Drinkwater records that eagles and vultures annually visited Gibraltar on their way into the Spanish interior; and that the former bred among the precipices, and, with the hawk, might often be seen wheeling above its summit. The green lizard is still numerous; and scorpions and other reptiles haunt the neighbourhood of the fissures and the crevices of the Rock. The climate on the whole is genial. Winter loses all its severity; and the summer-heats are tempered by refreshing breezes from the sea. The worst inconvenience is the recurrence in December and January of violent thunderstorms, with gales, and heavy rains, almost tropical in their fury. Yet there is so little soil on the Rock, that the climatic advantages do not produce any abundant vegetable-growth. When the rains set in, wild grasses shoot up in the chinks and fissures; but as soon as the sun reasserts its power, these disappear, and the eye rests only on bare, sombre, and sterile rock. The western slopes, however, present an agreeable contrast to the barrenness which everywhere else is dominant. There the vegetation, though dwarfed, is dense; palmettos flourish, and lavender, and Spanish broom, while the rugged rock absolutely blooms with roses, periwinkles, and asphodels.
The view from the summit is perhaps sufficient to compensate for any deficiency of beauty in the Rock itself. The spectator stands there on the boundary, as it were, of the Old World, on the confines of two great continents. At his feet the low and narrow tongue of land, called Europa Point, stretches far into the sea, covered with bastions and casemates, intermingled with villas and gardens. To the west extends the undulating line of the Strait, with its waters of an intense blue, and beyond rises the rocky coast of Tarifa, while the mighty sweep of the Atlantic Ocean is lost in the western vapours. On the right, the Mediterranean, of a pale azure, relieved by flashes and gleams of silver, beats in pearly foam against the very foot of the Rock; opposite frown the dusky cliffs of Africa, with the white houses and dismantled fortifications of Ceuta, visible at the bottom of a vast bay, and the Mount Abyla of the ancients, that other “Pillar of Hercules,” looking as if, in truth, a demigod had torn it from the Rock of Gibraltar, and planted the two huge fragments as gigantic landmarks at the extremity of the universe.
Bring your gaze back to nearer points, and on the right you see the graceful rounded outline of the sheltered Bay, associated with the names of Rodney, and Howe, and Nelson, and Collingwood, whose “tall ships” have so often rested upon its waters. Gibraltar stands on the one side, its harbour thronged with masts; on the other, the small town of Algesiras lies on the slope of the hills, and bathes its feet in the warm, bright waves. In the curve shelters the village of San Roque, the first the traveller meets with on entering Spain; nearer still, and in the rear, we see the thin sandy isthmus which links Gibraltar to the mainland. The division between English and Spanish territory is marked by a
EUROPA POINT.
row of towers, and we can distinguish close at hand the tents of a small camp always occupied by a few regiments. Finally, the background of the picture, beyond San Roque, is filled in with the green mountains of Ronda; and towering above and behind these, the rose-tinted peaks of the Sierra Benneja, and the snowy summits of the Alpuxarras. It is difficult to conceive a grander spectacle.
We have thus endeavoured to furnish the reader with a general view of the Rock, and town, and fortifications of Gibraltar at the time that General Elliot assumed the governorship.