The Rulers of the Mediterranean. Richard Harding Davis
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And then people tell you that there is land in sight again, and you find how really far you are from home when you learn that it is Portugal, and so a part of Europe, and not an island thrown up by a volcano, or stolen or strayed from its moorings at the mainland. Portugal is apparently a high red hill, with a round white tower on the top of it flying signal flags. Its chief industry is the arranging of these flags by a man. It is, on the whole, a disappointing country. After this, everybody begins to pack and to exchange visiting-cards; and those who are to get off at Gibraltar are pursued by stewards and bandmasters and young men with testimonials that they want signed, and by the weak in spirit, who, at the eleventh hour, think they will not go on to Genoa, but will get off here and go on to Tangier, and who want you to decide for them. And which do you think would pay best, and what is there to see in Tangier, anyway? And as that is exactly what you are going to find out, you cannot tell.
When I left the deck the last night out the stars were all over the heavens; and the foremast, as it swept slowly from side to side, looked like a black pendulum upside down marking out the sky and portioning off the stars. And when I woke there was a great creaking of chains, and I could see out of my port-hole hundreds of fixed lights and rows and double rows of lamps, so that you might have thought the ship during the night had run aground in the heart of a city.
The first sight of Gibraltar is, I think, disappointing. It means so much, and so many lives have been given for it, and so many ships have been sunk by its batteries, and such great powers have warred for twelve hundred years for its few miles of stone, that its black outline against the sky, with nothing to measure it with but the fading stars, is dwarfed and spoiled. It is only after the sun begins to turn the lights out, and you are able to compare it with the great ships at its base, and you see the battlements and the mouths of cannon, and the clouds resting on its top, that you understand it; and then when the outline of the crouching lion, that faces all Europe, comes into relief, you remember it is, as they say, the lock to the Mediterranean, of which England holds the key. And even while you feel this, and are greedily following the course of each rampart and terrace with eyes that are tired of blank stretches of water, some one points to a low line of mountains lying like blue clouds before the red sky of the sunrise, dim, forbidding, and mysterious—and you know that it is Africa.
Spain, lying to the right, all green and amethyst, and flippant and gay with white houses and red roofs, and Gibraltar's grim show of battlements and war, become somehow of little moment. You feel that you have known them always, and that they are as you fancied they would be. But this other land across the water looks as inscrutable, as dark, and as silent as the Sphinx that typifies it, and you feel that its Pillar of Hercules still marks the entrance to the "unknown world."
Nine out of every ten of those who visit Gibraltar for the first time expect to find an island. It ought to be, and it would be one but for a strip of level turf half a mile wide and half a mile long which joins it to the sunny green hills of Spain. But for this bit of land, which they call "the Neutral Ground," Gibraltar would be an island, for it has the Mediterranean to the east, a bay, and beyond that the hills of Spain to the west, and Africa dimly showing fourteen miles across the sea to the south.
Gibraltar has been besieged thirteen times; by Moors and by Spaniards, and again by Moors, and again by Spaniards against Spaniards. It was during one of these wars between two factions in Spain, in 1704, that the English, who were helping one of the factions, took the Rock, and were so well pleased with it that they settled there, and have remained there ever since. If possession is nine points of the law, there was never a place in the history of the world held with nine as obvious points. There were three more sieges after the English took Gibraltar, one of them, the last, continuing for four years. The English were fighting America at the time, and rowing in the Nile, and so did not do much towards helping General George Elliot, who was Governor of the Rock at that time. It would appear to be, as well as one can judge from this distance, a case of neglect on the part of the mother-country for her little colony and her six thousand men, very much like her forgetfulness of Gordon, only Elliot succeeded where Gordon failed (if you can associate that word with that name), and so no one blamed the home government for risking what would have been a more serious loss than the loss of Calais, had Elliot surrendered, and "Gib" gone back to its rightful owners, that is, the owners who have the one point. The history of this siege is one of the most interesting of war stories; it is interesting whether you ever expect to visit Gibraltar or not; it is doubly interesting when you walk the pretty streets of the Rock to-day, with its floating population of twenty thousand, and try to imagine the place held by six thousand half-starved, sick, and wounded soldiers, living at times on grass and herbs and handfuls of rice, and yet carrying on an apparently forlorn fight for four years against the entire army and navy of Spain, and, at the last, against the arms of France as well.
We are apt to consider the Gibraltar of to-day as occupying the same position to the Mediterranean as Queenstown does to the Atlantic, a place where passengers go ashore while the mails are being taken on board, and not so much for their interest in the place itself as to again feel solid earth under their feet. There are passengers who will tell you on the way out that you can see all there is to be seen there in three hours. As a matter of fact, one can live in Gibraltar for many weeks and see something new every day. It struck me as being more different kinds of a place than any other spot of land I had ever visited, and one that changed its aspect with every shifting of the wind, and with each rising and setting of the sun. It is the clearing-house for three most picturesque peoples—the Moors, in their yellow slippers and bare legs and voluminous robes and snowy turbans; the Spaniards, with romantic black capes and cloaks and red sashes, the women with the lace mantilla and brilliant kerchiefs and pretty faces; and, mixed with these, the pride and glory of the British army and navy, in all the bravery of red coats and white helmets, or blue jackets, or Highland kilts. It is a fortress as imposing as the Tower of London, a winter resort as pretty as St. Augustine, and a seaport town of free entry, into which come on every tide people of many nations, and ships flying every flag.
Around its base are the ramparts, like a band of stone and steel; above them the town, rising like a staircase, with houses for steps—yellow houses, with light green blinds sticking out at different angles, and with sloping red roofs meeting other lines of red roofs, and broken by a carpeting of green where the parks and gardens make an opening in the yellow front of the town, and from which rise tall palms and palmettoes, and rows of sea-pines, and fluttering union-jacks which mark the barracks of a regiment. Above the town is the Rock, covered with a green growth of scrub and of little trees below, and naked and bare above, stretching for several miles from north to south, and rearing its great bulk up into the sky until it loses its summit in the clouds. It is never twice the same. To-day it may be smiling and resplendent under a warm, brilliant sun that spreads out each shade of green, and shows each terrace and rampart as clearly as though one saw it through a glass; the sky becomes as blue as the sea and the bay, and the white villages of Spain seem as near to one as the red soldier smoking his pipe on the mountings half-way up the Rock. And to-morrow the whole top of the Rock may be lost in a thick curtain of gray clouds, and the waters of the bay will be tossing and covered with white-caps, and the lands about disappear from sight as though they had sunk into the sea during the night and had left you alone on an island. At times a sunset paints the Rock a martial red, or the moonlight softens it, and you see only the tall palms and the graceful balconies and the gardens of plants, and each rampart becomes a terrace and each casemate a balcony. Or at night, when the lamps are lit, you might imagine yourself on the stage of a theatre, walking in a scene set for Fra Diavolo.
There are no such streets or houses outside of stage-land. It is only in stage cities that the pavements and streets are so conspicuously