Welcome to mgsanchez.net

2009-07-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

Elephant Yard, Road leading to the Amber Fort, Jaipur, Rajesthan

2009-07-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

View of a market with the Jami Masjid Mosque in background, Delhi

2009-07-15T10:03:00.001-07:00

Man leading an elephant on the main road, Cochin, Kerala, India

2009-07-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Standing in front of the Taj Mahal, India, with an onlooking man

2009-07-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

Children waving at our houseboat on the Keralan backwaters, India

2009-07-15T08:39:00.001-07:00

Walking back from the Chinese fishing nets area, Cochin, India

2009-07-15T08:39:00.000-07:00

Man balancing on the end of one of the fishing nets, Cochin, India

2009-07-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Men taking idols to the water during Ganpati Festival, Bombay, India

2009-07-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

Inside one of the lower rooms in the City Palace, Udaipur, India

2009-07-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

2009-07-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

2009-07-15T06:28:00.002-07:00

2009-07-15T06:28:00.001-07:00

2009-07-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

Kuala Lumpur and Malacca, Malaysia

2008-08-18T04:44:00.000-07:00

Chinese Temple, Malacca 1

Lady with fan, Malacca

Colonial House, Malacca

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur

Maldives

2008-08-18T04:41:00.000-07:00

Kurumba island 1

Kurumba island 2

Kurumba island 3

Kurumba island 4

Houses from the sea

Sailing down the Keralan Backwaters

2008-08-18T04:09:00.000-07:00

Mauritius

2008-08-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

Mauritian countryside

Preybere Beach

Coastline

View from Preybere

Port Louis

Hong Kong

2008-08-18T03:51:00.000-07:00

Nick and Sarah

Hong Kong city 1

Hong Kong city 2

View from Victoria Peak

The famous Hong Kong Skyline

Dubai

2008-08-18T03:49:00.000-07:00

Dune Safari

Camel Close-up

Setting sun

Bangkok

2008-08-18T03:38:00.000-07:00

Bangkok street

Temple and boat

Temple and boat 2

River House

Inside auto rickshaw (scanned)

Sydney and Blue Mountains, 2004

2008-08-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

Sydney Harbour

Sydney from the sea

Sydney Opera House 1

Blue Mountains

Petra, Jordan

2008-08-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

View from a horse-driven carriage

Relaxing next to the Roman capitals

Adolescent tour guides with donkeys

Standing in front of the cliffs

Riding up to the entrance

Beijing

2008-08-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

Temple of Hevenly Delight, Beijin (video still)

On the way to the Forbidden City, Beijing (video still)

Outside the Forbidden City (video still)

View from the Great Wall (video still)

On the Great Wall (video still)

Almaty and surroundings, Kazakhstan

2008-08-18T03:12:00.000-07:00

Street wedding party, Almaty

War memorial, Almaty

Uzbek restaurant, Almaty

Chimbulak, Almaty

Charyn Canyon

Iceland

2008-08-18T03:07:00.000-07:00

Outside the blue lagoon

Waterfall

Jokusarlon 1

Jokusarlon 2

Some Literary Reminisces

2008-08-18T02:59:00.001-07:00

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - ‘A Letter to Daniel Stuart, at anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar’ (1804)
My dear Stuart, We dropped anchor half a mile from the Landing Place of the Rock of Gibraltar on Thursday afternoon, between 4 and 5: a most prosperous Voyage of eleven Days…The day before yesterday I saw a Letter from Barcelona, giving an account that the Swift Cutter with Dispatches to Lord Nelson had been boarded by a French Privateer & the Dispatches taken, her Captain having been killed in the first moments of the Engagement: and the same Letter conveyed the still more melancholy tidings of the utter loss of the Hindostan by Fire off the coast of Spain, between this place & Toulon. All the crew were saved but 4 lost. I repeated this Intelligence at Griffith’s Hotel on the Rock—a naval officer was present, who appeared thunderstruck, evidently much affected. He had come to Gibraltar in the Hindostan [and] told me that the Captain had shewn him her Invoice, chiefly of naval Stores of all kinds for Malta... And now of myself… I had hoped that I should have written a good deal: & wrote out with much pomp of promise a plan for the employment of my Time — to write in the morning, to fag Italian after dinner (we always dine at one) & to try to finish my Christabel in the quiet hours between that & bed time — but alas! alas! I have scarcely been able even to write a Letter: and all my reading has been confined to half a dozen Dialogues at the end of the Italian Grammar. The cruel Rocking took away from my hard Bed — one hard Mattress upon boards — all sense of support: I seemed to lie on a wave, and though it did not make me sea-sick, yet it evidently diseased my Stomach, for I [have ate] no morsel of solid animal Food till Wednesday last. The Rocking ceased — the weather was heavenly; & my natural Appetite returned. I took out with me some of the finest Wine, & of the oldest Rum & Brandy in the Kingdom; but excepting a single pint of Wine mulled at two different times, & both doses ejected or rather ejaculated, instantly in status quo, I tasted nothing stronger than Lemonade during our whole Voyage…. Since we anchored, I have passed nearly the whole of each day in scrambling about on the back of the Rock among the Monkeys: I am a match for them in climbing, but in Hops & flying Leaps they beat me. You sometimes see 30 or 40 together of these our poor Relations: & you may be a month on the Rock, & go to the back every day & not see one.— O my dear Friend! it is a most interesting place this — a Rock, which thins as it rises up so that you can sit astraddle on almost any part of it’s summit... Above the Town little gardens & neat small Houses are scattered here & there, wherever they can force a bit of gardenable ground; & in these are Poplars, with a profusion of Geraniums, & other Flowers unknown to me: & their fences are most commonly [adorned with] that strange vegetable Monster, the prickly Aloe, it’s leaves resembling the head of a Battledore, or the wooden wings of a church Cherub, & one Leaf growing out of another... Under the Lion’s Tail is Europa Point, which is full of Gardens & pleasant Trees — but the highest Third of the mountain is a Heap of Rocks, with the Palmitoes growing in vast quantities in their Interstices—with many flowering weeds, very often peeping out of the small Holes or Slits in the body of the Rock, just as if they were growing in a bottle… I could fill a fresh Sheet with a description of the singular faces, dresses, manners, &c, &c, of the Spaniards, Moors, Jews (who have here a peculiar Dress, resembling a College Dress), Greeks, Italians, English &c, that meet in the hot crowded Streets of the Town; or walk under the Aspen Poplars which form an Exchange in the very center. But words would do nothing. I am sure, that any young man, who has a Turn for character-painting might pass a year on the Rock with infinite advantage!

**

Benjamin Disraeli, Two Letters to his Father (1830)
Gibraltar, July 1, 1830
My dear Father
I write to you from a country where the hedges consist of aloes all in blossom - fourteen, sixteen feet high. Conceive the contrast to our beloved and beechy Bucks. I say nothing of geraniums and myrtles, bowers of oranges and woods of olives, though the occasional palm should not be forgotten for its great novelty and uncommon grace. We arrived here after a very brief and very agreeable passage, passed in very agreeable society… This Rock is a wonderful place, with a population infinitely diversified. Moors with costumes radiant as a rainbow or an Eastern melodrama; Jews with gaberdines and skull-caps; Genoese, Highlanders, and Spaniards, whose dress is as picturesque as that of the sons of Ivor. There are two public libraries — the Garrison Library, with more than 12.000 volumes; and the Merchants’, with upwards of half that number. In the Garrison are all your works, even the last edition of the Literary Character; in the Merchants the greater part. Each possesses a copy of another book, supposed to be written by a member of our family, and which is looked upon at Gibraltar as one of the masterpieces of the nineteenth century. You may feel their intellectual pulse from this. At first I apologised and talked of youthful blunders and all that, really being ashamed; but finding them, to my astonishment, sincere, and fearing they were stupid enough, to adopt my last opinion, I shifted my position just in time, looked very grand, and passed myself off for a child of the Sun, like the Spaniard in Peru.

We were presented to the Governor, Sir George Don, a general and G.C.B., a very fine old gentleman, of the Windsor Terrace school, courtly, almost regal in his manner, paternal, almost officious in his temper, a sort of mixture of Lord St. Vincent and the Prince de Ligne, English in his general style, but highly polished and experienced in European society. His palace, the Government House, is an old convent, and one of the most delightful residences I know; with a garden under the superintendence of Lady Don, full of rare exotics, with a beautiful terrace over the sea, a berceau of vines, and other delicacies which would quite delight you… He behaved to us with great kindness, asked us to dine, and gave us a route himself for an excursion to the Sierra da Ronda, a savage mountain district, abounding in the most beautiful scenery and bugs!

We returned from this excursion, which took us a week, yesterday, greatly gratified. The country in which we travelled is a land entirely of robbers and smugglers. They commit no personal violence, but lay you on the ground and clean out your pockets. If you have less than sixteen dollars they shoot you; that is the tariff, and is a loss worth risking. I took care to have very little more, and no baggage which I could not stow in the red bag which my mother remembers making for my pistols… You will wonder how we managed to extract pleasure from a life which afforded us hourly peril for our purses and perhaps for our lives, which induced fatigue greater than I ever experienced, for here are no roads, and we were never less than eight hours a day on horseback, picking our way through a course which can only be compared to the steep bed of an exhausted cataract, and with so slight a prospect of attaining for a reward either food or rest.— I will tell you. The country was beautiful, the novelty of the life was great, and above all we had Brunet. What a man! Born in Italy of French parents, he has visited, as the captain of a privateer, all countries of the Mediterranean: Egypt, Turkey, Syria. Early in life, as valet to Lord Hood, he was in England, and has even been at Guinea. After fourteen years’ cruising he was taken by the Algerines, and was in various parts of Barbary for five or six years, and at last he obtains his liberty and settles at Gibraltar, where he becomes cazador to the Governor for he is, among his universal accomplishments, a celebrated shot. He can speak all languages but English, of which he makes a sad affair — even Latin, and he hints at a little Greek. He is fifty, but light as a butterfly and gay as a bird; in person not unlike English at Lyme, if you can imagine so insipid a character with a vivacity that never flags, and a tongue that never rests. Brunet did everything, remedied every inconvenience, and found an expedient for every difficulty. Never did I live so well as among these wild mountains of Andalusia, so exquisite is his cookery. Seriously, he is an artist of the first magnitude, and used to amuse himself by giving us some very exquisite dish among these barbarians; for he affects a great contempt of the Spaniards, and an equal admiration for the Moors. Whenever we complained he shrugged his shoulders with a look of ineffable contempt, exclaiming, ‘Nous no sommes pas en Barbarie!’ Recalling our associations with that word and country, it was superbly ludicrous.

At Castellar we slept in the very haunt of the banditti, among the good fellows of Jose Maria, the Captain Rolando of this part, and were not touched. In fact, we were not promising prey, though picturesque enough in our appearance. Imagine M. and myself on two little Andalusian mountain horses with long tails and jennet necks, followed by a larger beast of burthen with our baggage, and the inevitable Brunet cocked upon its neck with a white hat and slippers, lively, shrivelled and noisy as a pea dancing upon tin. Our Spanish guide, tall, and with a dress excessively brodé and covered with brilliant buttons, walking by the side and occasionally adding to the burthen of our sumpter steed. The air of the mountains, the rising sun, the rising appetite, the variety of picturesque persons and things we, met, and the ending danger, made a delightful life, and had it not been for the great enemy I should have given myself up entirely to the magic of the life; but that spoiled all. It is not worse; sometimes I think it lighter about the head, but the palpitation about the heart greatly increases, otherwise my health is wonderful. Never have I been better; but what use is this when the end of all existence is debarred me? I say no more upon this melancholy subject, by which I am ever and infinitely depressed, and often most so when the world least imagines it; but to complain is useless, and to endure almost impossible; but existence is certainly less irksome in the mild distraction of this various life.

Tell my mother that as it is the fashion among the dandies of this place — that is, the officers, for there are no others — not to wear waistcoats in the morning, her new studs come into fine play, and maintain my reputation of being a great judge of costume, to the admiration and envy of many subalterns. I have also the fame of being the first who ever passed the Straits with two canes, a morning and an evening cane. I change my cane as the gun fires, and hope to carry them both onto Cairo. It is wonderful the effect these magical wands produce. I owe to them even more attention than to being the supposed author of—what is it ? —I forget!

These Straits, by-the-bye — that is, the passage for the last ten miles or so to Gib, between the two opposite coasts of Africa and Europe, with the ocean for a river, and the shores all mountains — is by far the sublimest thing I have yet seen… When I beg you to write, I mean my beloved Sa, because I know you think it a bore; but do all as you like. To her and to my dearest mother a thousand kisses. Tell Ralph I have not forgotten my promise of an occasional letter; and my dear pistol-cleaner, that he forgot to oil the locks, which rusted in conveyance. I thank the gods daily I am freed of Louis Clement, who would have been an expense and a bore. Tell [Washington] Irving he has left a golden name in Spain. Few English visit Gibraltar. Tell Lord Mahon, inquiries made after his health.
Adieu, my beloved padre.
Your most affectionate son,
B. D.

Cadiz, July 14, 1830.
My dear Father
We passed a very pleasant week at Gibraltar, after our return from Ronda. We dined with the Governor at his cottage at Europa, a most charming pavilion, and met a most agreeable party. Lady Don was well enough to dine with us, and did me the honour of informing me that I was the cause of the exertion, which, though of course, a fib, was nevertheless flattering. She is, though very old, without exception one of the most agreeable personages that I ever met, excessively acute and piquante, with an aptitude of detecting character, and a tact in assuming it, very remarkable. To listen to her you would think you were charming away the hour with a blooming beauty in Mayfair; and, though excessively infirm, her eye is so brilliant and so full of moquerie that you quite forgot her wrinkles. Altogether the scene very much resembled a small German Court. There was his Excellency in uniform covered with orders, exactly like the old Grand Duke of Darmstadt, directing everything; his wife the clever Prussian Princess that shared his crown; the aides-de-camp made excellent chamberlains, and the servants in number and formality quite equalled those of a Residenz. The repast was really elegant and recherche even for this curious age. Sir George will yet head his table and yet carve, recommend a favourite dish, and deluge you with his summer drink, half champagne and half lemonade.

After dinner Lady Don rode out with the very pretty wife of Colonel Considine, and the men dispersed in various directions. It was the fate of Meredith and myself to be lionised to some cave or other with Sir George. What a scene, and what a procession! First came two grooms on two Barbs; then a carriage with four horses; at the window at which H. E. sits, a walking footman, and then an outrider, all at a funeral pace. We were directed to meet our host at the cave, ten minutes’ walk. During this time Sir G. tries one of the Arabians, but at the gentlest walk, and the footman changes his position in consequence to his side; but it is windy, our valiant but infirm friend is afraid of being blown off, and when he reaches the point of destination, we find him again in the carriage. In spite of his infirmities he will get out to lionise; but before he disembarks, he changes his foraging cap for a full general’s cock with a plume as big as the Otranto one; and this because the hero will never be seen in public in undress, although we were in a solitary cave looking over the ocean, and inhabited only by monkeys. The cave is shown, and we all get in the carriage, because he is sure we are tired; the foraging cap is again assumed, and we travel back to the Cottage, Meredith, myself, the Governor, and the cocked hat, each in a seat. In the evening he has his rubber, which he never misses, and is surprised I do not play ‘the only game for gentlemen! You should play; learn.’ However, I preferred the conversation of his agreeable lady, although the charms of Mrs. Considine were puzzling, and I was very much like Hercules between — you know the rest.

I am sorry to say my hair is coming off, just at the moment it had attained the highest perfection, and was universally mistaken for a wig, so that I am obliged to let the women pull it to satisfy their curiosity. Let me know what my mother thinks. There are no wigs here that I could wear. Pomade and all that is quite a delusion. Somebody recommends me cocoa-nut oil, which I could get here; but suppose it turns it grey or blue or green! I made a very pleasant acquaintance at Gibraltar, Sir Charles Gordon, a brother of Lord Aberdeen, and Colonel of the Royal Highlanders. He was absent during my first visit. He is not unlike his brother in appearance, but the frigidity of the Gordons has expanded into urbanity, instead of sub- siding into sullenness — in short, a man with a warm heart though a cold manner, and exceedingly amusing, with the reputation, of being always silent. As contraries sometimes agree, we became exceedingly friendly.

The Judge Advocate at Gibraltar is that Mr. Baron Field who once wrote a book, and whom all the world took for a noble, but it turned out that Baron was to him what Thomas is to other men. He pounced upon me, said he had seen you at Murray’s, first man of the day, and all that, and evidently expected to do an amazing bit of literature; but I found him a bore, and vulgar, a Storks without breeding, consequently I gave him a lecture on canes, which made him stare, and he has avoided me ever since. The truth is, he wished to saddle his mother upon me for a compagnon de voyage, whom I discovered in the course of half an hour to be both deaf, dumb, and blind, but yet more endurable than the noisy, obtrusive, jargonic judge, who is a true lawyer, ever illustrating the obvious, explaining the evident, and expatiating on the common-place…

I have met here Mr. Frank Hall Standish, once a celebrated dandy, and who wrote a life of Voltaire, you remember. We have heard of the King’s death, which is the destruction of my dress waistcoats. I truly grieve. News arrived last night of the capture of Algiers, but all this will reach you before my letter. My general health is excellent. I have never had a moment’s illness since I left home, not counting an occasional indigestion, but I mean no fever and so on. The great enemy, I think, is weaker, but the palpitation at the heart the reverse. I find wherever I go plenty of friends and nothing but attention.
Your most affectionate son,
B. D.

**

Sir Walter Scott's Journal
November 14, 1831
The horizon is this morning full of remembrances. Cape St. Vincent, Cape Spartel, Tarifa, Trafalgar - all spirit-stirring sounds, are within our ken, and recognised with enthusiasm both by the old sailors whose memory can reinvest them with their terrors, and by the naval neophytes who hope to emulate the deeds of their fathers. Even a non-combatant like myself feels his heart beat faster and fuller, though it is only with the feeling of the unworthy boast of the substance in the fable, nos poma natamus.

I begin to ask myself, Do I feel any symptoms of getting better from the climate?-which is delicious, - and I cannot reply with the least consciousness of certainty; I cannot in reason expect it should be otherwise: the failure of my limbs has been gradual, and it cannot be expected that an infirmity which at least a year’s bad weather gradually brought on should diminish before a few mild and serene days, but I think there is some change to the better; I certainly write easier and my spirits are better. The officers compliment me on this, and I think justly. The difficulty will be to abstain from working hard, but we will try. I wrote to Mr. Cadell to-day, and will send my letter ashore to be put into Gibraltar with the officer who leaves us at that garrison. In the evening we saw the celebrated fortress, which we had heard of all our lives, and which there is no possibility of describing well in words, though the idea I had formed of it from prints, panoramas, and so forth, proved not very inaccurate. Gibraltar, then, is a peninsula having a tremendous precipice on the Spanish side - that is, upon the north, where it is united to the mainland by a low slip of land called the neutral ground. The fortifications which rise on the rock are innumerable, and support each other in a manner accounted a model of modern art; the northern face of the rock itself is hewn into tremendous subterranean batteries called the hall of Saint George, and so forth, mounted with guns of a large calibre. But I have heard it would be difficult to use them, from the effect of the report on the artillerymen. The west side of the fortress is not so precipitous as the north, and it is on this it has been usually assailed. It bristles with guns and batteries, and has at its northern extremity the town of Gibraltar, which seems from the sea a thriving place, and from thence declines gradually to Cape Europa, where there is a great number of remains of old caverns and towers, formerly the habitation or refuge of the Moors. At a distance, and curving into a bay, lie Algeciras, and the little Spanish town of Saint Roque, where the Spanish lines were planted during the siege. From Europa Point the eastern frontier of Gibraltar runs pretty close to the sea, and arises in a perpendicular face, and it is called the back of the rock. No thought could be entertained of attacking it, although every means were used to make the assault as general as possible. The efforts sustained by such extraordinary means as the floating batteries were entirely directed against the defences on the west side, which, if they could have been continued for a few days with the same fury with which they commenced, must have worn out the force of the garrison. The assault had continued for several hours without success on either side, when a private man of the artillery, his eye on the floating batteries, suddenly called with ecstasy, “She burns, by G-!”; and first that vessel and then others were visibly discovered to be on fire, and the besiegers’ game was decidedly up.

We stood into the Bay of Gibraltar and approached the harbour firing a gun and hoisting a signal for a boat: one accordingly came off - a man-of-war’s boat - but refused to have any communication with us on account of the quarantine, so we can send no letters ashore, and after some pourparlers, Mr. L-, instead of joining his regiment, must remain on board. We learned an unpleasant piece of news. There has been a tumult at Bristol and some rioters shot, it is said fifty or sixty. I would flatter myself that this is rather good news, since it seems to be no part of a formed insurrection, but an accidental scuffle in which the mob have had the worst, and which, like Tranent, Manchester, and Bonnymoor, have always had the effect of quieting the people and alarming men of property. The Whigs will find it impossible to permit men to be plundered by a few blackguards called by them the people, and education and property probably will recover an ascendancy which they have only lost by faintheartedness.

We backed out of the Bay by means of a current to the eastward, which always runs thence, admiring in our retreat the lighting up the windows in the town and the various barracks or country seats visible on the rock. Far as we are from home, the general lighting up of the windows in the evening reminds us we are still in merry old England, where in reverse of its ancient law of the curfew, almost every individual, however humble his station, takes as of right a part of the evening for enlarging the scope of his industry or of his little pleasures. He trims his lamp to finish at leisure some part of his task, which seems in such circumstances almost voluntary, while his wife prepares the little meal which is to be its legitimate reward. But this happy privilege of English freemen has ceased. One happiness it is, they will soon learn their error.

