Oct. 10th.
I considered it quite a feat to get at this Spanish key to the Straits, having been foiled in two attempts, the one by land, the other by sea: once the Spaniards stopped me, once the Moors. Like its vis-à-vis, to which it stands at right angles, it is a rocky tongue, joined to the main by a low and narrow neck, and pointing down the Mediterranean. It is all rounded and smooth: in its figure it presents nothing salient, and in its defences displays nothing formidable. The place derives its character not from the fortifications, but from the gardens, and each serves the purpose of the other. The public works are all laid out as pleasure-grounds, and the cactus orchards are disposed in alleys on every rising ground, so as to form stockades.
The tongue is formed of a chain of six dunes, or hillocks, with a seventh considerably larger at the eastern point, on which is seated a small fortress. These are the seven brothers whence the name is supposed to be derived.[47] The fortifications, like those of Gibraltar, are directed, not to command the sea, but to defend it against the land. It has no level ground in front, swept by its galleries and batteries; but, instead, a hill approaches nearly to the glacis, and looks into the works. The landscape beyond stretches away, wooded and picturesque, to the foot of the chain or block of mountains which fill up this angle of Africa, overshadowing Tetuan on the one side, Tangier on the other, and ranging along the Straits. The only sign of human habitation is a small enclosure of white walls, with a tower perched on the green mountain side, like a city on old tapestry in some Arcadian scene. All was silent in that landscape, and it might have been taken for a panorama, but for the Roman vexillum[48] fluttering from the tower, which showed that a Saracen eye watched the keep of the Goth.
Two thousand years before Gibraltar was heard of, Ceuta was an important place. It is enumerated as one of the three earliest of cities. Since the discovery of Gibraltar their fortunes have been strangely similar. Each has been wrested from the land to which it belonged. Each is held by a foreign Power to which it is useless. Neither has been won in honourable war: the one usurped, the other pilfered—the wrongful possession of each is the tenure by which the other is held. Spain retained Ceuta when she abandoned Oran as a set-off to Gibraltar, and England, who abandoned Tangier, must have lost Gibraltar but for the help of the Moors, which was rendered because Spain occupied Ceuta; so that, if Ceuta were not Spanish, Gibraltar would not be English; and if Gibraltar were not English, Ceuta would not be Spanish. The Spaniards lose their own door-post of the Straits, and seize the post of their neighbours; the English abandon Tangier (alone of the Portuguese possessions diverted from Spain), and seize that of the Spaniards. In the history of sieges, they both present the most remarkable incidents, from the unparalleled amount of power directed against the one, and the length of time expended in attempts to reduce the other. Both have at various times exhausted the countries to which they belonged, and the nations by which they have been held. Ceuta brought on the fall of Gothic Spain. Gibraltar was the immediate cause of the war of the Spanish Succession; and finally the smuggling trade of Gibraltar furnishes the school for the proficients for whom Ceuta is the prison.
During the war the Spanish Government placed Ceuta, to defend it from France, in the possession of England. Several English establishments were formed, and considerable sums expended, in the belief that England would never give it up; but the immorality of the Government had not then overtaken the baseness of the people. The Moorish Government, however, thought this an opportunity of recovering its own, and having furnished supplies to Gibraltar, and to our fleet, and corn for our army in Spain, conceiving itself entitled to some favour, claimed the restitution of the place. The appeal proved ineffectual, although it was backed by the offer of a million of dollars. The English Government could not, as may be supposed, well urge on the Spanish Government the claims of its Moorish ally. Muley Suleyman expressed the anguish of his spirit in a distich which might have suggested Moore’s celebrated lines on Poland:—
“There is no faith in our foe,
There is no comfort in our friend.”
We landed within a mole or jetty which corresponds with the Ragged Staff at Gibraltar, thence ascended by a stair to the gate, crossed a bridge, and found ourselves on a lively esplanade. An alley of trees opened upwards through the straggling town, and a terrace along the sea-wall stretched eastward to the extremity of the promontory. The buildings were in the Moresco style with the columned court. The arms of Spain are to be seen at Gibraltar beside those of England—here the arms of Portugal are beside those of Spain. To the whitewash of the Spaniards and the Moors, was here added the yellow of the Portuguese, running two or three feet as a skirting round the court-yards, and along the streets: everything was dazzlingly bright, exquisitely clean, and elaborately ornamented.[49]
The streets are one continuation of tesselated pavement, green, white, and red. The white is marble, the black a very dark serpentine, and the red ancient tiles, which are used as outlines for the figures: the gutter is in the centre, the pattern running on each side with a border joining in the middle. The running pattern is a device, such as a sprig in a Tuscan border; but here and there, you find more ambitious conceptions—a snake, a stag, a ship, a coat-of-arms, a dog attacking a bull, and, in one place, the figure of a man. I have seen something of the kind in the garden of the fortress at Lisbon. There were also the hollow bricks along the tops of walls for flowers, and the demi-flower pots, which they nail against the walls and houses, converting them into perpendicular parterres. They have also adopted the Moorish tesselated pavements for the garden walks, and yet they have neglected to copy that garden architecture which I observed at Kitan—halls and alleys constructed of a lacework of reeds, than which there is nothing more beautiful; and as to its uses, what can be so well adapted to the training of foliage and flowers, so fitted to ensure the luxuries of the clime—that is, shade and air—and to afford protection against its inclemency—the sun with his heat and light?
But the Spaniards here are as little in Africa, as if they were in garrison at St. Juan d’Ulloa. There is not a man who knows the language of the country. They live like cattle in a pen, and spend their lives here without ever having been without the walls. They are under strict blockade—a vidette on the hill, a picket at the gate. Should a Moor bring in eggs, he has to steal out of sight of his own sentries; and to furnish an ox, is to commit a capital offence. When the Christians venture within reach of the Moors, they are shot like dogs: they meet only after despatching a flag of truce. What a ludicrous disproportion between this array of towers, battlements, materials, troops, and discipline, and the half dozen wild mountaineers in a reed hut on the other side. It was said of the Arabs by a French general, “Among them, peace cannot be purchased by victory.” Defeat does not bring submission, nor hopelessness despair, because the brain has not robbed the heart, nor the tongue the brain. They cannot comprehend the wisdom, that a fact which is wrong should be submitted to because it is accomplished, and called a fact.
As I was, some time before, sailing by Ceuta in a bullock-boat, from Tetuan, a Spanish sailor called the attention of a young and delicate-looking Moor, who had embarked with us on his way to Mecca, to the Spanish flag flying on the fortress. The young man, who had scarcely spoken before, seemed absorbed in grief; started to his feet, his eyes glowing and his fists clenched, and roared out: “That no Christian, that Moor land.”