ALGECIRAS--TARIFA.
Towards the end of August I determined to profit by the last of the
fine weather, and to take a cruise in and about the Straits, shaping my
course by the will of the winds. Police and quarantine regulations are
in this neighbourhood perplexing; so I first sailed to Algeciras to get
letters of introduction, and such papers as would admit me at Ceuta,
and the other Spanish Presidios on the African coast.
The governor anticipated my request; the letters were folded, and the
address put, in the Turkish fashion, _across_. The Spaniards use this
form for official letters only; it is of course a remnant of the Moors.
I observed also at Algeciras, that a black cord tied to a walking
stick, is the mark of judicial authority, whether civil or military,
and is said to be a practice of the Goths.
As we were landing, the cargo of a smuggler, just brought in, was being
conveyed on men’s shoulders to the royal stores. In coming across, we
were enlivened with the chase of a little punt, by two scampanas. The
_Terrible_, celebrated as a smuggler, and subsequently as a catcher of
smugglers, lay at anchor beside us. Other vessels have been constructed
on her lines, but none have equalled her speed. The rig of the
smuggling boats is one large lateen-sail, the mast stayed forward, a
long bowsprit, carrying a jib of like proportions, and a lateen jigger.
Three sails thus compose the suit: they have nearly an upright stem, a
round stern, and spread well out upon the water. The _Terrible_, as a
smuggler, could have ‘run’ in one night goods to the value of £20,000.
We walked in very pretty gardens of a social kind--at once public and
private; they are laid out in stars, the paths diverging from centres.
The gardens are separated from the path by a small ditch and a low
hedge, enough to keep out an intruder, but not to intercept the view;
so that each person has the profit of his own grounds, and the sight of
all the others.
After our walk, I was conducted to his house by the Fiscal, and we
discussed ancient usages. He almost repeated Sir Francis Palgrave’s
words in speaking of liberty, that the purpose of government is only to
obtain adjudication. He laughed at the use of Greek words in politics,
&c. I happened to refer to the address to Charles V. of the Cortes of
Arragon, when they said, “How shall the king have strength to carry on
war, unless the nation has examined into its causes, and found it to
be expedient and just?” He expressed his astonishment at hearing such
a maxim quoted by an Englishman. “For two hundred years,” said he,
“Spain has injured no one, and has been unceasingly injured by England
and France, without benefit to themselves.” On parting, he made me a
present of Cornejo’s “Law Dictionary,” a rare work.
The following morning, accompanied by Mr. D. and Mr. B., I paid a visit
to the general, who bore the old Iberian name of Lara; when a very
interesting conversation took place. He was much excited by a reference
to some discussions with the Governor of Gibraltar, about rebuilding
the forts of St. Barbara and St. Philip, and took occasion to expatiate
on the mistake of the English on the subject of Gibraltar. “By it,” he
said, “you may irritate Spain, but you cannot injure her or benefit
yourselves. You mistake these Straits for the Dardanelles: there is no
padlock on the Mediterranean. Tarifa would command the Straits if they
could be commanded: you blow up and abandon Tangier which, being to
windward, might have served you, and hold Gibraltar, which can never
serve you in any way, unless indeed your object be to convulse Spain,
and fill her with hatred of the English name.” The gentlemen present
dwelt much on the dishonourable nature of the capture of the place, and
on the injury they suffered by our retention of it, and the use we made
of it. One of them said it would be worth their while to give Cuba in
exchange. They were surprised and delighted at hearing my opinion; but
the note was changed when I referred to Ceuta.
