The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

There are three elevations on the ridge, one in the centre, and one at each extremity. That in the centre is the highest; and here is the signal station, from which works are carried straight down to the beach at the ragged staff. The upper part of the Rock is like a roof, and down it, like forked lightning, runs a zig-zag wall. Below this stony thatching there is a story or two of precipices; the line of defence drops over them and on the works, which shut in the town on the south, and which consist of a curtain-bastion and ditch. In the rear of this wall (the zig-zag) there are the remains of a still more ancient one. A great amount of labour has been expended upon this almost inaccessible height. These zig-zag, or flanking lines, are naturally assumed to be modern, and the wall goes by the name of Charles V., who restored the fortification below; but the loop-holes are for cross-bows. The diagonal steps at the landing-places, the materials and the coating, as well as the whole aspect, show them to be Moorish. Heterodox as this opinion was held when I first broached it, it was not impugned after two inspections by the officers best qualified to pronounce on such a matter.

On the north, too, all our defences are restorations of the Moorish works: even in the galleries they have been our forerunners. Their open works were in advance of ours, and a staircase is cut out through the Rock down to the beach. In fact, save in what is requisite for the application of gunpowder, or what is superfluous for defence, the Moors had rendered Gibraltar what it is to-day. They have even left us structures of the greatest service, as resisting the effects of gunpowder, and such as we are able neither to rival nor to imitate. On the great lines, in consequence of the many changes which have taken place, the original work has been displaced, or covered up, and especially so along the sea-wall; but, ascend to the signal-post,—crawl out on the face of the Rock to the north,—examine even yet Europa Point—Rozier Bay, and everywhere you find the Moor.

It is impossible to move about at Gibraltar, without having the old tower in sight, and it is difficult to take one’s eyes off it when it is so. No aspiring lines, no graceful sweeps, no columned terraces exert their fascination, nor is it ruin and dilapidation that speak to the heart. The building is plain in its aspect, mathematical in its forms, clean in its outlines, with a sturdy and stubborn middle-aged air, without a shade of fancy or of wildness. Nevertheless, the eye is drawn to it, and then your thoughts are fixed on it—and they are so, precisely because you cannot tell why.

It constitutes the apex of a triangular fort, and massy and lofty itself, it thus assumes a station of dignity and command. The annals of time are traced on it—here by the arrow-head still sticking,[29] there by the hollow of the shot and shell. It has borne the brunt of a score of sieges, and stands to-day without a single repair. On its summit, seventy feet from the ground, guns are planted. The terrace on the roof is cracked, but the surface is otherwise as smooth as if just finished. The pottery-pipes fitted in to carry away the water, are precisely such as might have been shipped from London. A semicircular arch supports a gallery on the inner side. A window opening in this gallery, now blocked up, is like a church window with the Gothic arch chamfered. The exterior was plastered in fine lime, and there are traces of its having been divided off into figures. It has now, by the barbarians in possession, been rubbed over with dirty brown to make it look ancient. The turrets on the walls below have been furbished up to look like cruet-stands, and the staring face of a clock[30] is stuck in a Saracen tower.

The upper story only is explored and open; the flooring is perfectly smooth, and the roof stuccoed. There is a bath-room, and a mosque; the former has a figured aperture slanting through ten or twelve feet of wall to admit the light, as in the domes of Eastern baths. The other parts of the building are as much unknown as those of the unopened Pyramids. If these ruins had been in the hands of the tribe that live on the rock above, there would have been exhibited at least as much taste, and certainly more curiosity.

The standing walls adjoining the towers exhibit faces of arches that covered in halls and surrounded courts. The second portion of the fort is at present used as a prison. The lower enclosure is of greater extent, and in the line of the wall is a remarkable Egyptian-looking building, square with buttresses at the angles and a pyramidal roof—roof and walls one mass of Moorish concrete (Tapia). It is as perfect as it was a thousand years ago, and may be equally so a thousand years hence. It is at present used as a powder-magazine, and is divided into two stories. The flooring of the upper hall is supported in the middle by a block of masonry some fifty feet square. This apartment is curiously ventilated.

This Moorish fort is, as a whole, a building of great interest. An architect of the last century speaks of it as one of the most remarkable on the soil of Europe. It was no embellishment of, or defence for a capital; it was raised in time of trouble on a remote promontory as a protection for insurgents. It was antecedent to art in Europe,—the people who raised it did not imitate Rome; they must have brought this art with them. It stands a match for man and time, defying at once the inventions of the one and the ravages of the other.

Here is an original in design and substance, a work surpassing those of the Romans in strength, and equalling those of the Egyptians in durability.

As the zig-zag lines have been attributed to the Spaniards, so on high authority is a much more recent date[31] than that which I here assign to them given to the Moorish fort and tower; but supposing them to be of no earlier date than the fourteenth century, they would still illustrate a style of architecture which the Moors introduced, and which, like language, is lost in the mists of antiquity.

They are now busy in demolishing the works that connected the Moorish fort with the harbour. Whilst tracing the old wall from the former to the latter, I came upon a large arch, and satisfied myself that this had been an entrance to an inner harbour. On subsequent reference to James’s History of Gibraltar, I find that this was well known in his time.