Gibraltar has no public buildings of architectural importance; it is essentially a garrison town, a fortified post, in which art and beauty are subordinated to the useful. Except, indeed, at one spot, the Garden, or Alameda—one of the most charming promenades in the world—which extends from the sea-wall to the base of the precipices, formerly known as the “Red Sands.” Here blooms a garden which is truly “a miracle.” The sub-tropical flora is displayed in all its magnificent variety. A forest of aloe and cactus, of cistus and sweet-scented broom, clothes the rugged flanks and steep declivities of the mountain, if such it may be called. The winding
THE ALAMEDA.
alleys creep in and out of masses of rose-trees and flowering geraniums; while tall pines, huge mimosas, arbutes, and pepper-plants spread a pleasant shade around. Through these thick screens of verdure a glimpse is here and there obtained of the mast-studded harbour, and the shining waters of the Bay, and the azure hills beyond. Is it possible to conceive of a spot more enchanting? The great defect in landscapes on the border of the sea is, as a French writer remarks, the want of greensward and leafy trees. But here these charms are combined; the richness of a beautiful vegetation blends with the transparency of a sunny sky, and the sapphire light of a sea like that of Naples, to form a picture of supreme attraction.
The town of Gibraltar is of limited extent, and the peculiar nature of its position prevents it from enlarging itself in any direction. Its two or three long streets run parallel to the sea-lines, and are intersected at right angles by numerous narrow squalid lanes, which ascend the precipitous acclivity by flights of rugged steps, called “Ramps.” The general aspect of the town reminds the visitor of Landport; but these lanes resemble the wynds in the “Old Town” of Edinburgh. “Toilsomely clambering to the top of the Ramps, we find,” says Bartlett, “still narrower lanes parallel to those below, resting on the bare hillside, but the houses having a fine look-out, and being often half buried in shrubbery and creepers, and peeping down upon the confused bee-hive below. Crouching thus, as it does, at the foot of the hot and arid rock, with its streets and alleys closely jammed together for want of room to expand, the town of Gibraltar is in summer excessively close and oppressive, and at no time can it be, we should imagine, an agreeable place of residence; for not only are its habitations confusedly huddled together, but for the most part exceedingly ill built and unsuitable to the climate.” This unfavourable opinion, however, is not confirmed by every traveller; and, as a matter of fact, for some months in the year the climate of Gibraltar is anything but unhealthy.
Byron called Valletta, the principal port of Malta, a “military hothouse;” but the term is much more applicable to Gibraltar, where the principal ornaments are cannon, and half the population soldiers or soldiers’ wives, or soldiers’ purveyors. If not the pomp and circumstance of war, at least its more prosaic side is everywhere visible. At every corner parties are relieving guard; the patrol pace the crowded streets to the ear-splitting music of fife and drum; watches are regulated, morning and evening, by gun-fire; the gates are closed at a certain hour; peaceable amateurs sketching bits of the Rock are ferociously challenged by suspicious sentinels; you cannot move a step without abundant evidence that you are in a fortified town, where reigns an unrelaxing vigilance. Yet it is not without its semi-humourous, semi-picturesque aspects, such as Thackeray has drawn with his accustomed distinctness. Suppose, he says, all the nations of the earth to send suitable ambassadors to represent them at Wapping or Portsmouth Point, with each under its own national signboard and language, its appropriate house of call, and your imagination may figure the Main Street of Gibraltar. There the Jews predominate, and Moors abound; and from the “Jolly Sailor,” or the brave “Horse Marine,” where the people of our nation are drinking British beer and gin, you hear choruses of “Garryowen” or “The girl I left behind me;” while through the lattices of the Spanish wine-shops come the clatter of castanets and the jingle and moan of Spanish guitars and ditties. “It is a curious sight at evening, this thronged street, with the people, in a hundred different costumes, bustling to and fro under the coarse glare of the lamps: swarthy Moors, in white or crimson robes; dark Spanish smugglers in tufted hats, with gay silk handkerchiefs round their heads; fuddled seamen from men-of-war or merchantmen; porters, Gallician or Genoese; and, at every few minutes’ interval, little squads of soldiers tramping to relieve guard at some one of the innumerable posts in the town.”
Thackeray refers in a similar strain to the Garden, or Alameda, which we have just described. It is, he owns, and he might well have said more, a beautiful walk; of which the vegetation has been as laboriously cared for as the tremendous fortifications which flank it on either side. On the one hand rises the vast Rock, with its interminable works of defence; on the other shines Gibraltar Bay, out on which, from the terraces, immense cannon are perpetually looking, surrounded by plantations of cannon-balls and beds of bomb-shells, sufficient, one would think, to blow away the whole peninsula. The horticultural and military mixture is, he continues, very queer: here and there temples and rustic summer-seats have been raised in the garden, but from