Though I had been at Algeciras on several occasions, I now, for the
first time, visited the walls. I commenced on the southern side, and
I could trace them around the crest of a low flat hill. The towers are
close to each other, and about twenty feet square, of solid Moorish
_tapia_. To the north they are more remarkable. A large tower projects
into the sea, and is still forty feet in height. I had to scramble
over solid pieces of masonry, lying about like fragments of dislocated
strata! It is not the carefully-chiselled and mathematically-adjusted
blocks of the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, or Roman architecture. The
materials of these walls, not their building, is the marvel. One mass,
twelve feet thick, twenty-five feet high, and thirty long, has fallen
fifty feet, without breaking. While examining these masses, I observed
in the water large globes, and thought at first they were urns, but
on closer inspection they proved to be _shot_, and I found one twenty
inches in diameter, and weighing about seven hundred pounds. The
governor was kind enough to permit me to have it carried away--indeed,
he offered me one still larger from the store in the artillery-ground.
These, it is true, might have been intended for the catapulta; but
gunpowder was unquestionably known at the time to the Mussulmans.
Algeciras was rased immediately on its capture, and has never been
restored. That event preceded, by two years, the battle of Cressy,
which England gained partly by her first use of gunpowder. Was this
art, then, learned at Algeciras? There were English auxiliaries in the
ranks of the besiegers.
Looking on these remains, I tried to put myself in the place of our
forefathers beleaguering this fortress, when, for the first time, they
saw, heard, and felt this terrestrial lightning. It was not Neptune
with his trident upturning the walls, but Jupiter with his bolts
defending them. Algeciras, Troy-like, is memorable by its destruction.
The Princes of Christendom and of Islam assembled from far and near
to its siege. During this operation, the Spaniards so suffered from
Gibraltar, then in the hands of the Moors, that Alonzo the Great,
during whose minority it had been lost, vowed that he would retake it.
After great and vain efforts, he ended his days in the camp before it.
To raise money for the siege, excises were first invented. The French
word _Gabelle_, and _Gabella_ the Italian, come from the Spanish _Al
Cabala_, which is from the Arabic.[37] This Bay is thus remarkable as
the birthplace of two inventions, which have changed in modern times
the features of war and the characters of peace. The other to which I
refer is at Cressy, two centuries before that.[38]
The Chinese, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, used not
merely gunpowder, but bombs, against the Moguls. Nothing can be more
clear than the description of the latter in the Turkish writers quoted
by D’Ohsson in his history of the Mogul conquests. From China and the
Tartars, the discovery might have passed, as paper did, to the Arabs.
The link was established between Pekin and the Amoor, the Amoor and the
Oxus, the Oxus and Bagdad, Bagdad and Cordova. But indisputably the
Saracens were working their way towards the discovery--the granulation
of that composition, which was all that Friar Bacon, the pupil of the
Moors, wanted to convert his crackers and squibs into cartridges.[39]
It is but natural that they should have possessed gunpowder before we
did, for they anticipated us in guns. Artillery, at its very origin,
attained in their hands perfection. Discoveries and practice only
conduct us back to the kinds of ordnance at which they arrived _per
saltum_ and at once. Murat II. at the siege of Leodra, cast guns
which carried ball of fourteen hundred weight. Such Titanic engines
may still be seen at the Dardanelles, and Baron de Tott consulted
respecting their use. At the battle of Chesme, in 1790, the Russian
Admiral fell aboard the Turkish Admiral and drove in his guns. While
the vessels were thus foul and grappling, the Turk discharged _one
shot_ from inboard; it broke through the Russian on the opposite side.
She immediately filled and sank, but locked in her deadly grasp, her
antagonist sank with her. They now lie side by side “full fathom
five.” At that time, the armament of our heaviest vessels consisted of
twenty-four pounders, and of course a “First Lord” would have scoffed
at the idea of a sixty-eight or eighty-four pounder afloat.
I am afraid I should never get on if I entered on the subject of
fortification; but I may say in two words, that the structures of
the Moors, so long in advance of artillery, have borne unscathed its
brunt. At the Gibelfar of Malaga, Tarifa, Alcala, &c., are to be
found rudiments of advanced works, of glacis and counterscarp, with
a regular system of flanking walls. At Estepona, I observed angular
fortification, the link between the old system and the new. There are
walls for the purpose of resisting artillery, twenty-five feet high and
as many thick, on which the guns must have been mounted _en barbette_.
