EHRENBREITSTEIN.
The following are the sentiments of two pictorial artists. “The whole surface of the rock, glowed with the richest hues of sunset—its naturally deep-toned and richly coloured form assuming an endless diversity of tints combined with a focus of harmonious light, and relieved by the broad shadows of the surrounding objects.”—Leigh.
“We behold the mighty and stupendous rock of Ehrenbreitstein, crowned with fortifications—the Gibraltar of the Rhine—rising in towering majesty, and frowning in sullen grandeur on the beautiful and picturesque city of Coblentz, casting its deep and darkened shadow over the calm and glassy surface of the Rhine beneath.”—Tomlinson.
I have been often past, and sometimes over this “broad stone of honour,” and, I confess that, to my eye, it is about as shapeless and unpicturesque a mass of mountain as I ever beheld. It is a huge truncated cone—the lower-fourth of an enormous sugar-loaf—an Egyptian pyramid, cut down to the first floor—or rather it is a gigantic butcher’s block, on which a good bit of mangling has been done in its time. There is really but little that excites interest about the fortress, except its massive and passive strength—its vis inertiæ—its impenetrability by shot or shells. You might as well batter Ben Nevis as Ehrenbreitstein! You might sweep its rugged brow of every man, mortar, parapet, and bastion, but the rugged, dogged rock would stand in all its “brute force,” unmoved by the iron showers that fell on its head!
“The Gibraltar of the Rhine!” No man who ever viewed that renowned fortress, would have made the comparison. I resided on the rock several months, and every feature of it is as fresh in my mind’s eye, as it was 40 years ago, when I last left it. Imagine a gigantic rock rising out of the ocean to a height of fifteen hundred feet, connected with the main land only by a narrow, low isthmus of sand—with three sides perpendicular (North, East, and South), and one sloping at an angle of 45 degrees from the summit of the mountain to the water’s edge, sprinkled with little gardens and lodges—while the sea-line is bristled with batteries and flanked by spit-fire tongues, bearing the heaviest artillery, behind which lies a town, containing specimens of every nation between the Ganges and the Atlantic. Through the perpendicular cliffs that overhang the neutral ground, vast galleries for cannon, and profound excavations for ammunition, are cut, tier over tier, pointing destruction upon every foot of the isthmus below. Then the ruins of the old Moorish castle, perched on the crags at one extremity of the rock, while Europa Point, a high table-land a hundred feet above the level of the sea, stretches out to the South, like a splendid parade, with barracks, hospitals, &c. But oh! from O’Hara’s tower on the summit, what a glorious prospect! The boundless and tideless Mediterranean to the East—the vast and heaving Atlantic to the West—the fantastic mountains of Grenada to the North—and Africa fading away towards Carthage and Algiers to the South.
There is not, there cannot be a spot on this earth where such an extensive, magnificent, varied, and beautiful view (one hundred miles in radius) can be obtained, as from the summit of Gibraltar—a spot unique, between two mighty oceans, and two great continents—having Africa and Europe, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as it were, at your feet!
Is it nothing to stand on one of the “Pillars of Hercules” and contemplate the other within a few miles of you? Descending into St. Michael’s cave, near the apex of the rock, we find ourselves surrounded by thousands and tens of thousands of stalactitic figures, assuming the grotesque forms of everything which the most fertile imagination could conceive—dispersed through caverns where human step has never been able to trace the depth or extent—and supposed to form subterranean, or rather submarine, communications with the opposite fortress of Ceuta in Africa! Wander through the town, and you will observe the costume, the language, the manners, the habits, the productions, the features—almost the passions and thoughts of every people on earth—from the Calmuc Tartar of the East, to the Red Indian of the West—from the Laplander of the North, to the Hottentot of the South. To compare Gibraltar with Ehrenbreitstein, then, is to compare “Hyperion with a Satyr”—or Vesuvius with the funnel of a steam-boat. I leave the prodigies of valour performed by Englishmen, in taking and retaining the key of the Mediterranean, out of the question, believing that Prussian arms would, under similar circumstances, have achieved equal exploits. Of all nations, we have the least reason to doubt the prowess of Prussia. She fought at our side, when the destinies of Europe vibrated in the balance!