken in the name of Charles III. Sir George Rooke,
however, over-rode this, and pulled down the standard of Charles, setting
up in its stead that of England. A garrison of 1,800 English seamen was
landed. The English were, alone of the parties then present, competent to
hold it; and at the Peace of Utrecht, 1711, it was formally ceded
“absolutely, with all manner of right for ever, without exemption or
impediment,” to Great Britain.
The Spaniards departed from the fortress they had valiantly defended, the
majority remaining at St. Roque. “Like some of the Moors whom they had
dispossessed, their descendants are said to preserve until this day the
records and family documents which form the bases of claims upon property
on that Rock, which, for more than a century and a half, has known other
masters.”
Rooke went absolutely unrewarded. He was persistently ignored by the
Government of the day, and being a man of moderate fortune, consulted his
own dignity, and retired to his country seat. The same year, 1704, the
Spanish again attempted, with the aid of France, to take Gibraltar.
England had only three months to strengthen and repair the fortifications,
and the force brought against the Rock was by no means contemptible,
including as it did a fleet of two-and-twenty French men-of-war. Succour
arrived; Sir John Leake succeeded in driving four of the enemy’s ships
ashore. An attempt to escalade the fortress was made, under the guidance
of a native goat-herd. He, with a company of men, succeeded in reaching
the signal station, where a hard fight occurred, and our troops killed or
disabled 160 men, and took the remnant prisoners. Two sallies were made
from the Rock with great effect, while an attempt made by the enemy to
enter through a narrow breach resulted in a sacrifice of 200 lives. A
French fleet, under Pointé, arrived; the English admiral captured three
and destroyed one of them—that of Pointé himself. To make a six months’
story short, the assailants lost 10,000 men, and then had to raise the
siege. Although on several occasions our rulers have since the Peace of
Utrecht proposed to cede or exchange the fortress, the spirit of the
people would not permit it; and there can be no doubt whatever that our
right to Gibraltar is not merely that of possession—nine points of the
law—but cession wrung from a people unable to hold it. And that, in war,
is fair.
Twenty years later Spain again attempted to wring it from us. Mr.
Stanhope, then our representative at Madrid, was told by Queen Isabella:
“Either relinquish Gibraltar or your trade with the Indies.” We still hold
Gibraltar, and our trade with the Indies is generally regarded as a
tolerably good one. In December, 1726, peace or war was made the
alternative regarding the cession; another bombardment followed. An
officer(77) present said that it was so severe that “we seemed to live in
flames.” Negotiations for peace followed at no great distance of time, and
the Spaniards suddenly drew off from the attack. Various offers, never
consummated, were made for an exchange. Pitt proposed to cede it in
exchange for Minorca, Spain to assist in recovering it from the French. At
another time, Oran, a third-class port on the Mediterranean shores of
Africa, was offered in exchange; and Mr. Fitzherbert, our diplomatist, was
told that the King of Spain was “determined never to put a period to the
present war” if we did not agree to the terms; and again, that Oran “ought
to be accepted with gratitude.” The tone of Spain altered very
considerably a short time afterwards, when the news arrived of the
destruction of the floating batteries, and the failure of the grand
attack.(78) This was at the last—the great siege of history. A few
additional details may be permitted before we pass to other subjects.
The actual siege occupied three years and seven months, and for one year
and nine months the bombardment went on without cessation. The actual
losses on the part of the enemy can hardly be estimated; 1,473 were
killed, wounded, or missing on the floating batteries alone. But for brave
Curtis, who took a pinnace to the rescue of the poor wretches on the
batteries, then in flames, and the ammunition of which was exploding every
minute, more than 350 fresh victims must have gone to their last account.
His boat was engulfed amid the falling ruins; a large piece of timber fell
through its flooring, killing the coxswain and wounding others. The
sailors stuffed their jackets into the leak, and succeeded in saving the
lives of 357 of their late enemies. For many days consecutively they had
been peppering us at the rate of 6,500 shots, and over 2,000 shells each
twenty-four hours. With the destruction of the floating batteries “the
siege was virtually concluded. The contest was at an end, and the united
strength of two ambitious and powerful nations had been humbled by a
straitened garrison of 6,000 effective men.”(79) Our losses were
comparatively small, though thrice the troops were on the verge of famine.
At the period of the great siege the Rock mounted only 100 guns; now it
has 1,000, many of them of great calibre. In France, victory for the
allies was regarded as such a foregone conclusion that “a drama,
illustrative of the destruction of Gibraltar by the floating batteries,
was acted nightly to applauding thousands!”(80) The siege has, we believe,
been a favourite subject at the minor English theatres many a time since;
but it need not be stated that the views taken of the result were widely
different to those popular at that time in Paris.