November 15, 1831
I had so much to say about Gibraltar that I omitted all mention of the Strait, and more distant shores of Spain and Barbary, which form the extreme of our present horizon; they are highly interesting. A chain of distant mountains sweep round Gibraltar, bold peaked, well defined, and deeply indented; the most distinguishable points occasionally garnished with an old watch-tower to afford protection against a corsair. The mountains seemed like those of the first formation, liker, in other words, to the Highlands than those of the South of Scotland. The chains of hills in Barbary are of the same character, but more lofty and much more distant, being, I conceive, a part of the celebrated ridge of Atlas.

Gibraltar is one of the pillars of Hercules, Ceuta on the Moorish side is well known to be the other; to the westward of a small fortress garrisoned by the Spaniards is the Hill of Apes, the corresponding pillar to Gibraltar. There is an extravagant tradition that there was once a passage under the sea from the one fortress to the other, and that an adventurous governor, who puzzled his way to Ceuta and back again, left his gold watch as a prize to him who had the courage to go to seek it.

Kathmandu, Nepal

2008-08-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

Street seller, Kathmandu

Three 'holy' men, Kathmandu

Filming the guide at Pashupatti (scanned)

Flute Seller, Kathmandu

Cape Town

2008-08-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve

The Robertsons at the Cape of Good Hope

Photographers on Table Mountain

A South African Vineyard

Auckland

2008-08-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

Auckland City

North Shore

Piha Beach, Auckland, New Zealand

Moscow and Saint Petersburg

2008-08-18T02:38:00.000-07:00

Saint Basil's Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow

Communist party members, Moscow

Dvorcovaja Square, Saint Petersburg

Inside the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Hermitage Theatre, Saint Petersburg

Colombo, Sri Lanka

2008-08-18T02:28:00.000-07:00

Sitting by the seafront

Galle face Hotel, Colombo 1

Galle Face Hotel, Colombo 2

Taking a break

Pier, Colombo

A collection of eighteenth-century poems

2008-08-18T02:08:00.000-07:00

John Mawer, Liberty asserted: or, the siege of Gibraltar. A poem(1727)
John Mawer attended Trinity College, Cambridge before taking holy orders in 1727. An accomplished scholar and polyglot, he combined interests in poetry and bible study with a penchant for anti-Catholic pamphleteering. From the early 1730s onwards, he was involved in writing a supplement to Bishop Brian Walton’s polyglot Bible of 1657 – a lifelong project which sought to reconcile the Hebrew text with the Septuagint and which Mawer considered to be his most important scholarly work. A detailed account of the undertaking can be gleaned from his Epistle to the Earl of Oxford, published in York in 1732. He died on 18 November 1763 and was buried in Middleton Tyas. His long poem, Liberty asserted: or, the siege of Gibraltar. A poem. Written as an essay in the spirit of Lucan (1727), was published just after the Spanish siege of 1727.

When near advanc’d, th’ pow’rs of Spain rush on,
And vain in thought, already force the town.
Wedg’d foot to foot, th’ assailing Legions close,
Man bears on man, and these urge on to those:
Pikes lean on pikes, on armour armour’s shock’d,
Crests nod o’er crests, while side by side is lock’d:
They sweep the plain; in haste the ground devour!
Their hands a tempest, un-availing, pour
Upon the foe, and rain an idle show’r;
Essay of rage! When, like the lightning’s blaze,
The British Thunder its red wrath displays:
A storm of death upon the foe is blown,
And in an instant hosts are overthrown.
So Jove, when rebels storm’d his bright abode,
But thunder’d, and his foes confess’d the God.
Thus stunn’d, the Spaniards stand aloof with fear,
And less confiding the dreaded bastion dare.

But see how heav’n, with Albion’s rams does side,
While from the walls her foes are warmly ply’d;
As fiery fates in ruddy storms are thrown,
The burning soldiers in a deluge drown:
Relieving floods work thro’ each hostile mound,
And sap and sweep the breast-works to the ground.
While fires above the face of heav’n deform,
Torrents below the drench’d encampments storm.

**

Alexander Pennecuik, A Manifesto from the bold Sons of Britain, to the poor proud Spaniard besieging Gibraltar (1750)
Alexander Pennecuik was a nephew of the famous Scottish physician and writer of the same name. He appears to have been involved in the murder of the Laird of Boghall’s wife in 1721, although Pennecuik vigorously denied the accusation in A Gentleman’s Letter to the Laird of Boghall, the Day before his Execution (1721). He published Streams from Helicon, or, Poems on various subjects in 1720 and a second collection of verse entitled Flowers from Parnassus in 1726. He died in 1730, apparently of a drink-related disorder, and was buried in Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh. A collected edition of his poems, which included ‘A Manifesto from the bold Sons of Britain, to the poor proud Spaniard besieging Gibraltar,’ was published posthumously in 1750.

Dear bought Gibraltar, shall we part with thee,
And lose our vast Dominions of the Sea?
No, no, a British Brav’ry we display,
Like Log-wood you, or lazy Lumps of Clay.
Britons are stout as in the Days of Yore.
Ye Slaves, go sweat in Indian Mines for Ore,
To circulate through France and Britain’s Isle,
And when we see its golden Cheeks we’ll smile,
Say, here’s the rich Return of Britain’s Trade,
Which gives the proud and idle Drones their Bread.
The Annals of Eliza’s Reign do boast,
Your mad Armado danc’d upon our Coast,
A deadly Dance, when th’ Elements combin’d,
Fierce angry Waves, and Hurricanes of Wind,
And God Almighty in the Battle join’d.
The conqu’ring Floods did o’er your Vessels ride,
Swallow’d up Thousands each returning Tide.
From Namure’s Siege unto Almanza’s War,
The Glory of the Briton’s travell’d far.
Each Day our Heroes did fresh Laurels gain,
Climbing o’er Heaps, like Mountains, of the Slain
Which made the proud and haughty Spaniards bow:
For Heav’n was still our grand Confed’rate too.
Strength may push down all Nations to Disgrace,
Except the Angels and the British Race.
We fear no Beings, nor their Fury dread,
Save heav’nly Hosts and GOD upon their Head.
Britain, assisted by the Arms of France,
Shall to Madrid in solemn Pomp advance.
The wise, the warlike George prepares to go
And finish Peace, or give the killing Blow,
Success attend his Actions ev’ry where,
‘Till British Lions shall th’ Imperial Eagle tear.

**

Philip Thicknesse, Gibraltar delivered (1783)
Philip Thicknesse was born at Farthingoe, Northamptonshire, on 10 August, 1719. After a short spell in London as an apothecary’s apprentice, he abandoned his native country and settled into a semi-nomadic lifestyle that would take him to Georgia, Jamaica, France, Holland, Spain and Italy, and saw him earn a living as a publisher, soldier, gambler, writer, gardener and slave driver. A proud and fiercely argumentative man who married three times, Thicknesse wrote on a variety of topics (the medicinal properties of laudanum being one of his favourite subjects) and was not averse to defending his views with his fists. James Makittrick Adair, one of his lifelong antagonists, alleged that Thicknesse once sent a letter to one of his rivals ‘smeared in copious amounts of human excrement.’ Possibly his most accomplished literary composition was A Year’s Journey through France, and Part of Spain, published in two volumes in 1777 and commended by none other than Samuel Johnson. He died of a seizure, just outside Boulogne, on 19 November, 1792.

Where fair Iberia boasts her Southmost skies,
And Lybia’s shore at shortest distance lies,
A many-headed Rock its crest uprears,
A memorable Rock for length of years.
‘Twas Hercules’ strong hand first made the breach,
And tore it piece-meal from the Lybian beach.

Encroaching on the deep, its nether hand
Surveys the sea that leaves the middle-land,
Its right the Ocean’s ever-rolling pride
Controls, and bleaches in a double tide.
The mass immense still homeward seems to bend,
And long with kindred stone its stone to blend;
But Neptune, with his waters in his train,
Scours thro’ the Straits, and makes the effort vain.
How oft yon heights have heard the battle groan!
What slaughter hath that little Isthmus known!
How oft grown mighty with an heap of slain,
Circumfluous tides have purpled all the main!

Lo! on the Rocks, whose blood-disputed right,
Contending nations long engaged in fight,
Victorious Britain sits enshrined in stone;
Herself a rock, and not to be o’erthrown.
In vain Iberia’s chosen troops abound,
In vain her congregated fleets surround,
In vain may Gaul her ready force combine,
The kindred force of Bourbon’s vaunted line:
Whate’er their faithless poets may rehearse
Their force shall suffer shipwreck with their verse.
Here Anglia’s freeborn sons attend the fight,
Beneath a Chieftain of undaunted might;
Whom neither heat, not cold, nor want, can foil:
“Unconquer’d Lord of hunger and toil.”
Hail Eliott, hail, time-ever-honour’d sage!
Second to none in history’s fair page!

**

Joseph Palmer, The Siege of Gibraltar (1783)
Joseph Palmer was born in 1756 under the name of Joseph Budworth. He joined the Royal Manchester Volunteers shortly after turning twenty and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant within a few years. At the Great Siege of Gibraltar he was badly wounded and subsequently repatriated back to England. Once his convalescence was over, Palmer was sent to India to take up a cadetship with the Bengal artillery. He remained in India for a period of seven to eight months, but then decided to leave the service and get married. At the age of fifty-five he changed his surname to Palmer in order to inherit his dead brother’s estate. He was a frequent contributor to the Gentlemen’s Magazine (writing poems, travel articles and pieces of political polemic under the pen-name of ‘A Rambler’) and his book A Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes (1792) enjoys the distinction of being the first published account of a Lake District walking tour. He died of apoplexy at Eastbourne on 4 September, 1815, and was buried nine days later in West Moulsey, Surrey. His poem, The Siege of Gibraltar (1783), details Sir Roger Curtis’s exploits during the ‘Great Siege.’

Health to the Naval Chief – to whom we owe,
The final grandeur of this fatal blow;
In whom true courage and good conduct join,
In whom Humanity did nobly shine.
Who gain’d the admiration of his friends,
And Bourbon’s self – the gen’rous act commends;
For while the batt’ries burnt with scorching power,
Amidst the fury of the dang’rous hour,
Careless of life – and all alive – to save
The victim’d Spaniards from th’ impending grave,
And yet, how painful to the human mind,
What must remain a stigma – on mankind;
What! – No – not all the sophistry in Spain,
Can word away the ignominious strain.
But what – the haughty Spaniard will not do
Witness, ye base – your murders at Peru;
No wonder then – as the good Naval Chief
Did almost more, than man - to yield relief
Her very sons – should fire upon the crew:
Deny it, Spain? – She cannot – ‘tis true.
When wish’d for Aurora’s op’d the auspicious dawn
And shewed to Calpe’s sons the happy morn;
When the explosions rent the trembling air,
And columns high in majesty appear.
When million dangers overspread the sea,
Each British heart, brave Curtis, felt for thee,
Thou native son of fair Humanity.

Jerusalem

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King David's Tower

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Dome of the Rock

Streets of Jerusalem 1

Streets of Jerusalem 2

The Art of Relaxation, Kerala, India

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The motley population

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A Noah’s Ark of races (1842)
[F]rom its being a free port, and the extensive smuggling trade carried on from thence into Spain, and from being a point where so much commerce, from all parts of the world, passes, and where, owing to the narrowness of the straits, and the strong inward current, ships, in large numbers, are often wind bound, —from these, and other causes, Gibraltar collects a greater variety of foreigners than almost any other port, aside from its own. motley mass of inhabitants. Owing to the narrow limits of the place, too, those who meet there, are thrown so compactly together, as to present, at a single glance, a kind of living, panorama of the world, not unlike (in the varieties of men to be met with) the grand and varied exhibition of the brute creation, in that floating menagerie, — Noah’s Ark. There is the haughty English officer, living, with all his pomp and power, a floating, vagabondish kind of life. Then come those man-machines, the soldiers, stuffed, and padded into legal form and size, starched, and stiff as a maypole, slaves to martial rule, with no power of thought or action, which accords not with their commander’s will. The sober Dutchman, with his pipe, — the reckless and jolly Irishman, rolling off his brogue, — the Frenchman, with limber neck, and tongue more limber still,—the shrewd and active Genoese, the Yankees of Italy,—the dark and wily Sicilian, cringing and deceitful,—the well-formed and athletic Greek, intent on gain, and yet, with his eastern costume, and his free and independent bearing, conspicuous among the rest, — Spaniards, with their dark faces, and still darker eyes; some, with their steeple-crowned sombreros decked with beads and tassels; others, with savage, haggard faces, with loose, leather leggins, and long, red caps hanging down their backs, giving them a kind of cut-throat look,—the haughty and indolent Moor, tall and gaunt, and with his bag-breeches, and full-topped turban, stalking along, as if monarch of all he surveys, and laughing to scorn, the poor, deluded infidels around him, — and, last and lowest in the scale of degradation and oppression, the poor Jews, who seem to have exhausted, to the very dregs, the cup of cursing and bitterness given them, in answer to that awful invocation, — ‘ His blood be on us, and on our children.’ Some of them, indeed, are rich, and dress in the English mode, but most of them are, like the Gibeonites of old, ‘hewers of wood, and drawers of water,’ or rather, are beasts of burden to the Gentiles around them.

Like the Irish and Negroes in the United States, they are employed as porters, and for the most menial services. They are the descendants of those who were driven from Spain and Portugal, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, many thousands of whom then perished, as victims of Catholic cruelty. The lower classes of them move about the streets, abject, and with a filthy dress, bearing every kind of burden, or selling fruit, and other articles of small value. They wear large bag-breeches, open at the’ bottom, and reaching but little below the knee. The calf of the leg and ankle are bare, while, for an upper garment, they have a loose shirt, or frock, with a hood, which is the only covering of their heads. These garments are made of dark, coarse cloth, which is often striped, like bed-ticking. They have the common Jewish look, save that their faces are very lean and thin, and their eyes peculiarly large and ghastly. Truly, they are a living fulfilment of prophecy, — ‘ a nation trodden down and peeled, yet beloved for their father’s sake,’ and destined by God, to be again the objects of his favor, when, with sincere repentance, they shall look on him whom they pierced, and mourn.

Charles Rockwell, Sketches of Foreign Travel: And Life at Sea; Including a Cruise on Board (1842).

**

Chaos at Commercial Square (1860)
Throughout most of the nineteenth-century Commercial Square (nowadays known as John Mackintosh Square) remained the colony’s social and mercantile hub – housing the Exchange building, Gibraltar’s two most prestigious hotels (the Club House and Grffiths’), as well as its famously raucous and colourful outdoor auction. Visitors to the Rock frequently alluded to the square’s cosmopolitan character, maintaining that you could hear more languages spoken within its perimeter than in any other place in the world. For instance, the traveller Charles Wainwright March, who visited Gibraltar in the mid-1850s and stayed at the Club House hotel, wrote that he ‘could not… have chosen such a coigne of vantage elsewhere to view the life of Gibraltar’ and then proceeded to give the following account of the view from his hotel window: ‘The malignant and the turbaned Turk; the crouching, livid-faced greasy Jew of Fez, hatless and sandaled; the Ronda smuggler in his picturesque costume; the Spanish bandit with scrupulously clean linen, jacketless, but with a waistcoat of green silk profuse in silver buttons never used — and the kilted Highlander proud of his exposed calves and ear-splitting pibroch — all these and many others passed continually before my seat in front, and almost persuaded me I was assisting at a masquerade.’

Outside the race-course and the bare-looking military burial-ground, or round the other side of the Rock, where narrow bridle-roads, elbowed by rocks on one side, and a raging sea on the other, lead to outpost stations and small fishing villages, are not the places to judge of the picturesque contrasts and motley population of Gibraltar. No; to see its four thousand Moors, fifteen thousand Spaniards, hybrid tradesmen, pimps, Jews, rogues, and higglers, let alone its five thousand soldiers, its stiff generals, stuck-up doctors, and starched red-faced majors, you must go to Commercial Square, where the Exchange is, and General Don’s bust, the club, library, and open-air auctions. Here you will see the yellow-slippered, purple-robed, brown-legged Moors, looking complacently at the long row of hams, or the piles of empty beer-bottles that the ivory hammer is knocking down for sale, or standing proudly and stoically watching the gold-laced band, or the groups of red-sashed captains chattering at some guardroom door. Here, proof to all Gibraltar fevers are the real scorpion women, of a pale, clear, brown complexion, in their red cloaks and hoods, edged with black velvet—such a peculiar dress; but we are in the region of odd costumes—and not a day’s journey from the Tarifa women, who still wear the veritable Oriental yashmuk. Next those soldiers, with breeches half of leather, and who, from the tartlets of gold lace on their breasts, their straddling gait and obtrusive switches, I take to be horse artillerymen, are a group of shirking effeminate Jews, in loose blue cloth dressing-gowns, white linen drawers, straggling sash, and white buttoned caps: they are talking with the well-known negro date-merchant, who lives near the Four Corners, where the Moorish captains wait for passengers or consignments. Then going up to some quiet tavern, ‘Ale and spirits sold here,’ under the sign of the ‘Good ‘Woman,’ in Horse Barrack Lane, stroll a white-bloused party of Crimean men; and mixed up with the crowd that pushes roughly through, backward and forward, are Spanish ladies, bareheaded, with fans held up to keep the sun off; English nursery maids and refractory ‘Master Alfreds,’ who will pull the stray dogs by the tail, regardless of consequences; white-plumed and mounted generals, returning perpetual salutes; yellow-gartered muleteers, with donkeys laden with strings of water-jars—four in each rack; staring-looking travelers, looking at maps of Gib; subs in mufti, cavalierly gay; and subs mounted on spiteful well-blooded hacks, tearing off for a mad gallop to Saint Roque or the cork-woods. Step out of this past the governor’s house, once a convent, just to get a quick look at the slopes of gunners’ cottages and officers’ quarters slanting down from the middle heights of the rock, and you get at once to a parade, flanked by answering batteries, where silent red sentries, under suspended mats, wait grumblingly for the relief guard. Fifteen hundred miles from England, yet such a sense of England’s power! We are growing, we are strong for our age. We shall be, I think, stronger still. Here is power incarnate; the English lion has, indeed, seldom inhabited a nobler den.

Walter Thornbury, Life in Spain: Past and Present (1860).

**

From harbour to hotel (1892)
It was early on a bright May morning that our large French steamer came to anchor off Gibraltar. We had watched the leonine rock as its proportions grew larger and larger, and appreciated its natural strength before we were shown what engineering and the art of war had done to make it stronger still. The appearance of the town from the sea is hardly picturesque, compared with other Mediterranean seaports. It lies low along the shore and the lower parts of the rock and consists almost entirely of huge barracks uniform in size and shape and white-washed in the most dazzling manner. Mingled with these barracks are gray and brown flat-roofed houses, built of bricks and wood and covered with stucco, to suit the ideas of the owner or the position of the building.

The landing is characteristic of the Mediterranean. As soon as the vessel casts anchor, dozens of sail- boats and row-boats put out from shore, and from each of these several men board the steamer. A scene of quarrelling, gesticulating, and noise takes place, until all the passengers have made their choice of watermen, when luggage and people are hustled into the boats in the most unceremonious style. If the sea is rough, as it usually is, the chances of getting wet and losing some parcels of luggage overboard are in favour of the sea and against the passenger. As we looked toward shore, we were confronted with the melancholy sight of the masts and smoke-stack of the ill-fated Utopia which ran upon the ram of the ship of war Anson, while rounding-to in the harbour, during a fearful gale last March. She sank in a few minutes, bearing to a watery grave nearly six hundred men, women, and children, who were emigrants from Italy to New York. Everything was done which brave English seamen from the ships of war, aided by a multitude of boats, and electric lights that swept the bay, could do to save the unfortunates; but the storm, and panic, and night and cold made the disaster the most dreadful which Gibraltar has ever seen in days of peace. Such scenes in time of war are a part of the glory of a victory; in time of peace, we estimate wreck and death, resulting even indirectly from the ram of a ship of war, more justly.

Upon the wharf you are assailed by the rudest and most clamorous style of your native tongue, though the figures about represent every nationality. There are groups of blue-shirted fishermen, with purple flannel caps, girded with red sashes; Moors in white turbans and yellow slippers, and in red fez caps, waiting for the steamer which will take them onward in their pilgrimage to Mecca, for it is the fast of the Ramadan, and they would fain reach the prophet’s tomb in time for the Bairam feast; travellers from every part of Europe, who are changing steamers or have come to see the place; and a motley crowd of the curious race of sailors, who, made up from all lands, form a nationality of their own, and are rightly called ‘seamen.’

Entering through the gates, after being recorded, one comes first to a square, full of British soldiers. From this barrack-square opens the main street, leading up from the Waterport. It is hardly wide enough for vehicles to pass and is lined with common shops full of English, Spanish, and Moorish goods, for sale at high prices. Light phaeton cabs, with brown linen covers and curtains, ply in the streets and lanes; and lines of mules di-aw huge narrow trucks loaded with wine casks, and hogsheads of tobacco, and naval stores. One misses the shrill cries of Spanish towns, but there are other noises enough of guns, and drums, and fifes, and the “ tramp, tramp, tramp “ of men to break the stillness of the fine clear air.

The hotel is poor and dear, its rooms are small and dirty, and there is nothing royal about it but its name. In the Commercial building opposite, a pleasant library and reading-room are maintained by the residents, to which strangers are politely invited. Behind this building an open-air market is held, where Jews and Greeks and Turks and English privates and Spanish smugglers, with a sprinkling of horrid old crones, may be seen every morning bargaining for old bedsteads, and rickety tables and chairs, dilapidated bird-cages, and second-hand clothes, while an English auctioneer sells hogsheads and boxes of tobacco to the highest bidder. My high silk hat proclaiming me an American, in the latter crowd, my advice as to the quality and year of a lot of Virginia leaf was eagerly sought by some of the buyers, and I hope they had no occasion to repent of their purchases. The fruit and fish markets of the town are excellent, the former being supplied with delicious fruit from Spain and Morocco. At the time of our visit, the fish-market was deserted for a ghastly but suitable reason: the great number of unrecovered bodies from the wreck of the Utopia!