Their Spanish pupils anticipated Vauban.[40]
This region has been fertile in destructive inventions. Gunpowder was
first used for mining by the Spaniards at Baza, about 1480, superseding
the old practice detailed in Timour’s Memoirs, which was, to set fire
to the beams which supported the roof of the mine after it had been
carried under the walls.[41]
It was in the Straits of Gibraltar, before Ceuta, that artillery was
first introduced afloat, in 1518, by Don Gonzalo Zarto, in the service
of Don John of Portugal.
It was at the last siege of Gibraltar that shells were thrown
horizontally, and that red-hot shot were first used. But antiquity also
furnishes her share of discoveries. It is not travelling too far to set
down as belonging to the same list, the sling of the Balearic Islands,
and the leaden bullets which, as Ælian tells us, the Romans obtained
from Morocco. The battering-ram was first used at Cadiz, during the
short struggle between the Phœnician colonists and their unnatural
brothers of Carthage.[42] The Iberian sword borrowed by Rome, may also
be recorded in presence of the first Roman colony--Carteia.
We were under weigh at daylight with a light wind; but were baffled
all day by the currents. There was no room to complain of detention
with such a panorama--so many monuments of man to recall, and such a
phenomenon of Nature as the currents to pry into. Close on the right
were the brows and bays of Andalusia bearing strange-looking towers. On
the left the bold and beautiful mountains of Abyla. Behind, the rock
of Gibraltar presents itself as a point isolated from the land, and in
the middle of the Mediterranean. Before us opened the ocean, from which
rushed in the never-tiring stream. In the bay which we had quitted
stood Carteia, founded and peopled by the inhabitants of the coast of
Palestine. On the African shore, opposite its rival in antiquity, if
not in splendour, Ceuta. On the western coast of the African strait,
the Bay of Tingis, the country of Danaus and Antæus, and round the
European shore, opposed to it, Gadera, and the enchanted island of
Circe. On the one side the gardens of Hesperus, on the other the fields
of Hades, and between, the road to the Cassiterides. I saw before me
the worshipper landing to visit the sacred groves of Calpe, and then
threading his way through the then narrow passages of the channel,
I could read in his thoughts and catch from his tongue the names of
Atlas and of Hercules, as he saluted the one and invoked the other.
Not Greece alone, nor Phœnicia, nor Egypt; not the known only, or the
imagined, but all these together, seemed to converge to this passage
and to settle on this spot. The great shades of the past wandered among
the clouds, and the memory of every people floated upon the bosom of
the stream. Had that forehead of Africa been adorned with its ancient
clusters of the vine; had it borne hamlets, villages, and towns; had
the ploughman and the herdsman been there, I might have admired the
richness of the landscape, but should not have known its power.
I landed on Pigeon’s Island to fish, but was soon lost in the problem,
what becomes of the water which pours in? But I have already bestowed
upon the reader my thoughts on this subject. Suddenly the wind veered
round to the north-east, so we were immediately on board, and dashing
away for Ceuta; but the wind dropping as suddenly, we again made for
the European coast, and, aided by the tide, about midnight reached the
rocky island of Tarifa, which projects into the Straits at nearly the
narrowest part, and is joined by a causeway to the land. Scarcely had
we come to an anchor under the rock, when it began to blow heavily from
the east, the current running strongly from the west. We were entirely
sheltered from both, but not from the roll of the sea; yet in the midst
of this raging storm and boiling sea, stunned by the one, and tossed by
the other--we felt not a breath of wind.
As morning broke, a dismal prospect presented itself--the water white
with foam, and the heavens black. We were close under the rock, with
a sort of cave or cavern abreast of us: boats were lying within, for
their masts appeared over a breakwater of loose rocks. We durst not
attempt to weather the point, and every moment were exposed to the
utmost peril by the slightest shift of wind or current. The long and
varied sweep of the Moorish battlements became visible through the
sleet, lighting up gradually, and changing as if presented on a stage:
suddenly a long boat, well manned, emerged as if from under water, and
casting us a line, towed us into the entrance, which looked landwards,
and had hitherto been concealed from us. We struck once or twice on a
bar, and the very moment that we cleared the jetty, a sudden gust from
the north laid us on our beam-ends, and swinging inside instead of out,
we were not dashed to pieces.
