Round the Wonderful World

by G. E. Mitton

Coming up on deck we find the scene glorious. The sun is shining out of a cloudless sky on to a sea so blue that it gives one a sort of pleasant pain to look at its loveliness. The air is brilliant, as if we were living at the heart of a crystal. The ship is stealing along so silently and gently she hardly seems to move, and then she comes to anchor in a bay that seems to be surrounded on all sides with hills. Some of these hills, lying rather far away, gleam white in the sunshine; they are part of the great continent of Africa, and so, though it is only in the distance, we have set eyes on our first new continent. Towering up before us, with mighty bulk, is an immense rock, rising bald and rather awful into the pure sky. Near the summit its sides are completely bare, seamed by great gashes, and broken by masses of rock that look as if they might crash down at any moment. Apes live up there, wild mischievous creatures, who descend to steal from the orchards below, but are so shy that they are hardly ever seen of men. They are of a kind called Barbary apes, only found elsewhere in Africa; and it is thought that perhaps, many ages ago, Europe was joined to Africa at this point, and that when a great convulsion occurred which broke the two asunder and let the water flow through the Straits of Gibraltar some of the apes may have been left on this side, where their descendants still are, sundered for ever from their kinsfolk by the strip of sea.

About the base of the rock is a little town running up the hill and brightened by many trees—this is Gibraltar itself, one of the most famous places in the world. For this alone it is well worth while to come round by sea.

A BARBARY APE.

Anyone can see at a glance why it is so important. That little strait, about a dozen miles across, is the only natural entrance by water into the Mediterranean Sea, which lies all along the south of Europe. At the other end men have had to cut a way out by means of a canal. If ever European nations were at war, the nation which held Gibraltar would be able to prevent the ships of other countries from getting into or coming out of the Mediterranean. It could smash them with big guns if they tried, or blow them up. So that even if the country on each side were flat this would still be an important place; but nature has made here a precipitous rock, which is a natural fortress, and by great good luck this belongs, not to the country of Spain, of which it is the southern part, but to Great Britain. To find out how this is so you must go to history. Gibraltar has been held by Britain for many years now, and though the King of Spain is very friendly with Britain, and has married an English princess, I think he must sometimes feel a little sore over Gibraltar.

Lying in a basin on one side of us are some of our own powerful and ugly ironclads, like bulldogs guarding the fort, and on the other side are ships of all nations, come on peaceful trading errands or for pleasure cruises, including a dainty little white French yacht that looks like a butterfly which has just alighted.

We go ashore in a launch and are met on the quay by a medley of strange folk and a great clamour of voices! The men and women are nearly all dark skinned and black eyed, and yet they are all speaking English after a fashion. A woman offers us a curiously twisted openwork basket of oranges, with the deep-coloured fruit gleaming through the meshes, a man implores us to take some of the absurdly neat little nosegays he has made up, picture postcards are thrust under our noses, and cabmen wildly beseech us to patronise their open vehicles. It is a brilliant scene, full of life and colour and warmth, and the people all seem good-humoured and jolly.

Sitting huddled up against a wall, with some odd-looking bundles beside them, are a group of very poor people; they are emigrants about to leave their own country for South America. Out there in the bay is the emigrant ship, and dipping toward her over the open water are several boats loaded down to the gunwale going out; others have reached her side and the people swarm up like flies. This group on the quay are awaiting their turn. A small boy and girl are rolling about in the sun like little lizards and laughing gaily. The little girl is called Maria and is about ten years old; she has a tiny scarlet shawl pinned across her chest, and her bright black hair shines in the sunlight; in her wee brown ears are little gilt ear-rings, and she is hugging tightly to her bosom a large and very gaudy doll. It is not exactly the kind of doll an English child would care about, because its face is the face of an idiot and it is made of some sort of poor composition stuff; its clothes are tawdry material of tinsel and stiff muslin, and are pinned on by pins with coloured glass heads glittering in the sun. Maria thinks it lovely and shrieks if her young brother Sebastian lays a finger on it. She is on the point of leaving her own country, perhaps for ever, to travel for thousands of miles to a land where everything is different from what she is used to; but she is as unconscious of this as if she were a little kitten, and as long as she can roll in the sunshine and hug her doll, the first she has ever possessed, the thought of the morrow does not trouble her soul.

Her home lies far away in the interior of Spain, and her parents have travelled to Gibraltar in carts and then in a marvellous thing called a train which made the children shriek with delight when it moved off without horses. Maria and Sebastian were brought up in a hovel with a mud floor, and only one room, shared with the donkey and the goat. They were never taught to obey, or to have their meals at regular hours, or to go to bed at night at a particular time; they ran in when they pleased, clamoured for something to eat or drink, or else fell down on a bundle of rags in the corner and were sound asleep in a moment. They often slept in the heat of the day and were up almost all night listening to a neighbour playing the guitar, or singing and rollicking with other children. Their usual drink was sour red wine made from grapes grown on the neighbouring hillsides after all the best juice had been already pressed out of them. This the peasants bought in immense bottles, swollen out below like little tubs, and cased in wicker-work with handles which made them easy to carry. In every hovel there was a bottle like this. To match it there was an enormous loaf of dark-coloured bread, made flat and round as a cart-wheel or a small table; bits of this were chopped off as required, and when Sebastian and Maria cried out they were hungry they had a lump of bread and sip of wine given to them, and then they became quite happy again. Sometimes they had olives with their bread, or chestnuts, or a salad made from herbs growing by the roadsides, and they had oranges very often and goat's milk cheese. On high days and festival days they had sometimes very thin hot cabbage soup out of a great black pot that boiled over a few sticks; they dipped their bread into it or supped it up out of large flat wooden spoons, wrinkling their little noses meantime because it was so hot. A grand treat was a purple or crimson pomegranate given by a kindly neighbour.

When Maria was about seven the whole family moved into a town where the narrow streets were always dark between the tall thin houses. It was much more exciting here than in the country; there was always something to see, and in the evenings the whole place was like a bazaar with people coming and going, and shows and entertainments open half the night. On festival days the streets were gay with lanterns, and festoons of coloured paper and flags were waved until the children thought it like heaven.