Charles Augustus Stoddard, Spanish cities; with glimpses of Gibraltar and Tangier (1892).

Jaipur, India

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Female labourers, Jaipur

Elephant on the way to the Amber Palace, Jaipur

Elephant on the way to the Amber Palace, Jaipur

Elephant Yard, Jaipur

Colonial Curiosities

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Monkey Stories (1812)
Quitting this spot, I visited one of the signal houses, and as the Levanter was just beginning to blow, I had an opportunity, which an officer who had been nearly three years on the rock had not before met with, of seeing groups of very large monkeys, to whom this wind is peculiarly disagreeable, quit their caverns, which almost impend over the inaccessible crags on the eastern side, and having ascended the heights, descend, many bearing their young on their backs, a short way, and range themselves in rather formidable bodies on the western side. I counted no less than fourteen in a short space of time. We passed near them, but they did not appear to be annoyed at our presence. As shooting at them is prohibited, perhaps more from the fear of loosening the stones of these summits by the shot, which by rolling from such a height towards the town might do mischief below, than from tenderness to the antic race, they may probably derive confidence from being but seldom molested. As they were seated on this side of the rock, some time since, an officer happened to pass with a fine terrier, which ran at them. The monkeys, who were seated in a circle, were not in the least dismayed; but, upon some of them moving a little, the dog ran into the centre, when a very powerful monkey seized him by one of his hinder legs, ran with him to the top, hurled him over the eastern side of the rock, a stupendous and nearly perpendicular height, and dashed the rash assailant to pieces. Of these monkeys stranger stories are related. A most absurd and ridiculous one has obtained credit with some of the most credulous of the inhabitants, that before the English got possession of this place, one of them contrived to seize a pretty girl whilst she was enjoying the view from an elevated part of the rock, and to gratify his amorous propensities towards her, that he was put under arrest according to military law, tried by a court-martial of grave Spanish officers, and shot for the rape. It is worthy of remark, that this is the only spot in Europe where monkeys are found wild. Many are brought over from Barbary, and sold in the market for a mere trifle; and hence a monkey is almost as common as a cat in the houses of Gibraltar.

Sir John Carr, ‘An Account of Gibraltar, its present State of Society, Manners, & c,’ The Weekly Entertainer (1812).

* *

The Drunk who was killed by a Monkey (1831)
The sailors who have visited the Rock, and seen the monkeys, which are found in no other part of Europe, and are only seen here occasionally and at intervals, say that they pass at pleasure by means of the cave to their native land. The more cunning go so far as to think that the descendants of the Andalusian Moors will one day profit by this communication; and, taking the monkeys for guides, pass over to recover the land of their long-cherished predilection. There is, in truth, something very strange in the coming and going of these same monkeys. During nearly two months that I passed on the Rock, I saw them but twice in my daily rambles. Once while a levanter was blowing, and again just before the setting in of one; of which, indeed, their appearance is considered a certain prognostic. They are supposed to live at other times among the inaccessible precipices of the eastern declivity, where there is a scanty store of monkey-grass for their subsistence. When a levanter sets in, the wind drives them from their caves and crannies, and they take refuge among the western rocks, where they may be seen from the Alameda below, hopping from bush to bush, boxing each other’s ears, and cutting the most singular antics. If disturbed by an intrusive step, they scamper off anon, the young ones jumping upon the backs and putting their arms round the necks of the old. As they are very innocent animals, and form a kind of poetical appendage of the Rock, strict orders have been issued for their special protection.

While I was at the Rock, however, two drunken soldiers one day undertook to violate these orders; one of them was summarily punished for his disobedience, without the intervention of a court-martial. As they were rambling about the declivity, below the Signal Tower, they happened to come upon the traces of a party of monkeys, and at once gave chase. The monkeys, cut off from their upward retreat, .ran downward; the soldiers followed, and the monkeys ran faster. In this way they approached the perpendicular precipice which rises from the Alameda. One of the soldiers was able to check his course, and just saved himself; the foremost and most impetuous, urged on by a resistless impetus, passed over the fearful steep, and fell a mangled and lifeless corpse upon the walk of the Alameda. The next morning the slow and measured tread of many feet beneath my window, the mournful sound of the muffled drums, and the shrill and piercing plaint of the fife, told me that they were bearing the dead soldier to his tomb.

Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, A Year in Spain (1831).

* *

Valiente the Ass (1838)
In March, 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R.N. then at Malta, was shipped on board the Ister frigate, Captain Forrest, bound from Gibraltar for that island. The vessel having struck on some sands off the Point de Gat, at some distance from the shore, the ass was thrown overboard, to give it a chance of swimming to land—a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat which left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented himself for admission, and proceeded to the stable of a Mr. Weeks, a merchant, which he had formerly occupied, to the no small surprise of that gentleman, who imagined that, from one accident, the animal had never been shipped on board the Ister. On the return of that vessel to repair, however, the mystery was explained, and it turned out that ‘Valiente’ (so the ass was called) had not only swam safety to shore, but had, without guide, compass, or travelling map, found its way from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, which he had never traversed before, through a mountainous and intricate country, intersected by streams, and in so short a period that he could not have made one false turn. His not having been stopped on the road is attributed to the circumstance of his having been formerly used to whip criminals upon, which was indicated to the peasants, who have a superstitious horror of such asses, by the holes in his ears, to which the persons flogged were tied.

Anonymous, Tales of travellers; or, A view of the world (1838).

* *

Interview with a learned Gibraltarian gentleman (1839)
May 17.—Mr. Rees, the Wesleyan preacher, told me, that the Jew Gabay, who desires to see me to-morrow morning at his house, is a man of business, a very clever man, who has travelled in Germany, France, and in England, where he received his English education. He speaks Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, and English, and learned Arabic from a Moorish gentleman; he is described by Mr. Rees as a candid and gentlemanlike person: he has read the Gospel. Lieutenant Pollack told me, that they are very obstinate; he mentioned to me the Jew Hassan, who is very rich, and professeth Christianity. Mr. Pyne, above mentioned, will introduce me to him. The richest Jew is Ben Oliel; he is very benevolent to the poor. Carthusi, who is at present at London, has the title of King of the Jews at Gibraltar; he settles all the disputes among the Jews: but in case any one of them refuses to obey him, he brings the matter before the governor, and desires to turn him out of the garrison. The number of the Jews is supposed to be equal to that of the Protestants. Dr. Coldstream told me that my knowledge of languages, and those letters from respectable persons in England and Germany which I possess, assure me a favourable reception from the Jews at Gibraltar. I burn to be introduced to my brethren in this town, but I am firmly decided not to go to them until Dr. Parker’s return.

May 19.—The Rev. Mr. Rees and the Rev. Mr. Croscombe introduced me to Mr. Gabay, who is considered by the Jews themselves as the most learned man among them, and is styled by the Jews, “The wise man.” He was just interpreting to two Jews a rabbinical book; and, surrounded by his wife and children, he received us all with the greatest kindness. He tried me first in Italian, then in Arabic, and in Hebrew, and shewed me after this the travels of Niebuhr translated into the French language, which language he understood pretty well. On my asking for an Arabic Bible, he brought me the Arabic translation of the Old Testament, published by the Bible Society, and we read together a great part of the first chapter of Genesis.

Gabay: Do you understand Persian?

Joseph Wolff: A little. May I ask you about the state of the Jews at Gibraltar?

Gabay: With pleasure.

Joseph Wolff: How many Jews are at Gibraltar?

Gabay: Three or four thousand.

Joseph Wolff: Have they a Rabbi?

Gabay: Yes, one Rabbi, his name is Rabbi Joseph from Morocco.

Joseph Wolff: Is he a learned man?

Gabay: In the Talmud only….

Joseph Wolff: Is the account true, that the Jews at Gibraltar have a king?

Gabay. No; for the Jews are now without king, and without prophet, and without ephod.

Joseph Wolff: How many synagogues have the Jews at Gibraltar?

Gabay: Four.

Joseph Wolff: Of what rites is their worship?

Gabay: Of the Spanish rites…. Do you understand Kimchi’s dictionary?

Joseph Wolff: A little.

Gabay took out of his shelves Kimchi’s writings, and desired me to read; I read a portion of it, and asked him whether he would have any objection to read the Bible with me on the Sabbath-day in the Spanish tongue, of which language Gabay is perfect master.

Gabay: With great pleasure…. We could read together the Bible in Hebrew?

Joseph Wolff: I shall be most happy.

Gabay I offer you a room in my house?

Joseph Wolff: I shall be most happy to take lodgings in your house, but I must first speak about it with Doctor Parker, to whom I am particularly recommended.

I took his child in my arms; the Jews present, and the mother, Gabay’s wife, seemed surprised by my kindness. Our conversation lasted an hour and a half, and then all the Jews and Gabay shook hands with me, and Rev. Mr. Croscombe in the most cordial way, and he expressed his desire that I would come often to him. I asked him
likewise, whether the Jews at Gibraltar read their Old, Testament: he replied, ‘No, alas! for Gibraltar is too much a town of business.’

Reverend Joseph Wolff, Journal (1839).

* *

Those d------- mosquitoes! (1840)
With the warm weather come the Mosquitoes. These little tormentors, whose first dwelling is a pool of water, emerge at the critical moment when the case in which they have been enfolded is ready to burst, and fly off, gay as a butterfly just released from prison. I have seen water that had been accidentally left for some time in the open air, literally alive with the larvae, countless numbers flying off each moment to sport through the air. Their greatest victims are the newly arrived, whose blotched faces often bear witness of their sufferings, for the sting is intolerably itchy, and consequently, does not easily disappear. The chief precaution taken against them is to use thin curtains that leave no loophole of entrance; but this is not always effectual, and if they get within those protecting draperies, adieu to the favours of the drowsy god: better a tiger on the mountain than a mosquito within your curtains; you pass the night boxing your own ears in the vain hope of killing them, and you arise in the morning feverish and unrested.

Anonymous, ‘Letters from Gibraltar,’ Dublin University Magazine (1840)

* *

A few days’ stay at Griffiths Hotel (1843)
I now proceeded up the principal street, which runs with a gentle ascent along the base of the hill. Accustomed for some months past to the melancholy silence of Seville, I was almost deafened by the noise and bustle which reigned around. It was Sunday night, and of course no business was going on, but there were throngs of people passing up and down. Here was a military guard proceeding along; here walked a group of officers, there a knot of soldiers stood talking and laughing. The greater part of the civilians appeared to be Spaniards, but there was a large sprinkling of Jews in the dress of those of Barbary, and here and there a turbaned Moor. There were gangs of sailors likewise, Genoese, judging from the patois which they were speaking, though I occasionally distinguished the sound of “tou logou sas,” by which I knew there were Greeks at hand, and twice or thrice caught a glimpse of the red cap and blue silken petticoats of the mariner from the Romaic isles. On still I hurried, till I arrived at a well known hostelry, close by a kind of square, in which stands the little exchange of Gibraltar. Into this I ran and demanded lodging, receiving a cheerful welcome from the genius of the place, who stood behind the bar, and whom I shall perhaps have occasion subsequently to describe. All the lower rooms were filled with men of the rock, burly men in general, with swarthy complexions and English features, with white hats, white jean jerkins, and white jean pantaloons. They were smoking pipes and cigars, and drinking porter, wine and various other fluids, and conversing in the rock Spanish, or rock English as the fit took them. Dense was the smoke of tobacco, and great the din of voices, and I was glad to hasten up stairs to an unoccupied apartment, where I was served with some refreshment, of which I stood much in need.

I was soon disturbed by the sound of martial music close below my windows. I went down and stood at the door. A military band was marshalled upon the little square before the exchange. It was preparing to beat the retreat. After the prelude, which was admirably executed, the tall leader gave a flourish with his stick, and strode forward up the street, followed by the whole company of noble looking fellows and a crowd of admiring listeners. The cymbals clashed, the horns screamed, and the kettle-drum emitted its deep awful note, till the old rock echoed again, and the hanging terraces of the town rang with the stirring noise:

“Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub - thus go the drums, Tantara, tantara, the Englishman comes…

Perhaps it would have been impossible to have chosen a situation more adapted for studying at my ease Gibraltar and its inhabitants, than that which I found myself occupying about ten o’clock on the following morning. Seated on a small bench just opposite the bar, close by the door, in the passage of the hostelry at which I had taken up my temporary abode, I enjoyed a view of the square of the exchange and all that was going on there, and by merely raising my eyes, could gaze at my leisure on the stupendous hill which towers above the town to an altitude of some thousand feet. I could likewise observe every person who entered or left the house, which is one of great resort, being situated in the most-frequented place of the principal thoroughfare of the town. My eyes were busy and so were my ears. Close beside me stood my excellent friend Griffiths, the jolly hosteler, of whom I take the present opportunity of saying a few words, though I dare say he has been frequently described before, and by far better pens. Let those who know him not figure to themselves a man of about fifty, at least six feet in height, and weighing some eighteen stone, an exceedingly florid countenance and good features, eyes full of quickness and shrewdness, but at the same time beaming with good nature. He wears white pantaloons, white frock, and white hat, and is, indeed, all white, with the exception of his polished Wellingtons and rubicund face. He carries a whip beneath his arm, which adds wonderfully to the knowingness of his appearance, which is rather more that of a gentleman who keeps an inn on the Newmarket road, purely for the love of travellers, and the money which they carry about them, than of a native of the rock. Nevertheless, he will tell you himself that he is a rock lizard; and you will scarcely doubt it when, besides his English, which is broad and vernacular, you hear him speak Spanish, ay, and Genoese too, when necessary, and it is no child’s play to speak the latter, which I myself could never master. He is a good judge of horse-flesh, and occasionally sells a “bit of a blood,” or a Barbary steed to a young hand, though he has no objection to do business with an old one; for there is not a thin, crouching, liver-faced lynx-eyed Jew of Fez capable of outwitting him in a bargain: or cheating him out of one single pound of the fifty thousand sterling which he possesses; and yet ever bear in mind that he is a good-natured fellow to those who are disposed to behave honourably to him, and know likewise that he will lend you money, if you are a gentleman, and are in need of it; but depend upon it, if he refuse you, there is something not altogether right about you, for Griffiths knows HIS WORLD, and is not to be made a fool of.

There was a prodigious quantity of porter consumed in my presence during the short hour that I sat on the bench of that hostelry of the rock. The passage before the bar was frequently filled with officers, who lounged in for a refreshment which the sultry heat of the weather rendered necessary, or at least inviting; whilst not a few came galloping up to the door on small Barbary horses, which are to be found in great abundance at Gibraltar. All seemed to be on the best terms with the host, with whom they occasionally discussed the merits of particular steeds, and whose jokes they invariably received with unbounded approbation. There was much in the demeanour and appearance of these young men, for the greater part were quite young, which was highly interesting and agreeable. Indeed, I believe it may be said of English officers in general, that in personal appearance, and in polished manners, they bear the palm from those of the same class over the world. True it is, that the officers of the royal guard of Russia, especially of the three noble regiments styled the Priberjensky, Simeonsky, and Finlansky polks might fearlessly enter into competition in almost all points with the flower of the British army; but it must be remembered, that those regiments are officered by the choicest specimens of the Sclavonian nobility, young men selected expressly for the splendour of their persons, and for the superiority of their mental endowments; whilst, probably, amongst all the fair-haired Angle-Saxons youths whom I now saw gathered near me, there was not a single one of noble ancestry, nor of proud and haughty name; and certainly, so far from having been selected to flatter the pride and add to the pomp of a despot, they had been taken indiscriminately from a mass of ardent aspirants for military glory, and sent on their country’s service to a remote and unhealthy colony. Nevertheless, they were such as their country might be proud of, for gallant boys they looked, with courage on their brows, beauty and health on their cheeks, and intelligence in their hazel eyes.

Who is he who now stops before the door without entering, and addresses a question to my host, who advances with a respectful salute? He is no common man, or his appearance belies him strangely. His dress is simple enough; a Spanish hat, with a peaked crown and broad shadowy brim - the veritable sombrero - jean pantaloons and blue hussar jacket; - but how well that dress becomes one of the most noble-looking figures I ever beheld. I gazed upon him with strange respect and admiration as he stood benignantly smiling and joking in good Spanish with an impudent rock rascal, who held in his hand a huge bogamante, or coarse carrion lobster, which he would fain have persuaded him to purchase. He was almost gigantically tall, towering nearly three inches above the burly host himself, yet athletically symmetrical, and straight as the pine tree of Dovrefeld. He must have counted eleven lustres, which cast an air of mature dignity over a countenance which seemed to have been chiseled by some Grecian sculptor, and yet his hair was black as the plume of the Norwegian raven, and so was the moustache which curled above his well-formed lip. In the garb of Greece, and in the camp before Troy, I should have taken him for Agamemnon. “Is that man a general?” said I to a short queer-looking personage, who sat by my side, intently studying a newspaper. “That gentleman,” he whispered in a lisping accent, “is, sir, the Lieutenant-Governor of Gibraltar.”

George Borrow, The Bible in Spain (1843).

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Hints for Travellers visiting Spain and Gibraltar (1843)
I should have given some directions to travellers in this country in the Appendix, but as a full and elaborate guidebook by Mr. Ford will shortly appear, it is unnecessary, for no doubt that will contain all the requisite information. I will, therefore, only give a very few hints that have occurred during my varied and extensive practice, more especially as to hiring horses. There are two modes of managing this — the one, to take the horses by the day and keep them yourself. This is frequently practised in the north, and may do for short distances, and when you return to the same point from which you set out; but as it leads to extravagance and cheating, especially in the south, I would by no means recommend it for general adoption. Besides other difficulties in such a place, you may not be able to purchase the food they choose, excepting at an exorbitant rate, and by favouring jobbing with the people at the posadas. Therefore, whenever it is possible, make your bargain complete, return and every thing included, and let it be understood that the Mozo finds himself. You must, if he behaves well, give him the remains of your meals, and he is easily satisfied, but if you engage to feed him, he will probably turn out a cormorant. From my not attending to this, I have known one devour the provisions, intended to last for several days, in the course of a few hours. Amongst the best I have seen are those at Gibraltar, where they are used to good company, and are somewhat disciplined. The rules for dealing with these people in general, are, to treat them kindly, but coolly. No familiarity, nor too much respect or deference, and give your orders, after hearing what they have to say, in a cool and determined manner, never wrangling, nor entering into altercation with them. If in a wild or unfrequented district, pay little attention to the difficulties they may choose to find out, but always hear them patiently, and after appearing to consider, adopt your own plan, and go through with it. Be very careful in talking at ventas and such places, and always keep your movements and time of departure as secret as possible, as in every village of the south especially, there are loose fish hanging about, or probably others upon the tramp may drop in. Eat little, and you will find yourself the better, as every thing they give you is more or less hard of digestion. Request them to use manteca or lard instead of oil, which they always conform to, leaving your mozo to enjoy his rancid oil, which he invariably prefers, and will make you join him if you leave the arrangement to himself. Always inquire what is to be had in the Plaza or market, because they vary very much. In some there is game; others, as the Cuenca district and some others, occasionally mutton, hares, rabbits, pigeons, partridges; and by looking out you may see fellows carrying them about, who are the pastores or shepherds, and have contrived to poach a brace or two on their walks. The law is altered, by which the Ayuntamiento frequently had the monopoly and the supply of food; and every thing belonging to posadas is now open to the public.

The money system is mentioned in the body of the work, and I think what I have recommended is the best. Nor would I advise any one to trust to the circular notes, excepting in the great towns, where they are accustomed to use them. Nor are Spaniards at all easy to deal with on this subject in general, unless they know you. There is the greatest possible want of that useful article, the valet de place, all over the country; and even at Madrid the breed hardly exists. At Seville, there is a man called Bailey, a mixture of French, English, and Spanish, a perfect linguist, and a most able and intelligent guide, whom I have heard highly spoken of by those who have employed him; and in addition to other requisites, he is a capital cook and travelling servant. I am the more induced to mention him, because he complained bitterly that he had furnished their best anecdotes to several tourists, one dead and at least two living, without their making any mention of the source whence they obtained the information, and even in some instances actually taking pains to conceal it. He felt this the more sensibly, because they had always promised to mention him in their works; but somehow had forgotten to do so, although, he saw by the exactness with which they repeated his stories, their memories were not equally defective in other respects. He is well read in gypsy poetry and other lore, and from what he stated, must have studied their manners very deeply. In short, he must be considered a most useful ally, to those who may wish to add a little information to the common routine of tours in steam boats and diligences, and have not time to dig deeply into the mines of Spanish history. I certainly feel it a duty to fulfil my promise of mentioning him; and the last party I heard of his serving spoke to me in the highest terms of his attention. The only thing I fear is, that in future he may be less communicative; and he was extremely irate with some of those he mentioned, one especially, whose memory had been peculiarly deficient….

I strongly recommend to every one who travels in Spain, adopting the faja or waist belt of the people, especially in hot weather, and on long rides. The best are manufactured in Barbary and at Morella, and in the French Pyrenees, where they are made much finer than is usual with the Spaniards. It is no use tying them loosely round the waist as foreigners generally do as in that way they are of no service, and give an awkward look to the wearer, instantly proclaiming him a raw hand. They should be worn tight round the body, in the way practised by the natives, when they strengthen and fortify the seat of most disorders, especially in hot climates, and where sudden changes of temperature occur, and produce illness of various kinds; for which the natives of all these countries consider them certain preventives. The French have adopted the use of them for the army in Africa, and it is quite extraordinary we should not have done the same for the troops employed abroad, thousands of whose lives would be saved by this simple and inexpensive addition to the dress.

Samuel Edward Widdrington, Spain and the Spaniards (1843).