During three months, I had seen nothing but clear skies and smooth
seas. I could now feelingly revert to the words of a Spaniard, who,
when Philip V. asked which were the principal harbours of Spain,
answered, “June, July, and Cadiz.”[43]
We had to stand nearly two hours, dripping and shivering, till the
necessary sanitary formalities were gone through, and the permission of
the governor to enter the town, received. Of this we availed ourselves
with more alacrity than speed, in drenched clothes and water-logged
boots, over soft wet sand. We entered this strange town through the
gate of Guzman the Good.
I found myself at the Posada for the first time, under a gipsy roof.
The author of “The Gipsies in Spain” has selected this house as the
scene of the most salient incident of his work. In it he exhibits
the gipsy race with diabolical features, and under circumstances
scarcely credible. Nevertheless, the story tended rather to diminish my
distrust, than to augment it, for here it was no midnight adventure; no
meeting with an unarmed person in a nameless street--the names are all
given. Little did I expect, at the time of reading the story, to have
the opportunity of verifying it.
Mr. Borrow says that the innkeeper’s sister and cousin (as he
severally makes her) had had a Spanish child to nurse, and in sheer
spite had injured it, with the purpose and effect of depriving it of
reason. The idiot is then brought in as a young “caballero,” to play a
part in a very dramatic cozening scene, where a countryman and woman
are cheated out of an ass; all this is narrated circumstantially,
explained sensibly--there is no hearsay, no metaphor. Of this idiot
“caballero” I could obtain no trace; he was neither known nor had
been heard of at Tarifa in the memory of man, yet I made diligent
inquiry for him, and sent out Mr. Stark, who, from long residence at
Gibraltar, was familiar with the place and people, to see if he could
hear of him; but all in vain. The Alcalde, to whom I told the story,
contented himself with repeating the writer’s name, and laughing long
and quietly. As a last resource I applied to the people themselves.
The innkeeper had no “sister” and no “cousin;” there was, however, a
sister-in-law, so I questioned her about “the child she had nursed.”
She declared that she never had had a child of her own, and when I
asked if her sister had nursed any child? she answered, that her
sister’s youngest son was eight years old when they came to Tarifa.
Her testimony was confirmed by the neighbours, and the fact was
notorious. Mr. Borrow puts them in possession from father to son. They
imagined him to be a gipsy, he says, by his talking their language. I,
consequently, inquired about him as the English Gipsy. They did not
comprehend me; but recollected a tall man who was always writing:
holding up their hands, they exclaimed, “We thought he was writing some
learned things, and not lies about poor people like us.” The story
fills fourteen pages. Mr. Borrow sends a Jew before him to the Posada;
he returns and reports that they were Jews, and then he addresses this
Jew in “_Moorish_,” and tells him they are gipsies. As if a Jew could
have been mistaken about Jews; and, as if a person who could speak
Arabic, would call it “Moorish.” A few pages before he has told his
readers in the most off-hand manner, that the Basques are Tartars, and
that the Basque tongue comes between the Mongolian and the Manchou! all
which is equally authentic and profound--to “his chum” Mr. Ford.
It is the misfortune of Spain to be misrepresented. She has been the
subject of two standard and classical works--Don Quixote and Gil Blas.
The former, by its sterling worth, has made its way into the literature
of other countries. Being a satire upon a particular temper and habit
of mind, the scene and personages of which are Spanish, it is accepted
as a description of Spain. As well might England be studied in “Dr.
Syntax.” Those peculiarities which it is intended to ridicule, and
those extravagancies which are exaggerated in order that they may be
exposed, are to the stranger the instructive portion of the work.
