A balcony, or rather verandah, from which could be seen the bay and the opposite coast of Spain, ran the whole length of the house on the upper floor, in front of the drawing-room windows, and overhung the little garden, a walled enclosure in which the trees and flowering shrubs had grown to such a size that flowers could no longer be cultivated beneath their shade, and which was therefore only used for various pets. Here was kept the tame leopard in 1858, and later several mouflons and gazelles; here, too, young wild boar and porcupines had their day.
In his little book, In Spain, Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish poet and writer of fairy tales, who was one of Sir John’s guests in November, 1862, wrote of the old Legation:—
We were here in an old flat-roofed building with a balcony hanging over the garden surrounded by high walls. Within all was so pleasantly and well arranged. The stairs and corridors were adorned with skins of wild animals, collections of Moorish pottery, spears, sabres, and other weapons, together with rich saddles and horse-trappings, presents which Sir John had received on his visits to the Emperor of Morocco.
In the usual sitting-room—which was adjacent to a not insignificant library—there were, among many paintings and engravings, more than one well-known place and portrait belonging to my Danish home. The splendid silver vase, a gift from the Swedish King Oscar, stood in one corner, and in another a magnificent porcelain vase, presented to Sir John by the Danish King Christian VIII. Every window-blind was of Copenhagen manufacture, with painted views of the palaces of Fredensborg, Frederiksberg, and Rosenberg. I might have fancied myself in a Danish room—in Denmark—and yet I was in another quarter of the globe.
In this house there was every English convenience, even to a fireplace; and from the balcony we looked out upon the little garden where oleander bloomed amidst the variegated bell-flowers I had seen in the churchyard at Gibraltar. A large palm-tree raised its lofty head in the clear moonlit air, and imparted to the view its foreign appearance.
The sea, with its white-crested waves, was rolling near; and the lighthouse at Tarifa glimmered upon us from the coast of Europe as we sat, a happy circle, in the handsomely-furnished, comfortable room. Sir John told us about the country and the people; he told us also about his journey to Morocco (Marákesh), and of his residence in Constantinople.
The room used by Sir John as an office during the last twenty years of his life was on the opposite side of the court to that occupied by the dwelling-house. Outside it was a little railed balcony whence he was wont to interview the peasants and poor petitioners who came to see him. They would come to entreat his intercession in cases of cruelty or extortion on the part of the Moorish officials, and, even more frequently, his friendly arbitration was sought, sometimes by individuals, but not seldom by rival villages or even tribes who desired an impartial judgment on their differences. His decision in such cases was accepted as just and final, for his keen sympathy with the peasantry and his love for an open-air life were among the many ties that bound him to the people he had learnt to love and who held him in such high respect. The country-folk knew that in him they had a kindly friend, always ready in bad times to lend them small sums of money, to be repaid when the harvest was gathered—and rarely did they fail to refund such loans.
Residence in the town in summer-time, though not so unhealthy then as now, was very trying for delicate persons and young children. Consequently, for many years, Sir John sent his wife and little girls to England to spend there the summer months: his son being then a schoolboy at Eton. When the girls were older, and better able to withstand the climate, several summers were spent at a villa which had formerly belonged to Mr. Carstensen, Lady Hay’s father, by whom the surrounding grounds had been beautifully laid out. But in 1848, when Sir John bought the villa, the garden had fallen into a neglected state. It had never recovered from the ravages committed in 1844, when the French bombardment destroyed the greenhouses and the tribes completed the work of destruction by despoiling and wrecking both house and garden. Still, it was a lovely spot. The house was originally a small Moorish building consisting of a vine-covered courtyard surrounded on three sides by long, low rooms. To these Mr. Carstensen added several bedrooms and a large studio. Near the villa stood, and still stands, a tower, constructed, it is said, by Basha Hamed, the original owner of the garden, and one of the warrior saints who fought against the English and is buried on the hill of the ‘Mujáhidin.’
This garden Sir John had named ‘The Wilderness,’ for such it was when he bought it. But to the Moors it was known as ‘Senya el Hashti,’ or Spring of Hashti, from the water, which, rising in the garden, is conducted through it by an ancient aqueduct. Charming though this garden was, the irrigation necessary in the dry season for the groves of orange and lemon trees rendered it unhealthy as a summer residence. Sir John therefore decided on building himself a house on Jebel Kebír, known to-day to residents as the ‘Hill.’ For this purpose he bought a piece of ground from a former American Consul, to which however he later added largely. The site of the house was pitched upon by a lucky chance. Sir John was hunting on the ‘Hill’ with the gun, and an old boar being brought to bay in a cave under an overhanging rock, he crawled into the thicket and dispatched the beast where it stood fighting the dogs, and afterwards clambered round to the top of the cliff which overhung the cave. Much struck with the position and the view this spot commanded, extending from Trafalgar to Gibraltar and along the African coast to Jebel Musa, he determined, if possible, to establish his summer residence there. There, in 1861, he built ‘Ravensrock,’ naming it from a rock standing above the house which is known to the country people as ‘Hajara el Ghaghab,’ or, ‘rock of ravens,’ because these birds assemble there at certain seasons before flying to their roosting-place in the trees below the house.
The plan of spending the hot season only three miles from Tangier, but at a height of 500 feet above the sea, and with a northern exposure, answered so well that for some years Sir John and his family only left Tangier every second or third year to go home on leave or to travel on the Continent. Here came many an invalid from Gibraltar to endeavour to shake off the obstinate Rock fever. Here also gathered the friends who joined in hunting or shooting expeditions, which, in the hot season, were undertaken at a very early hour, so that the sportsmen might rest throughout the heat of the day in some shady spot and resume their sport in the cool of the evening before riding home late at night. Sometimes, perhaps, they would sit out by night in the grounds, or in the adjoining woods by the melon-patch of a villager, to watch for boar in hopes of shooting one, and thus saving him from an ignominious death in a trap or noose set by the peasants to protect their crops from the greedy ravages of the pig.