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A Frenchman compares Englishmen and Spaniards (1855)
It is impossible… not to do justice to the taste and magnificence of the English, on witnessing the care with which they have embellished the rock of Gibraltar. They have spared no pains to cover it with trees and flowers, to sustain the grounds by walls and other means of support, to open a number of roads on the bare stone, and to render such a soil practicable on horseback or in carriages to the most elevated points. They have even sown some artificial meadows for their flocks; a good example to the Spaniards, who might obtain with much more ease, in their fertile country, similar advantages.

The English troops attend to cleanliness and military appearance to such a degree, that it seems inconvenient and ridiculous to those who have served in armies less minutely particular in this respect. The same maybe observed of the regularity of their buildings, of the valuable and useful execution of all their defensive works; you would think yourself rather in the park and the palace of some monarch than in the fortress of Gibraltar: the cordons of the walls, the embrasures of the cannons, the groins of the vaults, are cut with inconceivable precision in very large blocks of very hard stone, and all the military instruments are constructed, each in its kind, with similar perfection.

Less neatness and order is observed at Gibraltar in the Catholic tombs than in the others. The Anglican graves have each its slab with a laconic and sententious inscription; but the Spaniards do not appear to have venerated these monuments with the same religious respect.

The English have neglected nothing at Gibraltar for the security of the place, and they have laboured incessantly to embellish it and render it agreeable... The activity and care of the police preserve the best public order, and effectually provide for the salubrity and cleanliness of the streets. No beggars are to be met with there as in the Spanish towns, nor any of those dealers in second-hand goods, who live at the expense of the poorest classes of the people, nor the quacks who at all hours of the day infest in other places public thoroughfares.

The Revue Britannique seeks for a term of comparison much lower. That journal does not compare the Spaniard with the Englishman, or even venture to place him on an equality with the citizen of any other nation of Christendom, not even with the Turk; it finds his fellow only among the heathens!

The Spanish peasant is, in our estimation, far below the English, French, German, and Dutch peasant; he will not even bear comparison with the Turk, who has not been spoiled by a residence in Constantinople. It is undeniable that he is perhaps of all men the least scrupulous as to shedding the blood of his fellow-creatures. He is ever ready, in his anger, to strike his adversary with the knife. Like the ancient Carthaginian, he is cruel by instinct, and no less treacherous when his interest is concerned. The punica fides is one of the essential characteristics of the Spaniard, taken in the mass or individually. He may be hospitable; but he has nothing to offer worth the trouble of refusing. The Spaniard is a Christian Arab; but, as such, he is far below the Wahabite, who is a little theistical, whereas the religion of the Spaniard, that self-styled Christianity, is nothing but a brutalising superstition, a superstition as contemptible, to speak moderately, as all the forms of paganism that ever prevailed upon earth, with the exception, however, of the Egyptian paganism, to which it is indeed analagous in more than one respect. The Spaniard is patient in poverty and in the midst of privations; he endures his fate, whatever it may be, with the apathetic resignation of the Hindoo. Why so? simply because he finds it easier to suffer than to toil. In this respect, as in many others, the Spaniard is greatly inferior to the Indian of the North American prairies. The Spaniard having within his reach all the means of procuring himself the positive enjoyments of life, and of raising his condition in the social scale, prefers living on a little bread and garlic, lying in a wretched hovel,, and lounging about in rags peopled with vermin, to working like a man. If by chance he gets a little money into his possession, either from the liberality of a traveller, or from having plundered the said traveller, or from any other source, instead of applying this money to the relief of his own wants or those of his family, or to improving the future prospects of his children, he takes care to make no use of it, to apply it to no purpose whatever, but conceals in some secret place his unproductive treasure.

Napoleon Roussel, Catholic & Protestant Nations Compared (1855).

* *

Baby Scorpions (1902)
Now, with regard to the children at Gibraltar - well - the shortest way of getting over my descriptive task, is to state at once that there are none. Don’t smile, dear reader - I will explain. From the time they can walk, use fans and powder puffs and have ornaments thrust into their tiny ears, they are just like stunted old folks, in their habits, expression, general appearance, and manner, and I may remark en passant that infants are “short clothed” very early in life, in fact they never go through a period of “long robes,” but probably at that time are happy in their nakedness. Poor little sallow creatures of four years old who lack the bonny laugh and riotous disposition of the English child are so decked out that their vanity, which is one of the curses of their character, is fed almost from their birth. I have seen a little old woman of two years put her hand to her heart and sigh “Ahi!” (Alas!) Their faces are moreover daubed unmercifully with violet powder - their Lilliputian skirts are hoisted up to a fashionable height with bustles (in 1890) and Hessian boots are forced upon their tiny feet and legs. The smallest walking children wear long stockings (generally white) and high heeled boots, and they thrive on bread and garlic mixed with fat of every description, --- Ugh!

R. Thomsett, A record voyage in H.M.S. Malabar (1902).

Deathly matters

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The smell of Gibraltar’s Cemeteries (1835)
The burial-places of Gibraltar were suspected of being very efficient agents in the production of the epidemic of 1813. The smell issuing from the principal one is described by Dr. Robertson as having been extremely offensive, and he expresses his astonishment that with such a source of fever existing within it, the garrison was ever free from that disease. The old burial-ground in South Port Ditch was suspected of similar ill effects. Whether these suspicions were well or ill founded, the main causes of complaint, have been removed, and the principal burying-ground is now on the neutral ground. Charnel-house effluvia occasionally arise from it, and in some instances water has flowed into the graves, which might have afforded similar exhalations on evaporation, but the perpetual current of air, the grand neutralizer of all insalubrious miasmata, renders them innocuous to the inhabitants of the town.

The Red Sands, between the Grand Parade and the South Pavilion, was formerly the principal receptacle for the dead. The greater part of these sands is now converted into gardens, and only a very small spot remains, which is occasionally used for officers. The Jews, also, have a burial-ground on Windmill Hill, in a very airy and elevated situation. An old burial-ground, now no longer used, is situated on the side of the hill, above the red sands, and another of a similar description lies within South Port. Upon the whole, the places of sepulture for Gibraltar afford little cause for suspicion at present. The depositing of bodies within the Spanish church, which was so common a practice fifty years ago, that Colonel James says, “all the Roman Catholics were buried there,” is now discontinued. Nothing but the quantity of lime thrown over the bodies, could have prevented the most dangerous consequences resulting from this practice. It is now so rare to deposit a body in the church, that a thousand dollars were lately paid by the family of a Spanish gentlemen for permission to do so.

Robert Martin, History of the British colonies (1835).

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A North Front Funeral (1842)
All the Sergeants of the garrison, and most of the officers of the regiment, as a mark of respect, attended the funeral of poor Sergeant Homer, which took place shortly after daylight in the morning. A custom was introduced in the garrison during the prevalence of the yellow fever, and which has continued ever since, of making funeral parties go silently along the “line wall,” and without the usual melancholy accompaniment of the dead march, which always plays on such occasions. This was first established here in order not to alarm the inhabitants, by making public the number of deaths which daily, nay, hourly, took place at the time of the epidemic. On the present occasion, our mournful procession followed the usual road, skirting along the fortifications, until it reached the Casemate barracks, when, after issuing from the gates at Landport, the muffled drums struck up the “ dead march.”

The scene was peculiarly solemn: a Levanter had been blowing during the night, which covered the rock with a canopy of clouds, and the dense vapour gradually descending, at last enveloped our lugubrious procession, giving us a most shadowy and unearthly appearance. By the time we had reached the burial-place on the neutral ground, the bare and perpendicular face of the rock at the “north front,” and which extends to the immense height of fifteen hundred feet above the sea, was but dimly visible; and ere the ceremony had been concluded with the usual salvo of musketry over the “soldier’s sepulchre,” we were all dripping with moisture. On looking into the grave, I was astonished to observe, at this dry season of the year, that water had been come at about five feet from the surface. This, though in a sandy soil, and on a level with the adjacent seas, is said to be perfectly sweet, and free from any brackish taste.

The quantity of tombstones here, bear witness to the number of inhabitants of this “last bourne of the weary;” but is no argument against the salubrity of the Rock, when it is recollected how dense a population it contains, and that, with the exception of two small cemeteries in the South, one of which is appropriated to the officers of the garrison, this is, and has been for years, its only place of burial. It is surrounded by a low hedge of the aloe plant, whilst scattered beyond its precincts are numerous slabs, the Hebrew characters on which denote them to belong to those of the tribe of Israel now resting in Abraham’s bosom.

The Jews, who are here extremely numerous, have at present another spot appropriated to their sepulchral rites, on the upper part of the rock, immediately above Windmill Hill barracks, where, from our house, we can frequently see them performing their last duties to the dead.

The “Levanter” which I have just mentioned is one of the greatest drawbacks we have: it is a “damper” to everything, both moral and physical; and even the giant “Calpe,” mourns the event, in a shroud of clouds and vapour, which then invariably crowns his venerable head. One’s spirits are depressed, an universal dampness pervades everything, and this unenviable state of things is only rectified by the salubrious and freshening “Poniente,” (western breeze,) which from the broad Atlantic brings us a supply of health, coolness, and comfort.

Edward Delaval Hungerford Elers Napier, Excursions Along the Shores of the Mediterranean (1842).

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Bringing up the Utopia’s Dead(1891)
On the night of 17 March, 1891 the SS Utopia, a British passenger ship carrying over five hundred Italian immigrants, collided with the battleship HMS Anson in stormy seas just off Gibraltar harbour. Badly damaged across the bow, the Utopia settled on her stern and then quickly began to sink, sending the panicking passengers rushing to the vessel’s foredeck. Meanwhile, a large crowd of curious onlookers gathered onshore at Grand Parade, from where they could see the floodlights of the rescue boats and hear the screams of the terrified passengers. By the end of the evening, a total of 535 people had drowned, among them 520 emigrants and 12 crew members, transforming the sinking of the Utopia into one of the most lethal maritime disasters on record. Over the next few days many grisly reminders of the tragedy began to wash up along the Bay of Gibraltar coastline – including, so it was said, a ‘pargo’ (or red snapper) containing a baby’s hand in its belly. When the Utopia was finally refloated by means of cofferdams several weeks later, a large number of corpses were discovered in its interior, all of them in an advanced state of decomposition. The Gibraltar Chronicle’s daily reports give us a step-by-step account of the unsavoury work facing the Royal Navy salvage teams.

21 March, 1891
We understand that by 2.15 today 17 bodies had been recovered from the ‘Utopia.’ The divers appear to have experienced great difficulty in removing the bodies owing to the number of orange boxes and amount of luggage floating about below, which might cut or entangle their air pipes.

25 March, 1891
The 59 bodies (including that of Mr. Lee, 2nd officer of the ship), recovered yesterday morning from the ‘Utopia,’ were in the afternoon placed in a lighter, each body wrapped in canvas and weighed with shot, and towed out by the steam-tug ‘Jackal’ some two and a half miles off Europa point and buried at sea. Among those present were the venerable archdeacon, Mr. Seed, chief of Police, Surgeon-Major Duke, Port Surgeon, and the Chief Officer and 3rd Officer of the ‘Utopia.’

20 July, 1891
The Utopia was again successfully floated in presence of HIS EXCELLENCY the Governor and a vast concourse of spectators on Saturday afternoon. Towards midnight she was into about four fathoms of water, where she was scuttled. The great inrush of water had the beneficial effect of removing much of the offensive smell arising from her decomposed cargo, which will now be immediately dealt with. The decks and what can be seen of the inside of the vessel presents a weird spectacle. No one has yet ventured into the lower holds on account of the deadly gas, so that it may be some days before it can be known how many bodies remain inside. Severe were discovered in the fore part of the ship yesterday and it is believed that as the ship is cleared others will be found.

28 July, 1891
Up to the present the number of bodies recovered from the Utopia since her removal to quarantine ground is 13 males and 7 females. The delay in recovering those who still remain is caused by the deadly gases within the ship. The water in the lowest holds is so heavily charged with gas that the centrifugal pumps are almost brought to a standstill. Chemicals are being freely used but to little purpose. A painfully touching picture was presented in the case of a woman found clasping an infant to her breast, while a second child was clinging to the mother’s garments. All the bodies recovered are beyond recognition, but it is some consolation to think that the Medical Staff Corps are conducting their sickening work with all the tenderness and humanity that circumstances will permit.

Anonymous, The Gibraltar Chronicle (1891).

Life across the border

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Anti-English Sentiment in Algeciras (1807)
It is evident that the manners of the inhabitants must differ in some respects from those of their fellow subjects; and it would be unjust to form an estimate of the general manners of Spain from those of Algeciras. Like all the towns along the coast of Spain bordering on the Mediterranean, till we cross the Guadalaviar, and even till we approach the Ebro, Algeciras retains in the manners of its inhabitants strong traces of the Moors. Travellers who have been on the opposite or Barbary shore, find many points of resemblance in the interior distribution of the houses on both sides, in the shape and use of the domestic utensils, in many articles of food, and even in various superstitions, which the Christians on one side, and the Mahometans on the other, have mingled with their several religions. In Algeciras the principal part of the inhabitants are certainly drawn from the provinces of Andalusia and Granada, and that in general from the lowest and most wretched classes; but exclusive of this mass of the population, there are great numbers of adventurers and desperadoes from every climate and country, who have come hither in search of fortune, and to man the gun-boats and privateers. Those who at present compose the richest inhabitants of the place, were a few years ago men of no credit or respectability, even among the banditti of Algeciras. As their riches have all been acquired from the capture of British property, or of neutral property condemned as British, they are naturally eager for the continuance of the war. Add to these the swarm of privateers and gun vessels which harbour here; and it will not be wondered at that Algeciras exceeds every town in Spain in animosity towards the English. Even here, however, this spirit is daily softening. The riches acquired by a few individuals no longer compensate to an increasing population the advantages of a peaceful commerce, the want of regular pay to the military and naval force, nominally employed by the government, and the ruin of many families which, through a lust of booty, have embarked their all in privateers, and have been unsuccessful.

Yet such is the cordiality, I may say esteem, with .which an Englishman is generally received in Spain, that even this petty rancour may be noticed as a trait in the character of the inhabitants of Algeciras. Besides this, the manners are here more depraved and more profligate, although mixed with a kind of ferocity, than I had observed anywhere else in this country. Assassinations are frequent; and in most of the streets some of the houses are marked with a cross, as a sign of murder having been committed near the spot. I had been accustomed to observe these melancholy memorials along the road side, on barren heaths, or in the bosom of deep forests; but till I reached Algeciras I had never seen them thickly planted in the streets of a populous town.

Robert Semple, Observations on a Journey Through Spain and Italy to Naples (1807).

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San Roque: the Gibraltarian’s Montpellier (1838)
San Roque is the nearest town to the British fortress, and distant from it about six English miles. A mere village at the period of the last siege of Gibraltar, it has gradually increased, so as at the present day to cover a considerable extent of ground, and to contain a population of upwards of six thousand souls.... The town is pleasantly situated on an isolated knoll, the houses entirely covering its summit, and extending some way down its Northern and Western slopes; but towards Gibraltar and to the East, the ground falls very abruptly, so as to form a natural boundary to the town. Though quite unsheltered by trees, and consequently exposed to the full power of the sun, San Roque possesses great advantages over Gibraltar in point of climate; for, whilst its elevation above all the ground in the immediate vicinity secures to it a freer circulation of air than is enjoyed by the pent-up fortress, it is sheltered from the damp and blighting levant wind that blows down the Mediterranean... driving clouds of sand, flies, and blue devils into every dwelling, and Rheumatism, Asthma, and Lumbago, into the bones, chests, and backs, of their inmates. San Roque, being free from this intolerable nuisance, is looked upon as a sort of Montpelier by the Gibraltarians, and, at the period of which I write, was very much resorted to by the mercantile classes, who fitted up comfortable ‘boxes’ there, that afforded them an agreeable retreat after their daily labours at the desk were concluded. The late Sir George Don, whilst Lieutenant Governor of the Fortress, invariably passed several months of the year at San Roque; and his noble hospitality, his ever open purse, and constant employment of the poor in works of utility, secured to him the love and respect of all classes of its inhabitants. Indeed, such was the gallant Veteran’s influence in the place, that I may literally say, not a stone could be turned nor a tree planted without ‘His Excellency’s’ being first consulted as to the propriety of the measure...

The need of some little acquaintance with the Spanish language caused but few English officers to enter into the society of San Roque; but living there as much as I did, and being often placed in communication with the authorities, I derived from it a source of great amusement. Indeed, to Lady Viale and her amiable family I am indebted for many agreeable evenings; her house uniting the pleasing informality of Spanish with the solid hospitality (I use the term in our eating and drinking sense of it) of English society.

It would be an error to depict the manners and customs of the inhabitants of San Roque, as those of the natives of Andalusia generally; since, in their various pursuits, the former are so frequently thrown in contact with Englishmen and other foreigners settled at Gibraltar, that they cannot but have acquired some of their habits, and imbibed some of their ideas. Nevertheless, there is a self-conceit about all Spaniards, that makes them particularly slow in throwing off their nationality; and the difference is consequently not so great as might naturally be expected. A proof of this is afforded by the circumstance of the English language not being spoken, nor even understood, by fifty of the inhabitants of San Roque, although it is evidently so much their interest to acquire it.

Their intercourse, on the other hand, (and this is observable in all the sea-port towns of Spain) has given them strangely ill defined notions of English liberty, and equally extraordinary opinions of our religious tenets; and has filled their minds with highly constitutional ideas of the iniquity of taxation, and most conscientious scruples as to the propriety of supporting a national church. I fear, indeed, that deistical, nay I believe I should say Atheistical, opinions prevail to a great extent amongst the upper orders of Spaniards, though they still continue to observe — if not the penances — all the superstitious ceremonies and absurd fooleries of the Romish church.

One of their extraordinary lental ceremonies I became acquainted with under very alarming circumstances. I was awaked one fine April morning, during one of my earliest visits to San Roque, by a most furious fusillade, which, considering the unsettled state of Spain at that particular juncture, I naturally enough concluded was occasioned by some popular commotion. The appearance of my servant in answer to a hasty summons of the bell immediately quieted my apprehensions on that score, however; the broad grin that distended his round Kentish countenance plainly bespeaking the absence of all danger; — though what occasioned his unwonted merriment puzzled me to divine. In reply to my inquiries touching the firing, the only answer I could obtain was, ‘They’re a shooting of Hoodah’ — ‘And who the deuce is Hoodah?’ said I, ‘and what has he been about?’ — But on these points he was quite as ignorant as myself; so dressing with all possible despatch — the astounding rolls of musketry, and as it appeared to me of field artillery also, continuing the whole time I was so occupied, seeming indeed to spread to all parts of the town — I issued forth, armed up to the teeth, and on turning the corner of the street saw, to my horror, a human figure suspended in the air, and reduced almost to a bundle of rags by the incessant firing of — as I supposed — a party of soldiers posted in a cross street.

This surely is ‘making assurance doubly sure,’ thought I. Why the poor devil can’t have an inch of sound flesh in his body after all this peppering. The bang, bang continued incessantly, however, accompanied by roars of laughter, until at length the ill-fated Hoodah was in a blaze. A crowd of men and boys, armed with guns, pistols, and blunderbusses, now rushed from the cross street, (where they had been concealed from my view) rending the air with vivas. At this same moment a loud peal of music burst upon me from a neighbouring church, and from its portal issued a long train of priests preceded by the Host. With these came the recollections of its being Easter Sunday, and of the guttural pronunciation of the Spanish J; and quite ashamed of my warlike demonstration, I retreated to my house yet quicker than I had issued from it.

The distant firing continued some time longer; and I afterwards learnt that the effigies of no less than seven Judases had that morning been severally hanged, shot, and burnt, to satisfy the holy rage of the devout inhabitants of San Roque.

Captain C. Rochfort Scott, Excursions in the Mountains of Ronda and Granada (1838).

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The Dangers of Venturing into Spain (1850)
At Gibraltar I heard two complaints: one of a decay of trade in the town; the other of a great increase of robberies and assassinations outside, in Spain. Owing to the enormous duties and the actual prohibitions of the Spanish governments, the best customers of the Gibraltar merchants were always the contraband adventurers. These fellows came, dollars and doubloons in hand, for the tobacco, the Manchester goods, &c. &c., which they afterwards smuggled into Spain. The quantities they could “ run,” in my time, were immense. By making extraordinary efforts, and employing great bodies of regular troops against it, the present Spanish government has spoiled this pretty trade. Many of the smugglers have therefore left the sea and taken to the road—have turned highwaymen.

My old friends were dead or scattered long since. I however succeeded in finding one, the kind, most hospitable Mr. S___ who had been settled nearly half a century on the Rock. With this early friend and schoolfellow of Robert Southey, I used to ride to St. Roque and pic-nic in the cork woods, and sketch, while he shot all about the country, without any thought of robbers or other dangers whatsoever. He assured me that it was not now safe to ride five miles from the guns of Gibraltar, unless you went well armed and with a goodly company. He complained of a visible decline of morality and principle among the poor Spaniards. The Andalusian peasant was no longer the trustworthy fellow he had been. The liberales and constitution-makers, in suppressing the monastic establishments and expelling the monks, had taken no adequate care to provide the people with better teachers. In becoming less reverential and superstitious, the peasantry had become less honest and less confiding. It is the same story everywhere, or wherever these Continental reformers have succeeded in establishing their sway.

Charles MacFarlane, Turkey and Its Destiny (1850).