“Gil Blas” is a romance by a Paris bookmaker. It owes its celebrity to
an admirable sketch of a great minister, another of his successor,
and an episode portraying Spanish manners. The Barber, Olivarez, the
Count-Duke, the Barber, and the story of the adventurer himself, in his
retirement, are all taken from the Spanish, and give to the work its
value. It is then dressed up with Spanish peculiarities, and Madrid or
Paris morals, and passes from hand to hand as a mirror of the Spanish
mind.
In reviewing the catalogue of recent works, I can point, as really
influencing opinion or as referred to by travellers, only to Blanco
White’s Letters, and the work out of which these remarks originated.
Blanco White[44] is a man who, writing upon any foreign country, could
not fail to perplex the judgment. How much more in respect to his own,
when describing it to another, where he had made himself at home? In
some parts, by keeping distinct the Englishman and the Spaniard, he
has been able to translate the one to the other. Those parts are the
domestic only. In all the rest he has jumbled the two characters,
and has made the prejudices of the one override the simplicity of
the other; falsifying the commonest facts, distorting the plainest
conclusions. The effect is to puff up the Englishman and to degrade the
Spaniard.
To Mr. Ford’s book, however disagreeable the task, I had intended to
devote a special chapter; but understanding that the two volumes are,
in the second edition, reduced to one, I must infer that the author
has anticipated my conclusion--that the work might be made valuable by
cutting out the slang, ribaldry, opinions, and false quotations.
The Governor of Tarifa had somewhat the air of an English country
gentleman. He afforded me all the facilities I could desire for
landing and embarking, and sent his aid-de-camp with me to inspect the
fortifications. On presenting to the Alcalde a letter from his brother
at Algeciras, he declined to open it, saying, “You are expected.” He
conducted me from his office to his house to see his family. Scarcely
were we seated when he remarked that the arrival of a stranger was an
extraordinary event at Tarifa, and still more so, of one interested in
their country, and who busied himself in studying the laws and manners
of different people. He then asked me whether I had thought of anything
for their benefit? I said I had, and that it was, “Bury your new laws
and return to your old customs.” Having explained that my meaning was
to get rid of a general Cortes, not to substitute a despotism, but to
revive the local constitutions--that is, the _law_, leaving to each the
burthen of its own management and the conduct of its own business; he
said, that indeed would be putting an end to _theories_ of “liberty”
or “despotism,” and that the plan would be most popular if any leading
man brought it forward. He then asked me how I came to devise such
a scheme? I told him it was as old as the hills--that it was, in
fact, the law of the Peninsula, encroached upon, but not destroyed
by Austrian or Bourbon--that these ancient customs were looked to
with veneration by the profoundest men of those countries, which the
Spaniards fancied they were imitating while they were destroying them.
Notwithstanding the war which the Spanish Government has for centuries
waged against every vestige of the race who made Spain the strongest,
most learned, chivalrous, and polished country in Europe, the women of
Tarifa appear in the streets muffled up as Mussulman women, and expose
but one eye.
I was invited in the evening to what I was told was a club. The place
was an apothecary’s shop. I was introduced into a sort of vault, and I
found myself in a gambling establishment. Their cards were like those
used by the Greeks; the club being represented, not by the French
trefoil, but by a club; the spade by a sword; the heart by a cup; and
the diamond by a gold coin. The names being _Bastones_, _Espadas_,
_Copas_, _Oros_. The conversation having turned upon cards, I mentioned
its supposed astronomical origin: the four seasons represented by the
four suits; the fifty-two weeks by the number of the cards; and the
thirteen lunar months by the thirteen tricks, proving whist to be
the original game. I was here stopped. They had only twelve tricks
and forty-eight cards; and “Of course,” said a Spanish Major (a Mr.
Kennedy), “our game is more scientific, because adapted to the Julian
Calendar!”
