But the cards out of which this conversation arose, are worth returning to. I was surprised to see the figures such as those used by the Greeks; to hear the suits designated as by them, and not according to the names used in Europe: but this is not all. The Spaniards are not content with the name which all other countries know them by: card, carte, carta, spielkarten, will not do for them—they call them naipes. A learned French abbé (Boullet) in his “Recherches sur l’Origine des Cartes à jouer,” makes them a French invention posterior to the use of paper, as proved by their being called cartes! introduced into Spain through the Basque provinces, where they took the name of naipes, from the Basque word napa, which signifies smooth! May not this, like so many other European inventions, turn out to be a mere copy, and Spain the transmitter to Europe rather than the debtor of Europe? If we go back to the once-famed game of Ombre, we shall find the terms of the game all Spanish, such as spadillo, matador, &c. If we go to Hindostan, we find the manner of playing to correspond with the game of ombre. Here is the link established between the Hindoos and Modern Europe through the Spaniards—that is, the Arabs. This latter point the name naipe confirms—Naib or Nawab, whence Nabob, being the equivalent to king. “The Four Kings” was the original name of cards in Europe. An old writer quoted in Bursi’s “Istoria della città di Viterbo,” has these words, “Cards were introduced into Viterbo in 1379, from the country of the Saracens, where they are called Naib. In Italy, they were formerly known by the name Naîbi. The two old Spanish lexicographers, Tamarid and Broceuse, derive the word from the Arabs. Alderete gives the fantastic origin of the initials N. and P. of the supposed inventor, Nicholas Pepin, which the moderns have followed. Islamism has driven cards out of use among the Arabs, and has thus left us to dispute about the origin of the name.
Cards and chess seem to have been combined and originally played by four persons, there being four suits of chessmen as well as of cards. The history of them would be a great book, if it could be written.
Next morning I came down to embark at the island; but a violent storm coming on, I took refuge in the house of the keeper of the lighthouse, on the point of the rock. The channel was covered with vessels: they had been all the morning sweeping away to the westward, with studding-sails on both sides, low and aloft; now they were fast measuring back their distance, and dashing past us under close-reefed topsails. We scrambled over the sharp points of the ledges of rock to watch the current where it is most straitened and convulsive. The dark deep current close in-shore was running out; a hundred yards or so from the rock it was running in; farther out again, there appeared another stream from the eastward. This must have been the spot where the action took place between Didius and the Carthaginian galleys, “when those were seen pursuing and these flying, who hoped not for victory and dreamed not of flight.”
About one o’clock, it suddenly cleared up, and the sun burst forth in brightness over the cooled and watered earth. The shroud of the heavens broke up into heaps of white clouds, “showing the dark blue,” as the Highlanders say, “through the windows of the heavens.” The bosom of the Straits and the brows and heads of the hills were mottled by their shadow, as they drifted along, chasing each other: at equal pace poured the current, and in the same direction. Soon reissuing from cove and rock, flocks of white sails were crowding on their way back over the course which they had already twice measured. Invited by the breeze, and shamed by the example, we lingered for a while to enjoy the pleasant mood of this fitful torrent, and then hurried on board, and were soon sweeping down before the batteries. We took good care to clear our colours and to make them blow out well, to save them the trouble of hulling us, as they did an American in the morning, because his stripes and stars had not been flashing to windward of the spanker, with as much coolness as if they had been firing at a partridge. That sort of thing is all very well at Gibraltar, with a thousand guns in battery, and four thousand men behind them; but four artillery-men with three mounted field-pieces, to be busy with rammer, sponge, cartridge, and ball, ready to blaze away at all the nations of the world, should any luckless wight forget to exhibit a bit of bunting by day, or a lantern by night, is about the most absurd prank one ever heard of. They will fire as glibly on a three-decker as on a cock-boat, if the ensign happens to draw to leeward, as was the case recently with the Phantom, at Ceuta; and yet they make no profit of the statistical information they seek with so much ardour. They have no toll to receive, as at the Sound; no sovereignty to assert, as at the Dardanelles; no neighbour to browbeat, and no smuggling to protect, as at Gibraltar:—besides, we sink their vessels.
To provide against being carried down to the Mediterranean, had it fallen calm, which might have entailed a week’s cruise, we stretched at once to the African shore. Despite the fears of my Scorpion[46] pilot, and cook, we skimmed along the edge of the stream, and shaved every headland, until we reached the last point of the Straits, to which we had to give a wide berth, on account of the “race.” Inquiring the name, the answer was, “Punta Leone.” The man may paint the lion as he likes, but he has but one name to call him by.
But why call the point that looks towards Europe, Lion? A few centuries ago, and the question would not have been to be asked. Then from this spot the spectator who observed the hordes ferried in an uninterrupted stream of galleys across, and beheld the rock of Calpe, which from here, as from the north, is the very likeness of a lion crouching on the point, would have seen in the figure the emblem of the event, and turning to the hill above to look whence the beast of the desert had taken his spring, instinctively must so have named it.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] From Kabyle, (tribe) came cabala, which signified both corporation and market-place. This tax was levied in the market-place, and was a repetition of the tenth, which by the Mussulman law was levied on the spot of production.
[38] “The battle of Cressy furnished the earliest instance on record of the use of artillery by the European Christians. The history of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was employed by the Moorish king of Granada, at the siege of Baza, in 1312. It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249, and Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the close of the eleventh century, which describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and Seville.”—Prescott.
[39] See “The Merchant and Friar.” It has been imagined that explosive powder was known to the ancients. It is singular that the priests of Delphi could always protect their Temple against barbarians (who were uninitiated) by thunder and lightning; but never against Greeks (who were initiated).