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Crossing the Frontier (1851)
The only access into Spain, at present, is by a narrow causeway across an artificial morass, which can be immediately blown away by the guns of the fortress; but supposing an enemy to succeed in making good his advance, he is encountered in front by a line of very formidable batteries, stretching from the foot of the Rock to the sea, and, at the same time, taken in flank by three or four lines of guns, cut one above another in the side of the rock itself, beneath which he must inevitably advance to the attack of the town. But as, receding still further from the Rock, we continued to advance along the neutral ground, new obstacles developed themselves, which would seem to render the near approach of a hostile force all but impossible. Fresh batteries, called Willis’s, appear upon a bold prominence, some half way up the Rock; and the very face of the inaccessible precipice itself is full of yawning fissures, called by the Spaniards, ‘los dientes de la vieja,’ or, ‘the old lady’s teeth,’ from which the muzzles of the huge guns are seen pointing down upon the isthmus; while at the same time, the Old Mole, or ‘Devil’s Tongue,’ projecting into the sea, takes the approach in flank—a combination of defences sufficient, one would think, to sweep an advancing enemy from the face of the earth.

The isthmus, across which we now advanced, with the Rock at our backs and the Spanish mountains in front, is a wretched sandy level, here and there thinly sprinkled with grass or cultivated in plots of vegetables, serving a variety of heterogeneous purposes, at once a burial-place for the townspeople and a race-ground for the officers. Two parallel lines of sentinels, the English and the Spanish, are drawn across it, and truly it is not a little amusing, and at the same flattering to one’s national vanity:

To look upon this picture— and on that;

to contrast the stout, rosy, well-appointed, beef-fed Briton, in his bright scarlet coat and white facings and pantaloons, with the meagre, sunburnt, half-starved Spaniard, whose tawny, cadaverous countenance looks more plague-like from the collar and trimmings of bright yellow (the livery of the Lazaret), with which his bright blue regimentals are bedizened; and whose slouching, unmilitary cut is no less opposed to the upright martial bearing of his opposite neighbour. Step across the lines guarded by these scarecrow sentinels, and at once every object and every figure testifies that you are in Spain. A short turn to the left, through the wretched barracks for the soldiers, and past the more wretched hovels for their hangers-on, brings us down to the deep sands of the bay, along which we somewhat toilsomely worked our way. This, however, being the only road into the interior, we fell in, at intervals, with every description of equipage, from the carriage of the Governor of Gibraltar to the old-fashioned Spanish cabriolet….

William Henry Bartlett, Gleanings, Pictorial and Antiquarian, on the Overland Route (1851).

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A Tarifan disappointment (1858)
Nothing is more tedious than approaching a conspicuous place on the sea - side: you make so many strides without ever seeming to get nearer. We did at last reach it, about half past five, and never was I more disappointed. I had imagined a quaint but gay little place, with Christian-like accommodations. Portela led me through a doorway in a white wall into a bad, small stable-yard, on one side of which, opening upon the yard, was a lock-up, destined to be my cuarto for the night…. There was a window, but small, and out of my reach, and the wooden shutter had to be closed, for there was no glass: so too had the door, or else dogs, pigs, and cats might walk in, in addition to what could creep (and did, as I saw in the morning) between the door and the ground. Much as I was prepared to ‘rough it’ on this journey, my heart died within me. They brought in my bedding. One of the pillow-cases was marked with the slaughter of many animals, but this they had the grace to change. There was no better lodging to be had, Portela told me, either in this house or elsewhere; and I could not, at this time, discover anything to the contrary. The posada was just outside the town gate, which, I was told, shut at nine o’clock and opened at six in the morning: why they shut it, except for something to do, I cannot guess.

The town [of Tarifa] is distinct from the fort, and has still all its old walls, gates, and Moorish towers. A tragical-looking man, with a long face, turban hat (the common Spanish one), and a cloak down to his heels, but disclosing a very shabby suit of clothes, offered to show me round the town. It is curious, as being confined within the old Moorish limits, and those very small ones; the streets narrow, white, and sepulchral, looking as if made of backs of houses instead of fronts. There was a great number of cloaked and turban-hatted men, however, lounging in the more than cool of the evening; but the most remarkable figures were the women, who wear black dresses, and the black mantle thrown entirely over the head, and meeting across the face in the oriental fashion; some shroud the face so that you cannot discern any part of it. It is striking to see these black spectres gliding up and down the white streets, and in and out of the church. As to their beauty and grace, of which Ford says a great deal, I was not lucky enough to see much of it: he says the beauty is derived from the Moors, ‘and I could see in both sexes something of what, I suppose, he means; animated black eyes, with eyebrows finely arched and very near the eye. The chief walk of Tarifa is a flagged pavement by the side of a muddy river in the middle of the town fronting the Italian facade of the principal church; quite a Flemish picture when some of the black women are crossing it, and the burghers lounging on the flags. The views from the rampart walks, up and down the coast and across the island, as it is called, where the fort is, are very striking. One of the towers has an inscription (half defaced, though modern) in honour of Alonso de Guzman, who defended this place against the Moors five or six hundred years ago, and refused to surrender it, though they threatened to murder his son if he held out, and the threat was fulfilled. The tower in front of which the tragedy took place bears the [said] inscription.

As to my night’s lodging, the bitterest ills have their alleviation; the people gave me an excellent supper, partly of fresh sardines, which I particularly affect, some fried in oil, and some dressed with an excellent sauce. I went to bed, and tried the elaborate nightdress, which I had not yet worn, and whether there were no animals in the bedding, or whether this panoply kept them out, I had eight hours of complete unconsciousness, and got up quite refreshed.

John Leycester Adolphus, Letters from Spain in 1856 and 1857 (1858).

Bourgeois Life

2008-08-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

Dinner at the Club house Hotel (1860)
‘[W]ith one or two exceptions [such as] the ‘Club House’ and ‘Griffiths’s,’’ wrote a British traveller to Gibraltar in 1868, ‘the hotels are scarcely tolerable, and hardly a single decent lodging is to be obtained in the place.’ For most of the nineteenth century, in fact, the ‘Club House’ and ‘Griffiths’ hotels, both situated on what is nowadays John Mackintosh Square, retained a position of pre-eminence among the Rock’s lodging places, attracting visitors from all nationalities and walks of life, including writers, artists and even members of the aristocracy. (When Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet’s sister, for example, tried to stay at the ‘Club House’ during her Gibraltarian sojourn in 1846, she was told that ‘the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and his suite, though not yet arrived, were hourly expected, and had secured all the vacant rooms.’) Standards at both establishments were notoriously variable. Richard Ford, author of ‘A Handbook for Travellers in Spain’ (1845), thought that the ‘Club House’ ‘is good and reasonable; [its] rooms cool, large and airy.’ Only the following year, however, William Makepeace Thackeray, the boozy and insomniac author of ‘Vanity Fair,’ wrote that the ‘Club house’ was ‘mouldy and decrepit’ and complained that its table-cloths were ‘richly decorated with cold gravy and spilt beer – although he did concede that a night at the ‘Club House’ was preferable to staying at one of the smaller, flea-ridden ‘ventas’ scattered across the rest of town. One thing, in any case, that appears to have remained constant at both establishments was their ‘Englishness,’ with service, décor and menus all catering to the English taste. ‘The Club-house being full,’ for instance wrote the traveller George Alexander Hoskins in 1851, ‘we found at ‘Griffiths’ a drawing-room, with carpets, chairs, and a piano, entirely in English taste.’ Even the staff seemed to have been handpicked for their English ways and manners, with Dorothy Wordsworth commenting in 1846 how one of the Club House’s waiters ‘though not an Englishman, spoke very good English.’ ‘Comically English,’ was how another visitor described the same establishment in 1874, adding, almost as a tongue-in cheek postscript, that the place exuded ‘a mixture of comfort and dinginess, worthy of an old- fashioned London hotel.’

The brazen bellowing of a gong had just called together the incongruous guests at the Club-house Hotel, when… Major Macgillicuddy, of the mounted Bombardiers, comes panting in to say the P. and O. steamer Tagus is passing Europa Point [and] the soup is forgotten... Hurrah! says all Gibraltar then … Now we shall have letters—checks for young ensigns unlucky at the green cloth, and with scores at the Gilt Grapes—billets for colonels’ daughters sighing for Rotten Row and the Rotten Rowers—news of children to mothers and of mothers to children—news of deaths that will make men smile and look happy—news of deaths that will, with a strong hand, suddenly squeeze the heart dry as a wrung-out sponge; so runs the world away. The scuttle of feet down to the Waterport Gate to see who have come by the steamer is audible to fancy’s ear as we turn satiated of news to our soup, that, offended at our neglect, has turned cold.

The table is remarkable for having more silver than meat on it, a peculiarity not unusual at showy hotel dinners. There is much napkin and little comfort; many servants and few dishes; a characteristic of the climate is the uncarpeted floor, the open but thickly-blinded windows, which seem to lure in the sun and turn the place into a furnace, now that the irritable hot wind is blowing. The stale fruit and fossil pastry is covered with blue gauze covers, ugly and deforming on a dinner-table as blue spectacles on a white man’s face. We have no band to play for us, but the gnats at intervals give us the “Dead March in Saul” gratis, and we pay them with the Genii’s blessings, which are curses…

I can hardly get on with my roast fowl and water-cresses for watching Major Macgillicuddy doing battle with the musquitoes. They have been attending on and tapping him for thirty years, and yet he and they are not yet on real terms of intimacy. Now and then he repeats what I suppose are prayers to himself, as he brushes them from his damask cheeks; now he flings down his knife and fork, and strikes out at them right and left, as if he were mobbed by Spanish bravoes. They are irritating, and I sympathize with him; but still it is ludicrous to see a big ogre of a man doing angry battle with such tiny and all but invisible adversaries, though they are as troublesome and invisible as the mischief makers and scandal-mongers of the world, and about as invulnerable to blows.

If you listen abstractedly to the conversation, there is only one observation in which every body seems to agree, and that is one that runs round the table like fire through dry grass. “There is no place like England;” another way of saying, “There are no people like the English;” which means, “No people like ourselves.” Without us I often feel the world would be a dunghill. Now the major, a hero with musquitoes, a bully with inferiors, a toady with superiors, I should say is busy hobnobbing, in choice Saint Jullien, with two young officers (Whipper and Snapper) in full scarlet… with crimson webby sashes and bullion epaulettes, who, being on duty in the square adjoining, have thought it their duty to come and have a “blow out” at the table d’hote. They are affable and condescending, as English officers always are with strangers, talk loud, ogle the ladies, sneer at every one else, and show themselves perfect men of the world by ostentatiously and unmistakably despising the world of which they are men. They take off their drab felt wide-awakes, bandaged with muslin turbans, and fling them on a tray of wine-glasses on a side table. They whip off their unused swords and belts, and clash them up to a nail with the practiced skill of diners-out. They then, first of all, with defiant duelling glances, turn up their eyes, pull down their bat’s-wing, espalier, gummed whiskers, furl up their mustaches out of way of the soup, and begin with an ease that a severe man would rather call impudence than ease. Their conversation is by gasps, as if their intellect was secreted in homoeopathic drops, and was to be used carefully, like an expensive’ cordial not easily replaced.

As for Fluker [my co-host], he is busy discussing with an old wine-merchant
the merits of Colares, a cheap chestnut-colored wine that is to be had for nothing abroad, and sold for a good deal in England; a sort of wine eventually to be sold as a “high quality sherry,” and many lies told over by sham connoisseurs of spurious vintages. There is much babble as to whether the wine has lost its body or not. Some one says it never had any; others say it still has a good deal. My conviction is that no one present but the old wine-merchant knows Colares from quinine, but I do not say so….

Whipper and Snapper’s (the young officers) conversation is “shoppy,” and not varied. They pity those poor devils at the Wind-mill Barracks. They hear the Three Hundredth is going under tents. They hear Silverstar has been scratched for the Scurry sweeps. They are told that Flanker lost a whole year’s pay last night at hazard; and that Solomon, whose wealth is a proverb (haw, haw), will not down any more rhino. Jones, of the Fifty-seventh, has killed another horse, and Driver is going to be cashiered. Verdi’s opera last night was “stunning;” and weeds are not what they were.

I dare say I should have learned even more than this, had not a scuffle of soldiers’ feet and a grounding of muskets been at this moment heard outside. It was the commanding officer visiting the guard-house. Whipper slips on his belt and is out. Snapper tosses off his wine, and flings down a half-finished bunch of raisins. Every one present draws a breath, as if a tight hand has been removed from their gullets: such a restraint are even two unsocial, insolent, and retractile men in a party.

I seize the occasion to propose a trip to Africa. Every one applauds it, but no one but Fluker… will go... We toss our napkins on the back of our chairs, leave the half-severed melon to the parliament of flies, always willing to sit, and summon the waiter.

The waiter with the immobile yellow wax mask of a face comes, napkin pinched under his left arm—”Africa-sir-yes-sir;” he will be gone, and anon he will be with us again. He will go to the Four Corners, the cross-roads where the sea-captains pace and bargain. He will then look for Ben-Hafiz, the Arab captain of the Ceuta xebec, The Young Man’s Escape, who was generally to be found smoking his cheroot, and quite in the clouds at the tavern called the “Good Woman” (a woman without her head), in Bombproof Alley. He will bring us the padrone, or report progress.

The party now break up with a general slide and shuffle back of chairs, and turn to the epergne, the bustle seized by the major as an opportunity to fill his glass and attempt to throttle the decanter.

Walter Thornbury, Life in Spain: Past and Present (1860)

* *

Hunting in the Cork woods (1844)
The great stand-by of the sportsman, and which, during the winter, (duty not interfering,) always gave him a couple of days’ enjoyment in the week, was the “Calpe Hunt,” a subscription pack of fox-hounds, very well got up, and which we occasionally recruited from England. Every Tuesday and Friday we assembled at stated Meets within eight or ten miles of the garrison, the Field often exceeding thirty horsemen, who mostly turned out in pink, in complete Melton Mowbray style; and though our gallant little “steeds” would no doubt have made but a poor show in a Leicestershire run, still they were well adapted to their present work, carried us well, and often at a killing pace, across the broken and rocky ground, the deep barancos and steep declivities of the rugged Sierras, over which we were frequently borne in the maddening excitement of the chase.

When it is further stated that a Scion of Royalty patronised the ‘Calpe,’ rode like a real sportsman, and made himself pleasant and affable to every one, it need scarcely be said that we all did our best either to follow or give him the go-by, which, indeed, was no easy matter, as he was a light weight, a good rider, crammed his horse at everything, and rattled him over all manner of ground. We had foxes in abundance, in fact, too many for sport; but from the great number of earths, and the few good scenting days, it must be confessed that our kills were not numerous, and the brushes we could produce — like angels’ visits — were few and far between. Still the hunting days were always looked forward to with pleasure, and if we did not commit much slaughter, they ensured us a pleasant ride, some conversation with our friends, and a few jokes at the covert’s edge; and our Meets were generally in some romantic spot, the scenery of which commonly afforded a rich treat to the lover of the beauties of nature.

One of our favourite points of “reunion” was the Pine Wood, a couple of miles beyond San Roque; and never shall I forget the impression caused by the first sight of this delightful spot. It was the commencement of the season, some time in November, that we jogged thither, and being one of the earliest of my excursions into Spain, whilst still well primed with Cervantes and Le Sage, as we dived into the gloomy shade of the darksome forest, whose echoes reverberated to the cries of huntsmen and hounds, I could not refrain from conjuring up in my reveries a long series of Quixotic adventures, which were, however, soon broken up by the gallant chiding of our dogs, who had unkennelled Reynard, and were in hot pursuit towards the Cork Wood — his general course when disturbed in the coverts where we had just found him.

Our usual Meets were besides the ‘Pinales’: the first venta — the Almendral, near San Roque — the Malaga Hills — occasionally the Second Ferry — and as the season advanced, and the wheat and barley sprung up in the cultivated parts of the country, we had to remove to a greater distance — the Duke of Kent’s Farm, the second venta, and the Cork Wood becoming the scene of operations, which the hot weather generally put an end to about the commencement of March, when we had to look out for other amusements; and amongst these may be reckoned the ‘Batidas,’ of which we will give the reader a specimen.

It was on a fine spring day that the author and a couple of Compañeros — whom we shall designate as Sam and Sandy — left the grim old Rock, shortly after morning-gun fire, for a sporting excursion to Castellar — an ancient Moorish tower, surrounded by a few houses, perched like an eagle’s nest on a rugged Sierra, about eighteen miles from Gibraltar - where we had been informed we could get some - very tolerable large shooting.

We presented on this occasion rather a different appearance from what a similar party, intent on two or three days’ sport, would do in England. Our little nags, besides the weight of the riders, with fowling-pieces slung across their shoulders, and “all appurtenances and means to boot,” had to carry their own food and clothing, in addition to a well-stored brace of alforgas, or saddle-bags, a pair of holsters, — one pipe of which contained a horse-pistol, the other a brandy-flask and a few sandwiches, which were snugly kept in their respective places by the well-rolled capa, or boat-cloak, securely strapped over the whole; and our tout ensemble, with the ‘bizarre’ mixture of our sporting and majo costume, gave us, it must be confessed, more the appearance of free sons of the forest than of a sober set of people—as we really were—going out to enjoy a little innocent pastime.

After leaving behind us the white walls of San Roque, and passing the Duke of Kent’s Farm, (so called from having, it is said, belonged to his royal highness when in command of the garrison of Gibraltar,) we entered the precincts of the Cork Wood, and halted to breakfast at the Almoraima, or Cork Convent, whose old Padre received us with his wonted hospitality; and after a cup of excellent coffee for ourselves, and a quartillo of barley to each of our horses, we again mounted, and, proceeding on our course, soon entered on wilder and more romantic scenes, as we approached the foot of the high and rugged Sierras before us.

The Cork Forest began now to be mingled with noble oaks, whose bright budding leaves at this early season, offered a strong contrast to the darker evergreen of the unchangeable and gnarled chaparros, beneath whose shade sprung up every variety of bulbous plants, amongst which were conspicuous the white narcissus, the golden-coloured crocus, and the brilliant crimson of a beautiful specimen of iris, whose bright hues were diversified by those soft pink blossoms of the smaller gum cistus, mingled with the snowy blossoms of the myrtle, now in the full pride of its bloom. So taken up was our attention with the beauty of the scene, that we at last got out of our path— at no time a very distinct one —and, wandering at random, were, however, so fortunate as to fall in with a man and boy tending a herd of swine. The latter, for a “consideration,” was easily induced to take on himself the office of guide, and under his directions we soon got into the way ‘we should go,’ which led us to a brook flowing at the foot of the hill, from whose summit frowned the embattled towers of Castellar.

We now laid to our souls the flattering unction that we were near the end of our day’s journey, but soon found, as we painfully toiled up the steep and rock-strewn sides of the mountain, that we had reckoned without our host, as it took us, even now, nearly an hour to reach the foot of the Moorish walls of the castle. Here we rested a few minutes to breathe our nags, and whilst admiring the splendid prospect at our feet, far above our heads we saw, proudly soaring towards us amidst the clouds, a pair of noble birds of prey. ‘Muchacho’ said I to the boy, ‘que son esos?’—

'They are eagles,’ was the immediate reply.

One barrel was ready loaded with ball: my eye in an instant glanced along its surface, and on the principle that a “chance shot may kill the devil,” I pulled the trigger; one of the birds paused for a second in his rapid flight, then, turning over, fell in revolving circles far, far below into the valley at our feet. The ‘muchacho’ was instantly despatched to secure the spoils, being considerably expedited in his movements by the promise of half-a-dollar in the event of finding the bird; and we in a short time had the satisfaction of seeing him slowly emerge from amidst the underwood, carrying with him the slain, which indeed proved to be an eagle, and one of such a size, that we were forced to content ourselves with bearing off the head and wings alone, as mementoes of our prowess. That shot, though a chance one, had proved mortal, for, missing the body of the noble bird, the ball had entered through the under part of the beak, and, crushing the brain, made its exit at the back of the head, thereby causing instantaneous death.

Shortly after this we found ourselves installed in the best and only venta the little hamlet of Castellar afforded; and on informing our hostess with the motive of our visit, she said that, as far as she was concerned, she had no doubt of being able to accommodate us during our stay, both with cama y comida, bed and board; that for the matter of the caceria, in order to get up a batida, Don Sebastian, the escribano, or writer of the place, had better be consulted; and he was forthwith summoned to our presence. We found him an intelligent young man, and he promised, on the return of the peasants from their daily occupations, to enlist in our service a sufficient number of men, as beaters for the proposed batida, or ‘battue.’

In the meantime we requested our old hostess to make some preparation for dinner, and proceeded to inspect the accommodation intended both for ourselves and horses. The latter, being provided with a good stable and plenty of barley, might be deemed well off; and on being taken to a loft, in which was one truckle-bed and a quantity of chopped straw in a corner, we made our minds quite easy as to our quarters for the night; and, beginning to feel in full force all the cravings of hunger, went into the cocina, or kitchen, to expedite the movements of our hostess, whom we found now aided and abetted in her culinary mysteries by a most dingy looking individual, and, if possible, a still more dirty, though otherwise pretty young woman, whom the former, in very tolerable French, introduced as his wife, informing us in the same breath, that he had at one time served in Napoleon’s army—was a Genoese by birth— had for some years, under the name of Monsieur Jean, been established as the marechal or blacksmith, at Castellar, and was entirely at our service in any way in which he could make himself useful; which proffer he backed by seating himself on one of the blocks of cork doing duty for chairs, and taking, unasked, a pull at the “ vino,” whilst we were engaged in demolishing the olla, which, steaming with grease and garlic, had been placed before us in a large wooden bowl, with one spoon of the same primitive material for the use of the whole party, who were, however, not likely to stick at such trifles; soon demolished the savoury dish, and were making free use of some capital vino seco, with Monsieur Jean — and maybe also with his pretty, though dirty young wife— when Sebastian came in with the welcome intelligence that he had procured the requisite number of recruits for the next day’s operations.