Conversation having been thus substituted for gambling, I asked what
they thought of the abolition of the Tithes and confiscation of Church
property? They all shrugged their shoulders. I repeated my question,
saying, that as a stranger I wanted to know if the nation had been
benefited by the measures which its wisdom had devised for its own
relief. This elicited a loud and general “No.” I then asked what had
been the result of the experiment? The answer was, “The poor man pays
more, and the rich less.” This, I said, was satisfactory, it having
been laid down as the great object for Spain “to put her institutions
in harmony with the spirit that rules those nations more advanced than
herself.”[45] They at first thought I was in jest, but I explained to
them something about the legislation of these advanced nations. The
increased burthen on the poor was then explained--thus: the tithes are
remitted, but a tax for _public worship_ has been imposed; it is less
in amount than the tithe, but a new set of fiscal officers has been
introduced to collect it: the other taxes since the abolition of tithes
have been increased. Pasturage and cattle, which bore under the tithe
system equal charges with the cultivated land, have been spared in
the new burthens: the rich are thus doubly benefited, possessing the
pasturage and not suffering in the same proportion as the poor from
tax-gatherers.
These grave politicians could not recover from their astonishment at
perceiving that there existed a human being who could question the
wisdom, far less the sanity, of their imitating England and France. I
was called upon to declare my sentiments on the great question which
I was told constituted the essential difference between England and
France, viz., the principle of direct or indirect _election_; nor could
they believe me in earnest when I assured them that I had never so much
as heard the names of these “principles” in the countries referred to.
“England and France,” said they, “are great and powerful; must we not
imitate them and become so too?” I submitted, that imitation is not an
easy matter; that it is more difficult than invention; that it requires
a perfect knowledge of the thing imitated, in which case there could be
no reason to copy; besides, it was impossible to copy institutions. “In
what particular,” I asked, “would you copy us? Two things only have we
to offer you as sanctioned by English consent--the Guelph Family and
Johnson’s Dictionary. Will you have them in lieu of the Bourbons and
the Castilian?”
As they would hear of neither, I then ventured to offer a Coburg for
their Queen, on which there was an outburst of what, in the French
Chambers, is called “Denegation.” I said that we were very well
satisfied with a similar arrangement. “The very reason,” exclaimed one
of the party, “why it will not suit us;” an avowal which I did not
fail to turn to account. I was then questioned as to Parliamentary
proceedings, currency laws, and so on, and I endeavoured to make
them apprehend that in regard to the real business of Government, the
liberties of England depended upon the Judges, with whom rested the
interpretation of the law and who alone had the power of action; and to
whom were rendered amenable the Executive and its functions, and the
House of Commons, if ever it took upon itself by an act _of its own_ to
infringe the liberty of the subject. That these were the two elements
at war in England--the unwritten and the written law: the last was the
disease, and that alone they saw or dreamed of copying. “Then,” said
they, “let us have your courts and judges.” I told them they could not
have the Bench without the Bar, and that neither could be transplanted
like lettuces, or grafted like slips of orange-trees.
They were endeavouring to begin where we had left off. That which was
abuse to us, and therefore, capable of remedy, came to be to them
principle. “After all,” said one of them, “look at the cloth you
wear,” putting his hand on my sleeve; “we make none such. Probably
you have a penknife in your pocket;--at all events, you have shaved
with a razor this morning: it is far beyond anything that we can make.
We owe you a great deal of money, which you have lent us out of your
superfluity.” I replied that there was no connexion between individual
dexterity and collective wisdom. They made the mistake of attributing
our prosperity--the result of private industry--to our political
institutions; and we, in like manner, attributed their disorders--the
results of the political theories which they had copied from us--to
their individual character.
The general Cortes of Spain has been constructed theoretically, without
the consent or the presence of the separate kingdoms. They are thus
figuratively merged, not in one of the kingdoms more powerful than the
rest, but in an abstraction which they call “constitution.” Lamentable
would be the fate of humanity if follies such as these could profit or
endure.
