TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN
There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach
to the rock of Gibraltar so much as its resemblance
to the trade-mark of the Prudential Insurance Company.
He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is
pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of
that institution. As the lines change with the
ship’s course, the resemblance is less remarkable;
but it is always remarkable, and I suppose it detracts
somewhat from the majesty of the fortress, which we
could wish to be more entirely original. This
was my feeling when I first saw Gibraltar four years
ago, and it remains my feeling after having last seen
it four weeks ago. The eye seeks the bold, familiar
legend, and one suffers a certain disappointment in
its absence. Otherwise Gibraltar does not and
cannot disappoint the most exacting tourist.
The morning which found us in face of it was in brisk
contrast to the bland afternoon on which we had parted
from Madeira. No flocking coracles surrounded
our steamer, with crews eager to plunge into the hissing
brine for shillings or equivalent quarters. The
whitecaps looked snow cold as they tossed under the
sharp north wind, and the tender which put us ashore
had all it could do to embark and disembark us upright,
or even aslant. But, once in the lee of the rocky
Africa breathed a genial warmth across the strait
beyond which its summits faintly shimmered; or was
it the welcome of Cook’s carriages which warmed
us so? We were promised separate vehicles for
parties of three or four, with English-speaking drivers,
and the promise was fairly well kept. The carriages
bore a strong family likeness to the pictures of Spanish
state coaches of the seventeenth century, and were
curtained and cushioned in reddish calico. Rubber
tires are yet unknown in southern Europe, and these
mediaeval arks bounded over the stones with a violence
which must once have been characteristic of those in
the illustrations. But the English of our English-speaking
driver was all that we could have asked for the shillings
we paid Cook for him, or, if it was not, it was all
we got. He was an energetic young fellow and satisfyingly
Spanish in coloring, but in his eagerness to please
he was less grave than I could now wish; I now wish
everything in Spain to have been in keeping.
What was most perfectly, most fittingly in keeping
was the sight of the Moors whom we began at once to
see on the wharves and in the streets. They probably
looked very much like the Moors who followed their
caliph, if he was a caliph, into Spain when he drove
Don Roderick out of his kingdom and established his
own race and religion in the Peninsula. Moslem
costumes can have changed very little in the last eleven
or twelve hundred years, and these handsome fellows,
who had come over with fresh eggs and vegetables and
chickens and turkeys from Tangier, could not have