They were all immediately summoned, when as hardy and bandit-like looking set of fellows as even frightened Gil Bias, soon made their appearance: at their head was a grey-headed veteran of about seventy; but the old mountaineer, Alonzo Rovero, whom the rest dignified with the name of El Capitan, bravely bore the weight of his accumulated years, and appeared in all the freshness of green old age. More wine and aguardiente being called for — additional blocks of cork were placed for the accommodation of the visitors — but ere separating for the night, we drank long and deeply to our success on the morrow, and on breaking up the revels, retired to our loft, in the full expectation of a good night’s rest. Never were, however, poor mortals more sadly disappointed: no sooner had we consigned ourselves to the arms of repose, than we were attacked by myriads of an enemy so active and persevering, that to close an eye was out of the question; and after invoking, during the whole night, sundry blessings on the head of our pigmy bed-fellows, we hailed with joy the first appearance of dawn, and were afoot long before either the sun, or El Capitan had made their appearance.

Thanks to the fleas—notwithstanding our orgies of the preceding evening — we were early in the field, and, descending the hill, followed by our batedores with their dogs, we crossed the Guadranque which flows at its base, and were soon in the maze of hill and glen, rock and forest, characterizing its opposite banks. Our party consisted of about a dozen, including the beaters, a few of the latter armed with rusty-looking escopetas (guns,) others with long porros, or knobbed sticks, and followed by sundry large specimens of the canine species, some having the look of lurchers, whilst others shewed a cross between the greyhound and shepherd’s dog; but, of however little sporting an appearance, they proved right good of their sort, were well-trained, and thoroughly understood their work.

Our party, headed by old Rovero, proceeded for two or three miles as rapidly as the nature of the ground would admit, till we came to the entrance of a deep glen, whose sides were thickly clothed with cork and ilex trees. I was earnestly engaged at the time in conversation with Sebastian, when he suddenly stopped, and pointing to the old Capitan, with a sign enjoined silence, and being near the head of the party, it was not until now I perceived that we had lost all our followers except the Chief and the Escribano. I soon discovered what the veteran was about: he had sent out his skirmishers to the entrance of the valley, and as they were to beat up towards us, he was, with great tact and generalship, fixing on positions at the different passes, where we were to be placed in ambush, and there, immovable, silent, and watchful, to await patiently until the affrighted game, — driven onwards by the men and dogs, — should, in their flight, pass within gunshot of our respective posts.
Having previously put half a dozen buckshot into one barrel and a ball in the other, I took up my position, and remained for some time all eyes and ears, with finger on the trigger, ready for immediate slaughter; but had yet to learn that patience as well as endurance was requisite in this mountain work, and might, perhaps, have continued upwards of half an hour in this state, when, overcome by want of sleep during the night, aided and abetted, maybe, by the unusually heavy potations of the preceding evening, I — and with shame do I record it — ‘fell asleep on my post!’

How long I remained so I know not, till, startled by the report of a gun, I jumped on my feet, and rubbing my eyes, was at first bewildered by the loud and continued baying of dogs, and the approaching shouts of the beaters in the deep and shaded glen below. I immediately, arousing myself, ran along the ledge of the hill, towards the spot from whence had proceeded the report, when, suddenly turning a dense clump of the mastic shrub, I rushed against an object covered with blood, which falling over, lay prostrate at my feet. Scarcely yet awake, I thought I recognised in the bloody mass before me, my friend Sam. ‘Good God! my dear fellow, are you killed?’ said I. Sam slowly rose on his legs, and, panting with excitement and fatigue, pointed to a fine roe- deer, which, it appears, he was carrying on his back, at the time of our unexpected collision, and from whose bleeding carcase was issuing the crimson stream that had so completely disfigured its murderer, as to make me suppose he had been shot. But poor Sam appeared as much done up as if he had received, instead of dealing forth, the deadly wound. When, however, he had sufficiently recovered his breath for articulation, he exclaimed, ‘My first deer! Sacramens! This is the proudest moment of my life!’ I remembered what I experienced on the death of my first buck, and sympathized with the poor fellow’s delight, though I was extremely annoyed at not having previously had a shot at the animal myself, as it must have passed close to me and within sight of my post; but Sam was too much elevated to think of asking how I had not seen it, and — as may be supposed — I was very silent on the subject….

Edward Hungerford D. Elers Napier, Wild sports in Europe, Asia and Africa (1844).

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Recommended reading at the Garrison library (1845)
It is difficult for us to grasp just how important the Garrison library would have been in the pre-radio and pre-television age. James Hogg, writing in 1847, described it as a ‘valuable institution without which Gibraltar would, indeed, be an undesirable residence.’ A similar opinion was voiced some ten years later by John Leycester Adolphus, the English lawyer and jurist, who thought that the library was ‘a vast resource for men condemned to garrison life.’ The problem with the Garrison Library, of course, was its forbidding exclusivity, catering as it did for military men (and even then only for military officers) and visiting dignitaries. Established in 1793 by Colonel John Drinkwater, veteran of the Great Siege and author of the bestselling ‘A history of the late siege of Gibraltar’ (1785), the library was designed as a place ‘where the officers may relieve by study the tedium of their residence in so confined a spot [as Gibraltar.]’ Many famous politicians and writers made their way through its doors, including a suitably irate and moody Lord Byron, who, profoundly irked by a town he later described as ‘one of the dirtiest, most detestable spots in existence,’ was discovered lounging in the garrison’s interior with ‘his brows lowered and gathered . . . [and thinking] of some unpleasant reminiscence.’ In 1817 Gibraltar’s civilian and mercantile elite decided to form their own library, the Exchange and Commercial Library. This was situated in the old Exchange Building, just off modern-day Main Street, nowadays occupied by the House of Assembly. An American visitor to Gibraltar, writing in 1832, described the civilian library as ‘a large room in the second story of the Exchange. It is small, consisting only of about eight thousand volumes; but it comprises many of the choicest works in all the languages of Europe.’ ‘There is also,’ he added towards the end of his account, ‘a public reading-room at the Exchange, well supplied with the best English, French, and American periodicals, as well literary as political.’

At Gibraltar, among other things which are rare in Spain, is a capital English and foreign library, called ‘the Garrison Library.’ Planned in 1793 by Col. Drinkwater, and completed at the public expense by Mr. Pitt, it contains, besides newspapers and periodicals, a well-selected collection of some 20,000 volumes. Here let the traveller, with the sweet bay and Africa before him, a view seldom rivalled, and never to be forgotten, and seated on an easy chair (which is not a cosa de España), look through [the] Descripción de Gibraltar [by] Francisco Perez (1636), or the excellent Historia de Gibraltar by Ignacio Lopez de Ayala (1782). Three books of this work were put forth just when all the eyes of Europe were bent on the “ Rock,” which the Count d’Artois (Charles X.) came to take, and did not. The 4th was never published, and the why will be found in the History of the Siege by Col. Drinkwater (1783) and republished by Murray in 1844. It details the defence, and utter frustration, by sea and land, of the combined fleets and armies of Spain and France. The History of the Herculean Straits by Col. James (1771) is a mass of dull matter, handled in an uncritical manner. The Pillars of Hercules by Mr. Urquhart is [similarly] the ‘ne plus Ultra’ of nonsense….There is a small Handbook for Gibraltar (1844), and a work on its botany and geology, Flora Calpenisis by Dr. Kelaart; but the ablest work, scientific and nautical, is the Mediterranean (1854) by Admiral Smyth. Roswell and Bartolots, [incidentally], are the best booksellers on the Rock.

Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1845).

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A Trip to the Theatre Royale (1858)
The presence of large number of garrisoned troops on the Rock ensured that amateur theatrics were always very popular. The players tended to be a combination of military part-timers and visiting Spanish professionals, with a few civilian thespians added to the confusingly polyglot mix. In 1811, an anonymous English visitor to the Rock, accustomed, perhaps, to the perfect diction witnessed in Drury Lane and its environs, could not help smiling when ‘one of the [Spanish] performers, on his benefit night, concluded his address with a wish to have the attendance of ‘Ladis’ and ‘Gentilmin.’ A year later John Galt, the fiery Scottish novelist who thought that the civilian population of Gibraltar resembled a bunch of ‘Orang Outangs,’ spoke of ‘a contemptible theatre, where strolling Spanish comedians sometimes perform. ‘The Theatre Royal,’ Gibraltar’s largest and most famous venue, opened with a production of Verdi’s ‘Nabucco,’ on 10 May, 1847. It quickly established itself as Gibraltar’s premier social and cultural venue, attracting both civilian and military visitors, as well as operatic luminaries such as Beniamino Gigli. Unfortunately, the grand old building was knocked down a few years ago.

I have been this evening to the theatre, to see a Spanish King John, but could not sit it out, though the fourth act was to contain the ‘descubrimiento de la Gran Carta’ (discovery of Magna Charta). The house is large and rather handsome, and the audience was attentive and orderly; very respectable indeed in the boxes; the other parts soldierish and sailorish, with a large sprinkling, aloft, of ladies quietly looking out for the unwary. …The scene between Arthur and Hubert went off very lamely, and was improved, as inferior workmen improve Shakspeare, by making Arthur turn round and address a showy apostrophe to something or somebody outside of the window.

John Leycester Adolphus, Letters from Spain in 1856 and 1857 (1858).

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Strolling through the Alameda Gardens (1890)
The Alameda Gardens were first open to the public on 14th April, 1816. As in so many other areas relating to Gibraltar’s civilian development, the main driving force behind their creation was Sir George Don, possibly the most fair-minded and reforming of all Gibraltar’s military governors. Being of the opinion that ‘there was no place of public recreation in this Garrison,’ the enterprising Don decided to establish ‘a walk around the Grand Parade, and form what is called in this country an Alameda, where the inhabitants might enjoy the air protected from the extreme heat of the sun.’ The work was funded by private subscription and took just over a year to complete, an achievement all the more impressive when one considers that the gardens were built on a bedrock of limestone and red sand. Over the next few decades the Alameda was subject to number of refinements and improvements – including the introduction of gas lighting towards the middle of the century and the addition of numerous pieces of topiary and statutory. The gardens, not surprisingly, were very popular among Victorian tourists, many of them travelling to Gibraltar just to be able to wander through its elm and acacia-lined avenues. In John Claudius Loudon’s ‘Encyclopædia of Gardening’ (1835), they are described as ‘truly a little paradise’ which offered ‘ever-changing and beautiful views of the bay.’ The article goes on to say that ‘the alameda of Gibraltar would be beautiful any where, but how much more so is it, bounded as it is on one side by a rock 1500 feet high, and on the other by a placid bay in the Mediterranean.’

In the Alameda… a visitor may spend many a pleasant hour, and — if the peace and beauty of a hillside garden, with the charms of subtropical vegetation in abundance near at hand, and noble views of coast and sea in the distance allure him – he assuredly will. Gibraltar is immensely proud of its promenade, and it has good reason to be so. From the point of view of Nature and of Art the Alameda is an equal success. General Don, who planned and laid it out some three-quarters of a century ago, unquestionably earned a title to the same sort of tribute as was bestowed upon a famous military predecessor, Marshal Wade. Anyone who had seen the Alameda ‘before it was made’ might well have lifted up his hands and blessed the gallant officer who had converted ‘the Red Sends,’ as the arid desert once occupying this spot was called, into the paradise of geranium trees which has taken its place. Its monuments to Elliot and Wellington are not ideal: the mysterious curse pronounced upon English statuary appears to follow it even beyond seas; but the execution of the effigies of these national heroes may, perhaps, be forgotten in the interest attaching to their subjects. The residents at any rate, whether civil or military, are inured to these efforts of the sculptor’s art, and have long since ceased to repine. And the afternoon promenade in these gardens — with the English officers and their wives and daughters, English nursemaids and their charges, English tourists of both sexes and all ages, and the whole surrounded by a polyglot and polychromatic crowd of Oriental listeners to the military band — is a sight well worth seeing and not readily to be forgotten.’

Anonymous, The Picturesque Mediterranean. With Illustrations by the Most Eminent (1890).

Pestilence and disease

2008-08-18T01:10:00.000-07:00

The Three Last Letters of Reverend William Barber (1830)
The tale of the Reverend William Barber in many ways epitomises the sufferings and tribulations endured by the many English and Scottish missionaries who flocked to Gibraltar during the course of the nineteenth century. Widowed at an early age, Barber first arrived on the Rock in 1825 with the hope of establishing Wesleyan Methodism among ‘the poor, benighted Spaniards at Gibraltar.’ Over the next few years he applied himself to the study of Spanish, a gruelling and often thankless task which caused him much vexation – he complained at one point that his attempts to speak the language were ‘not better than the poorest babblings’ - but which eventually allowed him to preach to the local inhabitants in their own tongue. During this time he also revealed himself to be an observant student of men and morals, regularly sending back letters home full of insightful, if slightly sardonic commentary. Speaking about the people around him, for example, he writes that ‘the Spanish inhabitants of the Rock are generally persons that can live no where else; by this, however, I do not mean that they are of an abandoned and incorrigible character; but, that they are thus too intimately dependent on each other.’ Similarly, when reflecting about Gibraltar’s cultural situation, he complained that ‘there is nothing like a good bookseller’s shop; and no printing press but that which is in the hands of Government.’ Of the dangers facing him, however, the young missionary appears to have been largely ignorant – so much so that in 1826 he questioned whether ‘a greater number of persons are carried off here [in Gibraltar] by fever, than in any town of equal population in England.’ Such sentiments, of course, proved to be sadly off the mark. Just over a year after he made these comments, Yellow Fever broke out in Gibraltar, this time with a force and virulence not seen since the great epidemic of 1804. Barber, who by this stage was engaged and waiting for the arrival of his bride-to-be from Malta, volunteered to help with the relief efforts and was duly appointed Acting Chaplain to the forces. The post carried an allowance of fifteen shillings a day, but Barber refused the money, arguing that ‘he would not upon any account be benefited a single farthing’ for helping those less fortunate than him. Over the next few weeks he behaved with exemplary courage and dignity, burying the dead and giving comfort to the dying ‘in the very midst of infection.’ Under such circumstances, it was not long before the inevitable happened. On the twenty-first of October, shortly after visiting a sick soldier, the Reverend William Barber fell seriously ill and died five days later. He was only twenty-nine years old.

To the Committee of the Wesleyan Missionary Society.
Gibraltar, Oct. 10, 1828.

Dear Sirs,
I cannot neglect the opportunity, offered by the packet, of writing to you, interested as you must be in our present situation. The newspapers will, no doubt, have informed you that the yellow-fever, so fatal here in 1804; and 1813, has again made its appearance; and, in spite of the most vigorous measures to prevent it, has prevailed to a very painful extent. It is probable that report has exaggerated the truth; I shall, therefore, confine myself to a simple statement of facts, for which, indeed, I am in some measure qualified, by the friendship of Dr. Hennen, the Head Physician of the Garrison: and by the frequency of my visits to his office, for the purpose of rendering myself useful, if possible, combined with my activity, at present, in a somewhat official capacity, in the place of the Garrison Chaplain, who is ill of the disorder.

It was in the end of the month of August, that alarm was first excited, by the successive illness of several of the members of a very respectable family, in the habit of attending at our Chapel. The servant of that family sickened, and, at length, after removal from the house to another situation at no great distance, she died. The disease was taken, before this event, by two individuals; the one a Mrs. Silcox, who unfortunately concealed her illness, till it was too late to remedy it; the other a Mrs. Smith, who, after a very severe illness, was kindly, in the mercy of God, restored to her husband and numerous family. The police and medical regulations of this place are always put especially on the alert in autumn; and these cases, as they were immediately known, became instantaneously the impulse of increased precaution and daily examination. A very few days, however, decided all doubt in the most competent quarters; for new cases of disease occurring, it became clear, that we should have to see the progress, and to contend with the miseries, of a very decided and malignant epidemic fever, to which the Medical Gentlemen gave the appellation of ‘autumnal bilious remittent;’ I suppose, because the popular termed yellow-fever,’ is either not scientific, or of very alarming sound: but of the nature of the disease there exists, I believe, in no quarter capable of forming a just estimate, the shadow of a doubt.

There is also another very important point connected with this disease, which seems equally to have fixed all the Medical Gentlemen in one uniform opinion, with reference to its origin. Many have maintained that yellow-fever is not a native of the place, but always imparted when found at all. I suppose the history of the fever this year will leave no more doubt remaining; it is most plainly and certainly of native origin; and whoever contemplates the circumstances of the place from actual observation, will be surprised, not that infectious bilious fever should originate here, but rather that any year should pass without its appearance, and unmarked by its awful devastations. What the atmospheric influences may be in originating this calamity, must remain, I suppose, as it always has been, a mystery too deep for investigation, and too uncertain to admit of consistent theory: one thing, however, is certain, that the past has been the coolest summer known here for many years; most assuredly the coolest I have spent here; and to this, the very unusual prevalence of westerly winds, which are always regarded as by far the most healthy for us, has mainly contributed. Another circumstance, singular enough, is, that while there have been each year insulated cases of decided yellow-fever, they have been for years confined to the individual sufferers; while in this, the coolest, and, every one thought, the healthiest year of many that have passed over us safely, the cases which, when they commenced, seemed slight, almost immediately became epidemic, and now it is hidden among the secrets of God, when and where it shall stop. Bat my business is not to indulge reflections, but rather to give you a sketch of facts; which, if I should be permitted to live till these calamities are overpast, I may more particularly fill up. Alarm began to spread about the 4th of September; and on the 5th, an order was issued from the Government, that every individual living in the district infected, should immediately leave home, and encamp on the Neutral Ground, tent-equipage being provided for them there. You are aware, I suppose, that the Neutral Ground is that portion of the sands forming the isthmus which joins the Rock to the main land; it is outside the fortifications, but may be swept by the Garrison guns. The impression, produced by this decided and vigorous measure, was both strong and painful: some imagined it unnecessary; others exclaimed that it was tyrannical; while many, remembering the sufferings of former epidemic years, felt a gloomy terror accompanying the apprehension of witnessing similar scenes of aggravated distress. It would be very difficult to convey any just idea of the scene presented to view. The order, to be of any use, was necessarily urgent: it was hoped, that, by clearing away the entire population of the district, all the infected individuals might be put outside the town: but this expectation was speedily baffled. The disease took, for some days, a well marked course from the very spot in which it commenced; till mingling, at length, with the mass pf the population, all effort to trace or restrain it was in vain. Very soon, nothing was left but to thin the population as much as possible, and, bending every effort of medical and police regulation to lessen the mischief, to mitigate an evil which God would not allow to be extinguished. Upwards of ten thousand people, it is calculated, have left the Garrison; and yet, it is supposed, there are not fewer than three thousand within who have not passed the fever; although nearly two thousand five hundred cases have already occurred, and more than four hundred and fifty have died. It is fearful to figure to one’s mind the possible, perhaps probable, range of the disease among so many, especially as the worst part of the season has yet to be passed. However, I cannot avoid expressing my deep personal conviction, that we owe it to the distinguished zeal and vigilance of the measures authorised by his Excellency the Governor, and urged by the head of the medical department, Dr. Hennen, that we have not the whole town and territory of Gibraltar one great mass of disease and death. When I consider the amount of the population, estimated at nearly thirty thousand, including soldiers, the peculiar malignity of the disease, the subtlety of its infection, and the number of actual cases of sickness, I am surprised that our deaths are not even more numerous than they are; nor is there a day I live, but I feel grateful to God, that, by the measures adopted, one-third part, at least, of those who could be food for this unsparing devourer of human life, are placed almost in assured safety: for, on the Neutral Ground and in the Bay, the probability of security is very great.