Gibraltar has had an eventful history even since the great siege. In 1804
a terrible epidemic swept the Rock; 5,733 out of a population of 15,000
died in a few weeks. The climate is warm and pleasant, but it is not
considered the most healthy of localities even now. And on the 28th of
October, 1805, the _Victory_, in tow of the _Neptune_, entered the bay,
with the body of Nelson on board. The fatal shot had done its work; only
eleven days before he had written to General Fox one of his happy,
pleasant letters.
The Rock itself is a compact limestone, a form of grey dense marble varied
by beds of red sandstone. It abounds in caves and fissures, and advantage
has been taken of these facts to bore galleries, the most celebrated of
which are St. Michael’s and Martin’s, the former 1,100 feet above the sea.
Tradition makes it a barren rock; but the botanists tell us differently.
There are 456 species of indigenous flowering plants, besides many which
have been introduced. The advantages of its natural position have been
everywhere utilised. It bristles with batteries, many of which can hardly
be seen. Captain Sayer tells us that every spot where a gun could be
brought to bear on an enemy has one. “Wandering,” says he, “through the
geranium-edged paths on the hill-side, or clambering up the rugged cliffs
to the eastward, one stumbles unexpectedly upon a gun of the heaviest
metal lodged in a secluded nook, with its ammunition, round shot,
canister, and case piled around it, ready at any instant.... The shrubs
and flowers that grow on the cultivated places, and are preserved from
injury with so much solicitude, are often but the masks of guns, which lie
crouched beneath the leaves ready for the port-fire.” Everywhere, all
stands ready for defence. War and peace are strangely mingled.
Gibraltar has one of the finest colonial libraries in the world, founded
by the celebrated Colonel Drinkwater, whose account of the great siege is
still the standard authority. The town possesses some advantages; but as
15,000 souls out of a population of about double that number are crowded
into one square mile, it is not altogether a healthy place—albeit much
improved of late years. Rents are exorbitant; but ordinary living and bad
liquors are cheap. It is by no means the best place in the world for “Jack
ashore,” for, as Shakespeare tells us, “sailors” are “but men,” and there
be “land rats and water rats,” who live on their weaknesses. The town has
a very mongrel population, of all shades of colour and character. Alas!
the monkeys, who were the first inhabitants of the Rock—tailless Barbary
apes—are now becoming scarce. Many a poor Jocko has fallen from the
enemy’s shot, killed in battles which he, at least, never provoked.
The scenery of the Straits, which we are now about to enter, is fresh and
pleasant, and as we commenced with an extract from one well-known poet, we
may be allowed to finish with that of another, which, if more hackneyed,
is still expressive and beautiful. Byron’s well-known lines will recur to
many of our readers:—
“Through Calpe’s Straits survey the steepy shore;
Europe and Afric on each other gaze!
Lands of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor
Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate’s blaze;
How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
Distinct though darkening with her waning phase.”
In the distance gleams Mons Abyla—the Apes’ Hill of sailors—a term which
could have been, for a very long time, as appropriately given to
Gibraltar. It is the other sentinel of the Straits; while Ceuta, the
strong fortress built on its flanks, is held by Spain on Moorish soil,
just as we hold the Rock of Rocks on theirs. Its name is probably a
corruption of _Septem_—Seven—from the number of hills on which it is
built. It is to-day a military prison, there usually being here two or
three thousand convicts, while both convicts and fortress are guarded by a
strong garrison of 3,500 soldiers. These in their turn were, only a few
years ago, guarded by the jealous Moors, who shot both guards and
prisoners if they dared to emerge in the neighbourhood. There is, besides,
a town, as at Gibraltar, with over 15,000 inhabitants, and at the present
day holiday excursions are commonly made across the Straits in strong
little steamers or other craft. The tide runs into the Straits from the
Atlantic at the rate of four or more knots per hour, and yet all this
water, with that of the innumerable streams and rivers which fall into the
Mediterranean, scarcely suffice to raise a perceptible tide! What becomes
of all this water? Is there a hole in the earth through which it runs off?
Hardly: evaporation is probably the true secret of its disappearance: and
that this is the reason is proved by the greater saltness of the
Mediterranean as compared with the Atlantic.
In sailor’s parlance, “going aloft” has a number of meanings. He climbs
the slippery shrouds to “go aloft;” and when at last, like poor Tom
Bowling, he lies a “sheer hulk,” and—
“His body’s under hatches,
His soul has ‘_gone aloft_.’”
“Going-aloft” in the Mediterranean has a very different meaning: it
signifies passing upwards and eastwards from the Straits of Gibraltar.(81)
We are now going aloft to Malta, a British possession hardly second to
that of the famed Rock itself.
[Illustration: MALTA.]