The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

We were under weigh at daylight with a light wind; but were baffled all day by the currents. There was no room to complain of detention with such a panorama—so many monuments of man to recall, and such a phenomenon of Nature as the currents to pry into. Close on the right were the brows and bays of Andalusia bearing strange-looking towers. On the left the bold and beautiful mountains of Abyla. Behind, the rock of Gibraltar presents itself as a point isolated from the land, and in the middle of the Mediterranean. Before us opened the ocean, from which rushed in the never-tiring stream. In the bay which we had quitted stood Carteia, founded and peopled by the inhabitants of the coast of Palestine. On the African shore, opposite its rival in antiquity, if not in splendour, Ceuta. On the western coast of the African strait, the Bay of Tingis, the country of Danaus and Antæus, and round the European shore, opposed to it, Gadera, and the enchanted island of Circe. On the one side the gardens of Hesperus, on the other the fields of Hades, and between, the road to the Cassiterides. I saw before me the worshipper landing to visit the sacred groves of Calpe, and then threading his way through the then narrow passages of the channel, I could read in his thoughts and catch from his tongue the names of Atlas and of Hercules, as he saluted the one and invoked the other. Not Greece alone, nor Phœnicia, nor Egypt; not the known only, or the imagined, but all these together, seemed to converge to this passage and to settle on this spot. The great shades of the past wandered among the clouds, and the memory of every people floated upon the bosom of the stream. Had that forehead of Africa been adorned with its ancient clusters of the vine; had it borne hamlets, villages, and towns; had the ploughman and the herdsman been there, I might have admired the richness of the landscape, but should not have known its power.

I landed on Pigeon’s Island to fish, but was soon lost in the problem, what becomes of the water which pours in? But I have already bestowed upon the reader my thoughts on this subject. Suddenly the wind veered round to the north-east, so we were immediately on board, and dashing away for Ceuta; but the wind dropping as suddenly, we again made for the European coast, and, aided by the tide, about midnight reached the rocky island of Tarifa, which projects into the Straits at nearly the narrowest part, and is joined by a causeway to the land. Scarcely had we come to an anchor under the rock, when it began to blow heavily from the east, the current running strongly from the west. We were entirely sheltered from both, but not from the roll of the sea; yet in the midst of this raging storm and boiling sea, stunned by the one, and tossed by the other—we felt not a breath of wind.

As morning broke, a dismal prospect presented itself—the water white with foam, and the heavens black. We were close under the rock, with a sort of cave or cavern abreast of us: boats were lying within, for their masts appeared over a breakwater of loose rocks. We durst not attempt to weather the point, and every moment were exposed to the utmost peril by the slightest shift of wind or current. The long and varied sweep of the Moorish battlements became visible through the sleet, lighting up gradually, and changing as if presented on a stage: suddenly a long boat, well manned, emerged as if from under water, and casting us a line, towed us into the entrance, which looked landwards, and had hitherto been concealed from us. We struck once or twice on a bar, and the very moment that we cleared the jetty, a sudden gust from the north laid us on our beam-ends, and swinging inside instead of out, we were not dashed to pieces.

During three months, I had seen nothing but clear skies and smooth seas. I could now feelingly revert to the words of a Spaniard, who, when Philip V. asked which were the principal harbours of Spain, answered, “June, July, and Cadiz.”[43]

We had to stand nearly two hours, dripping and shivering, till the necessary sanitary formalities were gone through, and the permission of the governor to enter the town, received. Of this we availed ourselves with more alacrity than speed, in drenched clothes and water-logged boots, over soft wet sand. We entered this strange town through the gate of Guzman the Good.

I found myself at the Posada for the first time, under a gipsy roof. The author of “The Gipsies in Spain” has selected this house as the scene of the most salient incident of his work. In it he exhibits the gipsy race with diabolical features, and under circumstances scarcely credible. Nevertheless, the story tended rather to diminish my distrust, than to augment it, for here it was no midnight adventure; no meeting with an unarmed person in a nameless street—the names are all given. Little did I expect, at the time of reading the story, to have the opportunity of verifying it.

Mr. Borrow says that the innkeeper’s sister and cousin (as he severally makes her) had had a Spanish child to nurse, and in sheer spite had injured it, with the purpose and effect of depriving it of reason. The idiot is then brought in as a young “caballero,” to play a part in a very dramatic cozening scene, where a countryman and woman are cheated out of an ass; all this is narrated circumstantially, explained sensibly—there is no hearsay, no metaphor. Of this idiot “caballero” I could obtain no trace; he was neither known nor had been heard of at Tarifa in the memory of man, yet I made diligent inquiry for him, and sent out Mr. Stark, who, from long residence at Gibraltar, was familiar with the place and people, to see if he could hear of him; but all in vain. The Alcalde, to whom I told the story, contented himself with repeating the writer’s name, and laughing long and quietly. As a last resource I applied to the people themselves. The innkeeper had no “sister” and no “cousin;” there was, however, a sister-in-law, so I questioned her about “the child she had nursed.” She declared that she never had had a child of her own, and when I asked if her sister had nursed any child? she answered, that her sister’s youngest son was eight years old when they came to Tarifa. Her testimony was confirmed by the neighbours, and the fact was notorious. Mr. Borrow puts them in possession from father to son. They imagined him to be a gipsy, he says, by his talking their language. I, consequently, inquired about him as the English Gipsy. They did not comprehend me; but recollected a tall man who was always writing: holding up their hands, they exclaimed, “We thought he was writing some learned things, and not lies about poor people like us.” The story fills fourteen pages. Mr. Borrow sends a Jew before him to the Posada; he returns and reports that they were Jews, and then he addresses this Jew in “Moorish,” and tells him they are gipsies. As if a Jew could have been mistaken about Jews; and, as if a person who could speak Arabic, would call it “Moorish.” A few pages before he has told his readers in the most off-hand manner, that the Basques are Tartars, and that the Basque tongue comes between the Mongolian and the Manchou! all which is equally authentic and profound—to “his chum” Mr. Ford.

It is the misfortune of Spain to be misrepresented. She has been the subject of two standard and classical works—Don Quixote and Gil Blas. The former, by its sterling worth, has made its way into the literature of other countries. Being a satire upon a particular temper and habit of mind, the scene and personages of which are Spanish, it is accepted as a description of Spain. As well might England be studied in “Dr. Syntax.” Those peculiarities which it is intended to ridicule, and those extravagancies which are exaggerated in order that they may be exposed, are to the stranger the instructive portion of the work.

“Gil Blas” is a romance by a Paris bookmaker. It owes its celebrity to an admirable sketch of a great minister, another of his successor, and an episode portraying Spanish manners. The Barber, Olivarez, the Count-Duke, the Barber, and the story of the adventurer himself, in his retirement, are all taken from the Spanish, and give to the work its value. It is then dressed up with Spanish peculiarities, and Madrid or Paris morals, and passes from hand to hand as a mirror of the Spanish mind.

In reviewing the catalogue of recent works, I can point, as really influencing opinion or as referred to by travellers, only to Blanco White’s Letters, and the work out of which these remarks originated.