On the 7th of September, our Chapel was opened for the last Sabbath services; but the congregation was so diminished, that we occupied no more than the lower part. We celebrated, on that day, the two ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The child baptised was an infant of Serjeant Grey, of the Royal Artillery. He and his excellent wife were present: they had set their minds on the day’s exercise with peculiar feeling; and we were more than ordinarily happy in the celebration, Our circumstances were very solemn; we apprehended that it was the last time the Chapel would be open; and every one seemed to feel the uncertainty of ever meeting in it again; though, on looking round, no one seemed likely to die. On pouring the water on the face of the infant, I felt myself urged to offer up a prayer for its preservation, and for its Parents, with more than common power. These were friends, with whom I was in habits of the greatest intimacy; both were persons of superior mind, and eminent for piety of the most consistent kind. He, for solidity and firmness of principle and conduct, has been seldom equalled, perhaps never surpassed: she, for animation, and energy, and zealous effort, has not left her superior behind. But both are gone! They were incessant in their attentions to the neighbours in the next house, who were slightly attacked by the fever; and this, with the very bad situation in which they lived, being in the line of the fever’s direction, arid of a drain from the side of the hill, from which the disease, it is most probable, arose, prepared them for a heavier stroke. I was with them this night three weeks; we spent some time in conversation, and closed with prayer. They were then both well; and talking, among other things, of that was to be done in case of an attack of disease. The next day, or that which followed, Mrs. Grey sickened: in four or five days, Mr. Grey himself was incapable of holding up any longer. I called that morning to enquire after them, and was told that he was just going to the hospital. He was still the same unmoved, but deeply feeling, man that, in more happy times, I had always found him. I assisted him to the hospital waggon. He just told me. that he felt his circumstances very painful, but was quite satisfied; nothing like a murmur escaped him, though, from his appearance and manners, I felt persuaded that his recovery was highly improbable; and I think he felt so himself. Mrs. Grey revived for a day or two, but, at last sunk, after leaving the most delightful testimony of clear and animated faith, and love, and hope. ‘Oh !’ said she to a friend, who is himself at this moment ill with a severe attack of the disease, ‘Oh ! if this be dying, why, O why, did not the Lord let me go just now? Should I recover after this, no more names or parties for me,—none but Christ and his faithful followers!’ A few minutes before she expired, she was probably delirious, for she thought she saw a friend, of whose death, two or three days before, she had not been informed. After pointing, and mentioning his name, she said, ‘ He is beckoning me to come to him !—Well,’ said she, addressing him, ‘ just stay a minute, and I’ll come with you.’ And so she did, for she almost instantly expired. This excellent pair are thus removed together, for her husband died the same night at the hospital. They were very dear to me, and I shall feel the loss of them greatly. They were not members of our Society: he was of the Scotch Church, and She an Independent, of Mr. Parsons’ Church, at Leeds: but their decided piety commanded my veneration, while their personal attachment won my heart. Another invaluable friend whom we have lost, is Quarter-master Serjeant Vagg, a member of my Class, and my very intimate friend. The last time we met in Class, several observed the peculiarly happy and holy state of his mind. He, like Mr. and Mrs. Grey, was universally esteemed: even the profligate admired him, and would gladly oblige him. But F cannot say more of him, or of others now: my paper is full, and my time is gone; and my heart recoils from the recital of ‘such losses, even though I am strongly reminded, of the probability that, ere long, I may cease to have power to deplore them. All places of public assembly were ordered to be closed on September 9th; and almost all business was immediately suspended. The respectable, I mean the monied, inhabitants, who could, made their escape, in every direction which was open; though, by this time, a cordon was laid down by the Spaniards; and soon after, a proclamation, denouncing the punishment of instant death to any one landing from Gibraltar, was published by the Governor of the Province. Some days ago, a letter was addressed to me from the Governor, re-questing the use of the Chapel, in this emergency, as an hospital. I immediately called together several of our leading members, and read the Governor’s letter; when it was instantly, and without difference of opinion, decided that the Chapel should be placed, with all cordiality, at the disposal of His Excellency. The Chaplain of the Forces has taken the complaint very severely. Dr. Hennen told me just now, that it is most likely by far he will die. He is, at present, on the verge of the last hope; and I have been requested by the Government to officiate in his stead, in the melancholy work of burying the dead. Twice a-day, therefore, I have the painful duty of going a mile and a half to the ground. Thence I have just returned, after burying five bodies in one grave, and a civilian separately. The correspondence on these subjects you will, one day, receive, if I live; if not, it is perhaps enough to know, that my conduct has been approved in the highest quarters here: and I hope if I drop, that this will hereafter turn out to the furtherance of the Gospel. I am, undoubtedly, now so exposed, that nothing but a special Providence indeed can protect my life. I have it now, indeed, in my band. But when better motives run low, I ask myself,—Why should not I be exposed, as well as medical men and others ? And there is nothing in me better than another to make me exempt, by merit, from a death, however sudden and calamitous, into which others, far, far more worthy, and more pious, than I, have sunk. Of course, I feel deeply at the possibility, that this is the last letter I shall write to you; for I have no constitution to stand against a violent attack of fever. But should that be the case, I now leave my deliberate testimony, that I believe salvation by Jesus Christ to be the true and only worthy object of human life, as a whole. I lament and bewail my own personal unfaithfulness, and Ministerial insufficiency. I feel most deeply that I have nothing to trust to for eternity, but the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The atonement of the Son of God, and the sanctification of the Spirit of Jesus, are the only ground of hope to your affectionate servant. I forgot to mention, that my man-servant took the fever and died. I am living at the house of Mr. Barnard, whom I hope, should I die, you will remunerate. The family are very dear and kind friends. Our greatest number of deaths in one day, according to the official medical report, is twenty-nine; but the number has diminished since, so that some slight hope is felt of a turn in the course of the disease; but the east wind has set in, and the heavy rains keep off, Well! it is the will of God!—it is the will of God! Yet He hears and answers prayer. O ! pray for us, then; for our need of the mercy of God is very great.

Your affectionate and obedient Servant, In the Gospel of the Lord Jesus,
William Barber.

Gibraltar, Oct. 12, 1828.

My very dear father,
I cannot let the Packet depart, without hastily scribbling enough to let you know, that your son William is thus far safe from the disease, which is raging around him; though how long he may continue so is, of course, to the last degree uncertain. It is most probable, that you have heard exaggerated accounts of the yellow-fever’s prevailing here. I shall, however, have only just time to state two or three leading facts.

The disease is ascertained, as nearly as any thing of the kind can be, to be of local origin. It appeared, at first, in the end of August, at a house situated about 200 yards from our Chapel. On the 4th of September, alarm spread; and then the Spaniards put on a cordon, and proclaimed instant death, as the penalty of any attempt to land, on their territory, from Gibraltar. On the 3th, the infected district of the Town was ordered to be entirely cleared of its inhabitants, who were provided with tents on the Neutral Ground. On the 7th, we had our last Sabbath-day exercises; for, on the 9th, an order from the Government was issued, for closing all places of public assembly; and apprehension, now, so generally prevailed, that almost all business was suspended. No stroke could have been more fatal than this, to the interests of Gibraltar just now; it is regarded as the last of a series of misfortunes, destined to accomplish its ruin. The Mission-premises were soon in the very centre of infection, and I, therefore, thought it best to remove. I accepted the offer of some friends, to receive me at the South part of the Rock, and strongly advised Paulo, my servant-man, and his younger brother, to go out to Camp. He, however, entreated me to allow him to stay at the Mission-House, as he had no fear respecting the issue; and J, at length, unhappily complied with his request. He soon afterwards sickened; and, contrary to my earnest and express desire, concealed his illness from me: in four or five days he died. ‘t is supposed, that upwards of ten thousand persons have gone out either to encamp on the Neutral Ground between us and the Spaniards, or to escape in different ways; but there is, of course, great difference between alarm and precaution, and the actual prevalence of disease. You may then rely on the following facts:— the number of cases in all, which have as yet occurred, is 2500, a few, and but a few, more or less; and the number of deaths, is something more than 450; but there are still, beside the soldiers, nearly, or quite 3000 persons, who have never had the fever; these, indeed, are all encamped, and, therefore, out of the Town; but there are, at least, 3000 more within the walls, who may be victims of the disease; and now we are only at the 12th of October, having the Worst part of the season to pass; for, from the number of cases and deaths which have occurred, our atmosphere must be full of disease; yet, hitherto, God has generally favoured us with strong winds, Our Chapel has been required as an hospital, though it is not yet employed; but the new Church is already occupied. Three medical men have died, and several more are ill. I attribute it, under God, to nothing but the unparalleled vigour and efforts of Dr. Hennen, that we are not all in the most horrid confusion, and one vast heap of disease and death. The disease is so insidious, malignant, rapid, and infectious, that, had not the people been greatly thinned, our situation would have been far worse than it is; and, had it not been for the wise arrangements which have been made, the evil would have been far more oppressive; but, after all, great numbers of the poor people, that are excluded from the town, have to be kept from, starvation by public charity.

The Garrison Chaplain is now lying at the point of death, and I have been requested by the Government to officiate on the burial ground, in his stead. I have buried twelve persons in one day, this, as yet, is the highest number. I am, however, thus in the very midst of infection continually, and hence, I have very little hope of escape. Indeed, how can I hope it? or why should? since I am no better than others, who sicken and die.

I have lost several of my dearest, and most intimate, friends on the lock, and many of my acquaintances. Well, if disease should be permitted to take me as a victim, it shall find me at the post of duty. I commend myself most heartily to your prayers. Oh, my dear Father, Brothers, and Sisters! how gladly would I once more embrace you! But I trust, that the blood of Jesus will be, the means of our meeting in Heaven. I have received the kind and cheerful letters of my friends in England, relative to my full admission into Connexion. I thank them heartily for their congratulations; but what do they all avail now .’— E , dear lovely girl, is, by a special Providence, detained, and that in, a remarkable manner, at Malta; and, by this time, she must have received my letter, to direct her to wait sometime longer in safety, where she is. But now, after all, I shall, perhaps, have to leave her an unmarried widow. Should that, unhappily, be the case, I am sure, that I shall not commend her in vain to your earnest affections, if you should ever see her. With love to all my Brothers and Sisters,
I am, my dearest Father,
Your affectionate Son,
William.

Gibraltar, Oct. 16, 1828.
My dear Mr. Pyne,
Every remaining friend is to us, now, very dear indeed. What a scene surrounds us ! What a scene have I before me every day on the Neutral Ground ! I rejoice more than I can tell you, and am more thankful than I care to describe, that you, by the good providence of God, were led away before this awful calamity burst on this unhappy place. Had your valuable life been spared by the disease, it would have been sacrificed by distress! a mind and heart all sensibility must either burst now, or change its very nature. But this is no time for any very particular expression of feeling, or description of facts; in some future time you will hear enough,—too much, from those who may be survivors. As for myself, I know not what reason I have, and I am sure I have no right, to hope to be spared; yet God has, in mercy to me, and in answer to the prayers, as I may without vanity believe, of many dear friends here and in England, spared me to see the 16th of October: but no man can now calculate upon a single hour; and deaths are very, very numerous, at three or four days illness. Among the members of our congregation, beside poor Mr. Walsall, we have lost both Mr. and Mrs. Grey. Their infant is spared, and under the guardianship of Captain Cameron. Quarter-master Serjeant Vagg is likewise gone; Mrs. Vagg and the children are spared. But the list is too painful to run over. You see, I have lost some of my most intimate friends in the Society, to whom my warmest affections were linked, for their piety and love. Great God! how terrible is this! A fierce disease, which you can neither see, nor hear, nor touch, springs invisibly on its victims; and not by ones or twos, but by scores and hundreds, we are putting them into the grave. The number of the dead is so great, that to bury them in single graves is impracticable. Trenches are dug, and the coffins (for, thank God, as yet coffins can be had, though only by the most praise-worthy vigour of the Government,) are laid side by side, in regular but most afflictive order. Yesterday, for example, I read the funeral service over nineteen bodies in the Protestant Ground! More than that number, of course, were likewise interred in the grounds of the Catholics and Jews. This morning I had to discharge the same melancholy duty for ten more; and how many may follow in the afternoon, I cannot guess. You will not think me stretching my respect beyond the bounds of truth, when I say, that I regard it as one of the most special mercies of God, amidst the judgments of this awful time, that Dr. Hennen was stationed here before it began, and that his health has been hitherto preserved. To his vigorous and decided measures we owe it, under God, that we have not cue universal waste of disease and death. It is generally believed, that the kind or type of the disease is fully as malignant as in 1804; aud the only reason why effects so dreadful, as of that year, have not yet resulted, must be found in the superiority of the measures adopted. Think of the crowded state of the Garrison; think of its pouring forth, at Land-port, at least ten thousand of the inhabitants; of the Neutral Ground, covered with tents and sheds of the most temporary nature; of the thousands out of employ, dependent on the charity of others for daily support; of the sacrifices which every body must make; of the numbers who have fled from danger and duty; and of the many,—for, thank God, they are not few,—who stand manfully, amidst the raging of disease, and the threats of famine, to alleviate the miseries of the rest; among whom, Mr. T. G. Turner, and Mr. Cochrane, who is to-day down with the fever, are pre-eminent.

But I must close. Miss Hennen continues in health; she is the life and soul of her invaluable Father, to whom this afflicted place is infinitely more indebted than it can ever be possible for the inhabitants to acknowledge, or the world to know, though much will, and ought to be known. I perceive that Dr. Hennen has expressed himself strongly about me. There is more of friendship in this, than the occasion calls for. The Governor has required the use of the Chapel as an hospital, and requested me to act as Chaplain, ad interim. The mournful duties of this station I have had to fulfil for Mr. Hatchman, among others: never have I had duties so melancholy to discharge. The burial-ground and the hospitals are spots of intense infection, and I am every moment with my life in my hand. But, ‘What do ye more than others ?’ There are very many who deserve infinitely higher praise, if praise at such a moment can be thought of with innocence, than I. With a very, very sinful heart, and a life that looks to me only in the light of something far worse than a blank, I prostrate myself at the feet of Jesus, and hope for every thing through His atonement alone. Yet that heart feels that it is very affectionately yours.

W. BARBER.

William Barber, Anne Barber, A brother’s portrait: or, Memoirs of the late rev. William Barber (1830).

* *

A description of Gibraltar’s civilian hospital (1830)
The want of a civil hospital was long universally acknowledged; and at length, to use the words of an official document dated August 1815, ‘the extreme inconvenience and distress which had hitherto been experienced for want of a proper place for the reception and cure of sick civilians in the garrison, rendered the establishment of an hospital indispensable.’

A range of buildings was given up for this purpose, which had formerly been known by the name of the ‘Blue Barracks.’ In 1810 they were remarkable for the presence of fever in them, but by judicious arrangements, they have now become acknowledged among the airiest, most cleanly, and most salubrious buildings in the garrison.

The Civil Hospital stands on the hill side, at the northern end of the town. It is situated upon an open parade, and presents a front looking directly upon the bay. It is completely insulated from all other buildings on its flanks: upon the east, or rear, it is separated from the adjacent houses and tenements by sufficient walls. In his hospital there is accommodation for one hundred patients, with ample offices, and a house for the surgeon and dispenser.

The hospital is divided into three branches, for patients of the Catholic,Protestant and Hebrew persuasions; each has a separate establishment for itself. The wards are upon two floors of easy access, and are extremely well ventilated; they consist of four for the Catholics, four for the Protestants, and two for the Jews. Besides these regular wards, there are three or four small rooms that, on an emergency, may be appropriated to hospital purposes.

The wards consist from four to sixteen beds each. The floors are of wood, the bedsteads are of iron, and the bedding is of a very superior quality, consisting of an excellent hair mattress, sheets, blankets, and a cotton cover; each bedstead is furnished with a frame for supporting a mosquito net; and upon the whole, the inmates of this hospital are as well accommodated, in these particulars, as any individuals in the garrison.

There are two large tanks with the walls of the hospital building, capable of containing between 4000 and 5000 gallons of water, with force-pumps to distribute it through all the words of the hospital.

The sexes are properly divided. The sewers and drains throughout are well constructed; unfortunately, the privies, from the nature of the ground, have not the drainage that is so desirable in establishments of this nature.

Behind the hospital is an airing ground, sufficient, on an emergency, to contain two or three convalescent marquees. Within the body of the hospital is a well-fitted dispensary, a surgery, and a room for specimens of natural history and morbid anatomy; and at one end, in a detached situation, is a chemical laboratory.

The officers of the hospital are, one surgeon, and a dispenser, who acts also as purveyor; both these gentlemen are half-pay British medical officers. The servants are, one steward for the whole establishment, one cook for the Protestants and Catholics, the Jews cooking for themselves, one orderly for each division, one nurse for each division, one dispensary servant and barber for the whole, and washerwomen hired at discretion.

The salaries are as follows:
The Surgeon 90 dollars per mensem
Purveyor and Dispenser 45 ditto
Steward 24 ditto
Cook 8 ditto
Orderlies 8 ditto
Nurse 8 ditto
Dispensary Servant and Barber 10 ditto

Washerwomen and extra nurses are paid at discretion, and the steward, cook, and orderlies are allowed rations.

The dietary and extras, as well as the books and regulations, are quite assimilated to the plan of the British Regimental Hospitals. On the average, the diet for each patient costs from 10d to 1s sterling per diem. The funds are supplied from a contribution of three reals, or about one shilling on each cask of flour used by the town bakers; the Quarantine fees, which average annually about 3000 dollars; fines imposed by the Civil Court, private subscriptions, legacies, and a sum of 2s. 2d. paid by such patients as are able to contribute to their own support. The Consuls of the different nations pay for sailors &c. at a similar rate, but payment is not necessary in all cases, the only claim for admission being distress. A legacy of 3000 dollars per annum was left to the Catholic part of the hospital by the late Mr. Gavino, a charitable inhabitant.

The Dispensary is daily open to out-patients; advice and medicines are liberally distributed, and vaccinations regularly performed. For a period of ten years, namely, from its first establishment in 1815, to 20th December, 1825, there have been treated in the hospital 2333 cases; and for the same period, 13, 182 outpatients have been treated by the officers of this establishment.

Upon the whole, the civil hospital of Gibraltar reflects the highest credit on all concerned in it. Whenever circumstances will admit of the enlargement of the accommodation for lunatics, and the formation of a distinct hospital for lying-in women, all will have been effected, of which the establishment seems capable.

John Hennen, Sketches of the medical topography of the Mediterranean (1830).

**

On the recent spate of yellow fever epidemics (1831)
If I am allowed to cast a retrospective glance on the former epidemics, I may state, that, in 1813, the neighbourhood of Boyd’s Buildings was, as in 1804, the first spot on which the disease made its appearance in Gibraltar; and, as early as the 6th of July, a highly suspicious case of fever, which proved rapidly fatal, was met in the person of a ferryman, who lived in that unfortunate situation; but it was on the 10th of September that Dr Gilpin, the principal medical officer, reported officially to the Board of Health, that cases of fever of a very serious type had, within a few days, become prevalent in town, and that masons, porters, bakers, and people exposed to hard labour, had been principally attacked. The first case of black vomit which I personally observed during that season occurred about the beginning of September, in a gardener who lived at the south end of the South Barracks. He was a Genoese, and had for some time resided in Gibraltar. In 1814, the cases which first alarmed the garrison occurred about the 15th of August on the hill side, at Cavallero’s Buildings, situated close to Arengo’s-Gully, and at the top of the central part of the town. These buildings competed at the time with Boyd’s for want of cleanliness. They were inhabited by about 300 Portuguese of the lower order, and, close to them, there was an accumulation of filth, (one of the dirt’s deposits alluded to in my answer to the 6th query,) which emitted a very offensive stench, and attracted an incredible swarm of flies, which, infecting the whole neigbourhood, became at the time the subject of general observation and surprise.

I may assert, indeed, without fear of the correctness of the assertion being questioned, that, whenever the epidemic has appeared in Gibraltar, it has always commenced in the filthiest spot, among the lower and more disorderly class of inhabitants; and that this was the case in the late visitation, is confirmed by an official communication of the late Dr Hennen to his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor…

The rise of our epidemic has never been satisfactorily traced to a foreign source, nor its progress marked, from a known focus of contagion, to one or more individuals; and instead of creeping from one family to another, cases have frequently appeared unconnected and scattered at different points; spreading, in some instances, with the rapidity of the electric fluid, and attacking persons who never had approached the sick, nor any assignable source of contagion.

Our epidemic fever did not spread at Europa Flats, on board of the vessels in the bay, or on the Neutral Ground, when carried thither from the town; and numbers of individuals who had the seeds of the disease about them, even in the case of their falling sick or dying there, did not communicate the malady to their neighbours or attendants. This important fact, which I had particularly noted during the epidemic of 1813, amongst the foreign recruits quartered at the Brewery Barracks, has been most forcibly exemplified during the late calamity, when neither the bedding, clothes, &c. &c. removed from the focus of sickliness, nor the continual intercourse with some of the inhabitants who daily went out to the Neutral Ground, nor the numerous convalescents directly sent thither from the Civil Hospital, often in an early stage of their recovery, produced a solitary case of the disease beyond the gates of the garrison among that numerous population who had fled thither, and who frequently were in confined habitations, when the heat of the weather, the depression of spirits, the melancholy scenes which they witnessed, and, I may add for many of them, privations and hardships, afforded the most favourable means for the propagation of the disease, had it been of a contagious and communicable nature.

Against this assertion it may be stated, that cases of the same fever that prevailed in the garrison, repeatedly occurred on the Neutral Ground, among individuals who, for some time previous to the attack, had not breathed the atmosphere of the Rock. This circumstance certainly leads to the inference, that those individuals contracted the disease by communication with the people going from the town; and this inference is corroborated by the fact related before the Board of Inquiry, that a clergyman whose clothes had been recently stained by black-vomit, having been admitted into a shed, one of the tenants was immediately taken ill, and experienced retchings and febrile symptoms, and that shortly after some of the other individuals in the same shed were similarly affected.

But in answer to this objection, I observe that a contagion producing a disease which manifests itself so suddenly, is yet unknown, and that the sudden attack of the tenant of that shed appears to have been the effect of imagination, rather than of any contagious fomites retained in this gentleman’s clothes. This is the more probable, because the disease of the tenant and of the other individuals was mild, and at no time showed an unequivocal character; and because the cases on the Neutral Ground were altogether few, and did not present, as far as I could ascertain, any of the violent and dangerous symptoms observed in the garrison. The fact, also, that in former years. amongst the few people residing there, probably under 400 individuals, cases of fever were annually observed during the summer and autumnal months, which had been frequently attended with very suspicious symptoms; and compared with which, the few slight cases observed this year, among a population exceeding 6000, placed under the most unfavourable circumstances, far from invalidating my position, evidently tends to establish the principle, that the Gibraltar fever has been literally local, and its infectious properties confined to the vitiated atmosphere of the Rock.

The epidemics which at different periods have raged in this garrison, and on the coast of the Mediterranean, have always appeared about the latter end of summer, or during the autumnal months. If the disease were introduced from abroad, and had the property of propagating itself by contact with the sick, or with substances tainted with the effluvia of the sick, would that property have constantly remained inert during nine months of the year? and do other importable contagions attend to seasons to make their ravages?

The inefficacy of the various means which have been repeatedly employed to stop the progress of the epidemic, such as removing and sending out the sick, shutting up their houses, burning the furniture which they had used, prohibiting intercourse and meetings of all kinds, &c.; and, on the contrary, the success which tended the measure of removing from the impure atmosphere of the Rock those who appeared most susceptible of the fever, as was done in 1813 with many thousand inhabitants; in 1814with the sickly regiments; and during the late epidemic, with the whole population of the 13th and 24th Districts, clearly prove that our epidemic fever is not easily removed from its native soil, nor easily transplanted into another place.

Those cases of fever attended with the same series of symptoms which characterize a severe attack of the epidemic, viz. darting- pains in the head, suffusion of the eyes, yellowness of the skin, hemorrhages, hiccup, black vomiting, or dejections, &c. &c. presenting the same morbid appearances after death, and evincing the same property of affording immunity from a second attack, clearly show their identical nature with the epidemical fever, at the same time that their frequent and spontaneous recurrence strongly tends to establish the fact, that the disease originates in Gibraltar, and is produced by local and endemic causes.

