When we turned to drive back over the neutral territory
the rock of Gibraltar suddenly bulked up before us,
in a sheer ascent that left the familiar Prudential
view in utterly inconspicuous unimpressive-ness.
Till one has seen it from this point one has not truly
seen it. The vast stone shows like a half from
which the other half has been sharply cleft and removed,
that the sense of its precipitous magnitude may unrelievedly
strike the eye; and it seems to have in that moment
the whole world to tower up in from the level at its
feet. No dictionary, however unabridged, has
language adequate to convey the notion of it.
ASHORE AT GENOA
The pride of Americans in their native scenery is
brought down almost to the level of the South Shore
of Long Island in arriving home from the Mediterranean
voyage to Europe. The last thing one sees in Europe
is the rock of Gibraltar, but before that there have
been the snow-topped Maritime Alps of Italy and the
gray-brown, softly rounded, velvety heights of Spain;
and one has to think very hard of the Palisades above
the point where they have been blasted away for road-making
material if one wishes to keep up one’s spirits.
The last time I came home the Mediterranean way I
had a struggle with myself against excusing our sandy
landscape, when we came in sight of it, with its summer
cottages for the sole altitudes, to some Italian fellow-passengers
who were not spellbound by its grandeur. I had
to remember the Rocky Mountains, which I had never
seen, and all the moral magnificence of our life before
I could withhold the words of apology pressing to
my lips. I was glad that I succeeded; but now,
going back by the same route, I abandoned myself to
transports in the beauty of the Mediterranean coast
which I hope were not untrue to my country. Perhaps
there is no country which can show anything like that
beauty, and America is no worse off than the rest of
the world; but I am not sure that I have a right to
this consolation. Again there were those
“Silent pinnacles of aged snow,”
flushed with the Southern sun; in those sombre slopes
of pine; again the olives climbing to their gloom;
again the terraced vineyards and the white farmsteads,
with villages nestling in the vast clefts of the hills,
and all along the sea-level the blond towns and cities
which broidei the hem of the land from Marseilles
to Genoa. One is willing to brag; one must be
a good American; but, honestly, have we anything like
that to show the arriving foreigner? For some
reason our ship was abating the speed with which she
had crossed the Atlantic, and now she was swimming
along the Mediterranean coasts so slowly and so closely
that it seemed as if we could almost have cast an apple
ashore, though probably we could not. We were
at least far enough off to mistake Nice for Monte
Carlo and then for San Remo, but that was partly because
