Page:Lands of the Saracen 1859.djvu/393

CHAPTER XXXII.

 

GIBRALTAR.

 

Unwritten Links of Travel — Departure from Southampton — The Bay of Biscay — Cintra — Trafalgar — Gibraltar at Midnight — Landing — Search for a Palm-Tree — A Brilliant Morning — The Convexity of the Earth — Sun-Worship — The Rock.

 

————" to the north-west, Cape St. Vincent died away,
Sunset ran, a burning blood-red, blushing into Cadiz Bay.
In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray."

Browning.

 

Gibraltar, Saturday, November 6, 1852.

I Leave unrecorded the links of travel which connected Messina and Gibraltar. They were over the well-trodden fields of Europe, where little ground is left that is not familiar. In leaving Sicily I lost the Saracenic trail, which I had been following through the East, and first find it again here, on the rock of Calpe, whose name, Djebel el-Tarik (the Mountain of Tarik), still speaks of the fiery race whose rule extended from the unknown ocean of the West to "Ganges and Hydaspes, Indian streams." In Malta and Sicily, I saw their decaying watch-towers, and recognized their sign-manual in the deep, guttural, masculine words and expressions which they have left behind them. I now design following their footsteps through the beautiful Belàd-el-Andaluz, which, to the eye of