But the cards out of which this conversation arose, are worth returning
to. I was surprised to see the figures such as those used by the
Greeks; to hear the suits designated as by them, and not according to
the names used in Europe: but this is not all. The Spaniards are not
content with the name which all other countries know them by: card,
_carte_, _carta_, _spielkarten_, will not do for them--they call them
_naipes_. A learned French abbé (Boullet) in his “_Recherches sur
l’Origine des Cartes à jouer_,” makes them a French invention posterior
to the use of paper, as proved by their being called _cartes_!
introduced into Spain through the Basque provinces, where they took the
name of _naipes_, from the Basque word _napa_, which signifies smooth!
May not this, like so many other European inventions, turn out to be a
mere copy, and Spain the transmitter to Europe rather than the debtor
of Europe? If we go back to the once-famed game of Ombre, we shall find
the terms of the game all Spanish, such as spadillo, matador, &c. If
we go to Hindostan, we find the manner of playing to correspond with
the game of ombre. Here is the link established between the Hindoos and
Modern Europe through the Spaniards--that is, the Arabs. This latter
point the name naipe confirms--Naib or Nawab, whence Nabob, being the
equivalent to king. “The Four Kings” was the original name of cards
in Europe. An old writer quoted in Bursi’s “_Istoria della città di
Viterbo_,” has these words, “Cards were introduced into Viterbo in
1379, from the country of the Saracens, where they are called _Naib_.
In Italy, they were formerly known by the name Naîbi. The two old
Spanish lexicographers, Tamarid and Broceuse, derive the word from the
Arabs. Alderete gives the fantastic origin of the initials N. and P. of
the supposed inventor, Nicholas Pepin, which the moderns have followed.
Islamism has driven cards out of use among the Arabs, and has thus left
us to dispute about the origin of the name.
Cards and chess seem to have been combined and originally played by
four persons, there being four suits of chessmen as well as of cards.
The history of them would be a great book, if it could be written.
Next morning I came down to embark at the island; but a violent
storm coming on, I took refuge in the house of the keeper of the
lighthouse, on the point of the rock. The channel was covered with
vessels: they had been all the morning sweeping away to the westward,
with studding-sails on both sides, low and aloft; now they were fast
measuring back their distance, and dashing past us under close-reefed
topsails. We scrambled over the sharp points of the ledges of rock to
watch the current where it is most straitened and convulsive. The dark
deep current close in-shore was running out; a hundred yards or so from
the rock it was running in; farther out again, there appeared another
stream from the eastward. This must have been the spot where the action
took place between Didius and the Carthaginian galleys, “when those
were seen pursuing and these flying, who hoped not for victory and
dreamed not of flight.”
About one o’clock, it suddenly cleared up, and the sun burst forth
in brightness over the cooled and watered earth. The shroud of the
heavens broke up into heaps of white clouds, “showing the dark blue,”
as the Highlanders say, “through the windows of the heavens.” The
bosom of the Straits and the brows and heads of the hills were mottled
by their shadow, as they drifted along, chasing each other: at equal
pace poured the current, and in the same direction. Soon reissuing
from cove and rock, flocks of white sails were crowding on their way
back over the course which they had already twice measured. Invited
by the breeze, and shamed by the example, we lingered for a while to
enjoy the pleasant mood of this fitful torrent, and then hurried on
board, and were soon sweeping down before the batteries. We took good
care to clear our colours and to make them blow out well, to save them
the trouble of hulling us, as they did an American in the morning,
because his stripes and stars had not been flashing to windward of
the spanker, with as much coolness as if they had been firing at a
partridge. That sort of thing is all very well at Gibraltar, with a
thousand guns in battery, and four thousand men behind them; but four
artillery-men with three mounted field-pieces, to be busy with rammer,
sponge, cartridge, and ball, ready to blaze away at all the nations
of the world, should any luckless wight forget to exhibit a bit of
bunting by day, or a lantern by night, is about the most absurd prank
one ever heard of. They will fire as glibly on a three-decker as on a
cock-boat, if the ensign happens to draw to leeward, as was the case
recently with the _Phantom_, at Ceuta; and yet they make no profit of
the statistical information they seek with so much ardour. They have no
toll to receive, as at the Sound; no sovereignty to assert, as at the
Dardanelles; no neighbour to browbeat, and no smuggling to protect, as
at Gibraltar:--besides, we sink their vessels.
To provide against being carried down to the Mediterranean, had it
fallen calm, which might have entailed a week’s cruise, we stretched at
once to the African shore. Despite the fears of my Scorpion[46] pilot,
and cook, we skimmed along the edge of the stream, and shaved every
headland, until we reached the last point of the Straits, to which we
had to give a wide berth, on account of the “race.” Inquiring the
name, the answer was, “Punta Leone.” The man may paint the lion as he
likes, but he has but one name to call him by.
But why call the point that looks towards Europe, Lion? A few centuries
ago, and the question would not have been to be asked. Then from this
spot the spectator who observed the hordes ferried in an uninterrupted
stream of galleys across, and beheld the rock of Calpe, which from
here, as from the north, is the very likeness of a lion crouching on
the point, would have seen in the figure the emblem of the event, and
turning to the hill above to look whence the beast of the desert had
taken his spring, instinctively must so have named it.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] From _Kabyle_, (tribe) came cabala, which signified both
corporation and market-place. This tax was levied in the market-place,
and was a repetition of the tenth, which by the Mussulman law was
levied on the spot of production.
[38] “The battle of Cressy furnished the earliest instance on record
of the use of artillery by the European Christians. The history
of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was
employed by the Moorish king of Granada, at the siege of Baza, in
1312. It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient
as 1249, and Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the
close of the eleventh century, which describes the use of artillery
in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and
Seville.”--PRESCOTT.
[39] See “The Merchant and Friar.” It has been imagined that explosive
powder was known to the ancients. It is singular that the priests of
Delphi could always protect their Temple against barbarians (who were
uninitiated) by thunder and lightning; but never against Greeks (who
were initiated).
Pliny speaks of the art of bringing down lightning being made common
after the siege of Troy.--Lib. ii. ch. 53. Philostratus, Lib. ii.
_Life of Apoll._ 1. iii. ch. 3 says that Hercules was repelled by the
Indians, who launched lightnings. The Gentoo code forbids the use of
fire-arms.
Coming down to modern times, Langlès supposes it to have been used by
the Saracens against St. Louis. In the work of Marcus Græcus, “Liber
ignium ad Comb. hostes,” it is said to be referred to, and exactly
described in, Julius Africanus, ch. 44; and about the time that Roger
Bacon was amusing himself with crackers, an Arab poet was describing
the granulation of gunpowder in verse, Langlès “Apud Salverte,” t. ii.
c. 8. If the Arabs had had it from us, they would have taken our word,
or given to it a constructive name. Their term is original--_Barut._
[40] Bastions à Oréillons were constructed by a canon of Barcelona,
1514. Vauban was born one hundred and twenty years later.--See LABORDE,
vol. i. p. 58. The bastion is accidentally noticed, and not as then a
new construction.
[41] This practice was also known in Spain. “In 1445 a report was
spread that the Jews had undermined the streets of Toledo,--through
which, on the festival of Corpus Christi, the procession of the Host
was to pass--with the intention of _setting fire to it at the time_.
The mob would have fallen on them had not the authorities proved the
report to be false, and prevented the massacre.”--LINDO’S _Jews of
Spain_, p. 226.
[42] The bas-reliefs from the Palace of Ninus, lately brought home,
exhibit battering rams in full play, and archers:--so there is nothing
new under the sun.
[43] It is singular how sentences like this descend and adapt
themselves to the times. A Carthaginian being asked the same question
above two thousand years ago, answered “June, July, and Mago.”--Port
Mahon was named after its founder.
[44] I have only seen this book while revising these sheets for the
press.
[45] Miraflores.
[46] The name given to those born on the Rock.