‘Answers to Queries from the Army Medical Board on the Epidemic at Gibraltar 1828 by R. Amiel, Surgeon, 12th Regiment,’ Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal (1831).

**

Death of a Yellow Fever victim (1828)
James Larry, soldier of the twenty-third regiment, age 22, of a strong constitution, of middle stature, somewhat addicted to alcoholic drinks, at Gibraltar during the last four years, was received for the first time at the Marine Hospital the seventh of November, 1828. He exhibited then febrile symptoms unaccompanied by yellowness, which were of a short duration. Larry was received for the second time in the same hospital, the 23d of the same month, having experienced the day before, after ten days’ convalescence, which appeared perfect, a rigor lasting four hours, headache, pain in the loins and limbs, nausea, and vomiting excited by soup. The 22d, almost immediately after the appearance of these symptoms, ten grains of calomel were prescribed with half an ounce of castor oil and an enema of salt and water. The 23d, three grains of calomel were prescribed, to be repeated; the camphor mixture of the London Pharmacopeia, with a small quantity of the spirit of Mindererus; and toward noon, a bleeding from the temporal artery. The patient had hardly lost three ounces of blood, when he was seized with a chill, became delirious, and it was thought proper to discontinue the bleeding. The head was shaved and compresses of cold oxycrat were applied to it.

The 24th, at ten o’clock, A. M., the face was universally red, the eyes considerably injected, (chronic ophthalmia,) anxiety, frequent change of posture, constant complaints, headache varying in intensity, and in intervals of rest from severe pain inclination to drowsiness; intense thirst; tongue moist, its edges of a deep red color, its centre whitish; nausea, vomiting at intervals of whitish matter; epigastrium and other parts of abdomen very sensible on pressure; urine easy; pulse frequent, moderately large; heat great, skin not dry; at intervals, slight chills, or great sensibility to cold. Forty leeches were ordered to be applied to the epigastrium; frictions with hot vinegar, a warm bath, cream of tartar lemonade were prescribed.

A large evacuation of blood was obtained by leeches, continuing through the night; the vomitings were repeated almost every time the patient drank; the anxiety was prolonged until half past ten, when the patient slept a little until midnight. The 25th, at ten o’clock, A. M., the symptoms of the preceding day were noted, excepting the sensibility of the abdomen, which no longer existed; the pulse eighty, regular; the heat natural; the skin of a natural color. An application of vinegar and water to the head; Riviere’s potion; an ounce of the sulphate of Magnesia; the simple camphor mixture; lemonade.

The black vomit came on for the first time at eleven o’clock the same evening; it was more abundant and of a deeper color at midnight, and continued so until morning, coming on as soon as the patient drank. The 26th, at nine o’clock, the vomitings continued, and hiccough was added to them. The color of the stools was natural; the epigastrium indolent, except when the patient vomited. The countenance wore an expression of suffering, the mind not clear, slow; the eyes universally red and injected; the whole body yellow, especially the forehead; the thirst intense; the tongue clean, moderately red anteriorly, whitish posteriorly, thick and dry, though soft; the pulse small, regular, eighty-four; the skin generally cool, the hands and feet cold, although well covered up.

The vomit on standing an hour was found separated into two parts, the one upper moderately thick, homogeneous, blackish soot color; the other at the bottom of the vessel, of a deeper black color, apparently formed of a sort of pulverized detritus, really of a viscous fluid mixed with a black matter, sandlike. Hot applications to the extremities; frictions of hot vinegar; weak brandy and water for drink.

The hiccough and the vomiting continued, the patient became delirious as soon as we left him, and died at midnight.

Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, Anatomical, pathological and therapeutic researches on the Yellow Fever of Gibraltar of 1828 (1839).

**

Gibraltar’s hospitals (1846)
The military hospital (formerly the naval hospital, and known still better by this designation), is a noble pile of buildings, situated on a flat below Buena Vista; it can accommodate upwards of four hundred patients. Each regiment has so many wards allotted to it, of which their respective medical officers have charge; the whole establishment being under the immediate supervision of the principal medical officer. A lunatic asylum, for the temporary accommodation of insane patients among the soldiers, has lately been added to this establishment, the arrangement and construction of which have occupied the constant attention of Dr. Gillkrest, the late principal medical officer. The ordnance hospital, situated on a higher flat, called Buena Vista, above the naval hospital, is a small range of old buildings, which can only accommodate about thirty patients. The civil hospital is situated on a projecting hill in the town, but sufficiently away from other houses of the inhabitants (the adjoining buildings are commissariat quarters). This establishment owes its origin to the late Sir George Don. It affords medical and surgical relief to the sick poor of Gibraltar, and even to strangers who may seek relief there; sailors from the shipping in the bay are also admitted into its wards. The expenses of this hospital are partly defrayed by government, and partly by private donations and legacies. Patients are also admitted into this hospital, by paying one shilling and six-pence per diem, who cannot claim the usual certificate of pauperism. The Jews, Roman Catholics, and Protestants have each their board of directors, but from this multiplicity of masters, much of the efficiency of the establishment is destroyed. The hospital can accommodate eighty patients, but rarely are there more than thirty or forty in it. Besides the in-door patients, the dispensary attached to it affords relief to a large number of out-door patients. There is some room for improvement in the whole institution, and a well qualified resident English surgeon would be a great advantage to the establishment. Perhaps no class of people object to go into hospital more than the poor of Gibraltar; and it is only when the case is hopeless, or when the supply is stopped, that they can be persuaded to enter the hospital, relief to them having been, in the meantime, afforded by efficient medical practitioners.

E. F. Kelaart, Flora Calpensis (1846).

Housing and Sanitation

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A brief overview of the housing situation (1812)
As this celebrated Rock has been so often and so minutely described, my remarks upon it will be very few. Considering the heat of the summer, and the reverberation of that heat from the rock, the town and most of the barracks appear to me to be badly constructed. Many of the streets are very narrow, and nearly all built after the English, instead of the Moorish fashion; they are not sufficiently ventilated, and of course are more likely to assist, than prevent, contagion. On account of the number of adventurers who, attracted by the prodigious trade in English manufactures which was ‘till lately carried on here, reside at Gibraltar, and the small space allowed by the government for the erection of buildings, house-rent is almost incredibly high. Three or four hundred pounds per annum, for a small store and two or three miserable rooms, is a common rent; and my worthy friend, Mr. John Sweetland, the captain of the port, informed me that, were he so disposed, he could let his residence, a small Moorish house, having a square court, and stores and apartments on the basement and first floor on each side, for nine hundred pounds per annum.

Sir John Carr, ‘An Account of Gibraltar, its present State of Society, Manners, & c,’ The Weekly Entertainer (1812).

**

Houses utterly unfit for human habitation (1831)
At just over six square miles, Gibraltar has always had problems accommodating its native population. In the early part of the nineteenth century, most civilians were forced to live in squalid and overcrowded tenement buildings, with as many as fifteen to twenty individuals in one room, often without basic sanitary facilities. A decorative peculiarity, during the period in question, was the tendency to paint buildings in black rather than the more traditional form of whitewash used in Andalusia. According to an 1831 American encyclopaedia, this blackening of outside walls was intended “to blunt the dazzling rays of the sun,” although it seems to have also had a rather dampening effect on people’s moods. Many visitors coming to Gibraltar, in fact, complained about the ‘sombre appearance’ of these poorer dwellings, some of which looked more like cemetery vaults than dwellings fit for human beings. By contrast, most of the English soldiery lived in ordered and well-appointed buildings, perfectly equipped with latrines and other conveniences, very much “in the English style” as one commentator described them. This disparity between military and civilian standards of accommodation continued well into the twentieth century – although, not surprisingly, the military authorities tended to underplay any existing social inequalities. Even as early as 1897, an English correspondent writing from Gibraltar made the claim that ‘the Scorpions, as the inhabitants are facetiously called, have all the best houses in their hands’ – something which, in the light of how the majority of Gibraltarians then lived, is nothing short of astounding!

To say that all [houses] are bad, would be exceeding the bounds of truth, or even of probability; but I am justified in asserting, that the majority are strikingly deficient in size, ventilation, and the means of cleanliness, and that some are utterly unfit for human habitations.

In the premises of a Jew, in Victualling Office Lane, I found, on a ground floor, seven occupied apartments, one store-room, and one necessary, built around an area of twenty-five feet by seventeen feet five inches: this area was encumbered with casks, baskets, and jars piled along the walls, and the upper part was curtailed by a projecting gallery, so that the space left for ventilation was reduced to eight feet five inches by five feet six.

It would occupy a large volume, were I to go into minute details on this subject; I shall therefore merely give the summary of two or three reports I made in the spring of 1826, on the dwellings of the poor; and I may premise, that there are many infinitely worse off, in all respects, than the inhabitants of those places; the two first of which, it must be observed, are neither of them fifty yards from head-quarters, close to the public offices, on a surface almost perfectly level by nature, and with a fair exterior appearance. Were I to select specimens from the hill side, the details would be still more illustrative of the insalubrious nature of these confined abodes; and when it is stated that the thermometer stood no higher than fifty-six degrees when my examination was instituted, some estimate may be formed of what the inhabitants would suffer in the summer, in a temperature of eighty degrees and upwards.

The entrance was fortunately wider than usual. Of the occupied apartments, two only had windows to the street, and two had small, irregular slits in the upper part of the wall, which admitted air from without, and the others had neither air nor light, except what they derived from the area; cross ventilation was therefore impossible. On this ground-floor, twenty-four individuals (including children) lived. In one of the apartments next the necessary, with no other means of ventilation than a door, three women and one dog slept. The cubic contents of this wretched kennel were short of 200 feet. Above, the rooms were of a better description, but they contained twenty permanent inhabitants, besides a day school, in which, when I visited it, there were fifteen children.

In another Jew’s premises, in Governor’s Lane, the sheds, which were built round an area originally twenty-eight feet by twenty-four, at the time of inspection were not overcrowded with population, but the cubic contents of the area were diminished nearly one half, by the erection of a new shed in its centre.

In another Jew’s lodging house, in the main street, near the court house, three adults slept in a wooden shed of six feet long, five broad, and six high; the necessary wall formed one side of this commodious dwelling! But even this is ample accommodation, compared to what Mr. Fraser reports in 1816. In the beginning of August he says, ‘In the middle area of Boyd’s buildings, confined and choked up by lumber, 18 persons were crowded together, some of them sleeping and cooking, in places called rooms, not larger than two ordinary sentry-boxes…. Some of the areas are crowded with water butts, old mats, oil jars, and lumber of all descriptions, affording a nest for filth, and a fruitful source of putrescent exhalations, independent of their seriously diminishing the cubic mass of air, the circulation of which is still further obstructed by lines and poles crossing the areas for the purpose of drying linen…. In many tenements there are no necessaries; in many others, one small hole serves to receive the ordure of twenty families. In the centre of the area, there is, in the best class of houses, a grating, which communicates with a drain; in several, this grating and drain are altogether wanting. …Upon the whole, although Gibraltar is improved to a degree scarcely to have been contemplated by those who knew it before his Excellency Sir George Don took the command, it is even now a town, in many parts of it confined and ill ventilated, in which innumerable obstacles to cleanliness exist, and with a population, filthy in themselves, and over-crowded, perhaps, beyond any other community in the world.’

Anonymous, The London Medical and Physical Journal (1831).

**

English construction methods in the Mediterranean (1831)
Nothing can be worse judged than the manner in which the town of Gibraltar is built; the houses are constructed for the latitude of England in place of the latitude of Africa. It is not to be wondered at, that when epidemics find their way to Gibraltar, their progress should be irresistible; for not one demand of a hot climate has been complied with: here are no patios, and fountains, and open galleries, admitting a free circulation of air, as in Seville; all is closely boxed up, as if for the climate of England; closed doors, narrow passages, and narrow stairs, keep out the fresh, and keep in the foul air. In place of the floors being of brick, or Valencia tiles, they are of wood; the rooms are small; the windows, not folding, lightly closed, and opening upon airy balconies, but constructed upon the most approved air-excluding plan; and the bedrooms carpeted, and the beds curtained. The effects of all this may easily be imagined,— the spread of disease is powerfully assisted by filthiness, and by impure and stagnant air; and, accordingly, no where in Europe have the ravages of the plague been so fearful as in Gibraltar. The streets and houses are incapable of alteration; and therefore the only remedy would be, gradually to pull down the houses, and to replace them with others better fitted to the climate.

Henry David Inglis, Spain in 1830 (1831).

**

On the inadequacy of public sewers and drains (1831)
Gibraltar’s first sewers were constructed under Governor Don, just after the yellow fever epidemic of 1813. Although a considerable feat of engineering at the time, they had a tendency to clog and choke, frequently enveloping the adjacent town with a variety of unhealthy vapours and stenches. The area known as the Camber, now the site of the prestigious Waterfront development, was particularly notorious in this respect due to its proximity to one of the main outlets. ‘Besides this drain,’ wrote one disgusted commentator, ‘there is a stagnant piece of water, called the Camber, in which boats are hauled up to repair; this, it is said, has three or four feet of mud in it, and receives a great part of the filth of the shores at the south, and emits a very offensive effluvium.’

I am not sufficiently acquainted with the construction and state of the public sewers in general, to submit correct and satisfactory remarks on this subject; but on referring to an official statement of Mr Woodward’s, surveyor of the Revenue Works, I find that the drains in the lower part of the town have but little declivity, and receive the soil and other filth from those in the upper part, into which the privies of the several houses discharge their contents. The consequence is, that, either by direct winds from the west, or eddy winds from the east, the foul air is blown up from the line wall; and in hot weather, the streets and houses are filled with air so offensive and fetid, as frequently to make the people sick.
The whole surface of the drains is covered with night soil, which, from the want of water to clean them, becomes in the warm weather an expanded ridge of rotten matter near the surface of the ground; and the offensive effluvia, disseminated over the whole place, cannot have escaped even superficial observation. During the late epidemic the air was particularly offensive, and great numbers of rats were found dead in the drains. At their outlets on the line-wall, and in many places where Mr W. had occasion to direct their opening, he always noticed that they contained a great deal of filth, particularly at the lower part of the town.

It appears that, previous to the year 1814, there were very few drains in Gibraltar; and, for want of them, large accumulations of filth called Dirt’s depots were established in various parts of the town. In 1815, the reconstruction of the drains took place, and, since that time, they have been continued at various periods up the hill-side; and the gullies have been covered, which undoubtedly is an improvement in the state of the drains. In rainy weather, they have sufficient declivity to be cleared of their contents; but this cannot be the case in dry weather.

In 1828, the drains were much filled with filth, and it may be remembered that there was in the month of July some rain. On the 1st of August heavy showers fell; and about the 17th, 19th, and 20th of August, there was more rain, which brought the contents into action, so that the effluvia arising from them were very like those arising from the dirt deposits in 1814.

As to the state of the drains more particularly belonging to the barracks occupied by the 12th regiment, with the condition of which it has been my duty to make myself acquainted, I can state, that, both in the town-range and King’s Bastion, they appear to have been, and continue to be defective. In the lower square of the town range, the drain from the soil-pit was choked up, and burst open a short time before the regiment was sent to camp: and, in the King’s Bastion, the sewers at the north and south, probably from a want of sufficient declivity, frequently allow the corrupt substances to accumulate at their entrances, and emit during the summer months exhalations highly offensive, which, in several instances, have been complained of by the men, and reported to the authorities.

The drains about the south end of the building, where the Regimental Hospital is established, are likewise in a very defective state. They have been frequently choked up; and their opening in the kitchen, and in the centre of a very small yard, forms a permanent source of disagreeable, and, I may venture to say, pernicious exhalations. In illustration of this it may be remarked, that the first hospital servant taken ill during the late epidemic was the cook of the establishment who slept in that kitchen, and the disease has been very severe amongst those who have been successively employed on the same duty.

Anonymous, Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal (1831).

**

Exorbitant Rents (1833)
It is impossible to conceive a spot better fitted for the dissemination of infectious disease than Gibraltar. Had the town been double in extent, it could scarcely have afforded sufficient accommodation to the numbers which were even then crowded within its narrow limits. The rent demanded for the smallest house in Gibraltar equalled that of a splendid mansion in London. The consequence, of course, was that a domicile which could afford comfortable accommodation for one family became the residence of many; nor was it an uncommon circumstance that fifty or even a hundred individuals were congregated beneath a single roof. The great proportion of these were foreigners; and when we consider how little attention was necessarily paid to cleanliness in such dwellings the unhealthy atmosphere in which their inmates were condemned to live and breathe, we shall not feel surprised that all human endeavours to arrest the progress of the pestilence were in vain. I had been in such houses. In an apartment scarcely the size of an ordinary English bedroom, I had beheld the accommodation of twenty human beings, where stretched upon a mat or carpet, they every night, even in the hottest season, retired to rest. In such hives of men, when fever once appeared, it of course spread like wildfire; there the arm of death was raised to strike— who could prevent its falling?

Anonymous, The Novelist’s Magazine (1833).

**

The Unwholesomeness of Patio living (1862)
The city is composed of small and crowded dwellings, ill ventilated, badly drained, and crammed with human beings. Upwards of 15,000 persons are confined within a space covering a square mile…. The peculiar formation of the smaller dwellings is another enemy to health; these houses consist of square or oblong buildings, enclosing a confined and ill-ventilated courtyard or patio, into which the windows open. Each floor is cumbered with a balcony, and is often occupied by many families. In these yards clothes are constantly hung out to dry, thus further impeding ventilation. All kinds of filth accumulate, while the drain, if such a luxury exist, is rarely trapped or kept in order…. House rent is excessively high, and the poorer labouring classes are compelled to occupy dwellings which are more fitted for animals than human beings….Most of the patios are crowded with lumber, water-butts, casks, and even animals; whole kennels of dogs and even mules and asses are sometimes kept in these yards. Such are some of the local causes of sickness, and it remains a question for inquiry, how far those causes may be considered to account for a high and increasing rate of mortality, apart from any atmospheric influences?

Frederick Sayer, The History of Gibraltar and of Its Political Relation to Events in Europe (1862).

**

The disposal of sewage (1862)
Although great facilities exist for the construction of a complete system of drainage, no comprehensive plan has yet been adopted. Main sewers have been established, which empty themselves by means of iron pipes at some distance into the sea in various places along the line-wall, but the want of water renders them comparatively useless during the summer months. In many houses cesspools or accumulations of night soil exist, which, through the apathy of the inhabitants and the disregard for stench and filth, remain untouched for years, slow, smouldering hot-beds of disease. When they are emptied, a course usually resorted to in summer, when the fetid effluvium overcomes the callous tenant, their contents are carried in open barrels along the streets, spreading their deadly exhalations through the crowded dwellings.

Frederick Sayer, The History of Gibraltar and of Its Political Relation to Events in Europe (1862).

**

The Want of Water(1862)
Another local cause of sickness is the want of water, a want which, considering the position of the town, might long ago have been supplied. From the peculiar nature of the Rock there are no springs of pure fresh water. To many houses tanks are attached, in which during the rainy season the water is collected, but rarely in sufficient quantities to last during the summer drought; in many dwellings, especially among the poorer classes, no such convenience exists, and the poor creatures are dependent for the water they require upon the hawkers who distribute it through the city in small barrels carried on donkeys or mules. During some seasons, such, for example, as the summer of 1860, the sufferings of the poor are very great for want of this necessary of life. During that summer, when small-pox, the companion of uncleanliness, was dangerously prevalent, and cholera was striking down its helpless victims, water became so scarce, and rose so considerably in price, that the poorer classes were in numerous instances reduced for days to a quantity barely sufficient to quench their thirst, much less to wash away their uncleanness. From a calculation lately made, it seems that nearly £3000 is annually expended by the public of Gibraltar on water alone, while for half that sum an efficient establishment might be maintained, which would supply the remotest districts of the city. This supply would be applicable to domestic wants only, the resources of fresh water being in no way sufficient to permit of its being used as an agent for flushing the drains and sewers. For this purpose we have vast means at hand, and readily available; as salt water, which at a small expense could be conveyed above the town, is as well adapted for that object as fresh.

Frederick Sayer, The History of Gibraltar and of Its Political Relation to Events in Europe (1862).

* *

Communicating from the rooftops (1902)
[Regarding Gibraltarian servants], I may mention that the class of persons from which they are chiefly recruited reside in houses built around court-yards called Patios. The open space is generally squre, and the rooms and verandahs are in tiers.Now, when a house is building and nearing completion, it is often decorated with flags like a ship en fete, thus proclaiming its grandeur to the world at large. On entering one of these patios you will probably find a medley of people squatting in the courtyard around an itinerant vendor of goods, all chattering away at the tops of their voices; and among other things I have seen a coffin being publicly made in the midst of such a group, every one being in high glee! Ascend the narrow wooden steps and you may pass by a room in which lies a sick person who will be attended by a large number of men, women and children, who are crouching round the bed with sympathetic motives.

The men will be, as usual, smoking cigaretes and most polite to a stranger, but without an atom of modesty or reserve as they recount and dwell upon every sickening detail concerning the [invalid’s] cse. The room, moreover, is clothed in filth from floor to ceiling, and the atmosphere vitiated; in fact, the general condition (as I have often witnessed) and state of overcrowding of these patios inhabited by the poorer classes is certainly neither wholesome nor a credit to civilisation and sanitary reform. Cross the room and put your head out of the window, and you will see the washed articles of clothing drying, and supported by means of three small sticks places against the window ledge in the form of a triangle. If someone wishes to call your attention from a neighbourng window, he will hiss at you violently, this being the usual mode of drawing attention, and should he still further want you to go to him, he will not beckon as e do, moving his hand towards himself, but away from him and towards you – in fact, as if he wished you were further removed. I may add that a good deal of conversation, as well as love making, is carried on from the windows and housetops.

Richard G. Thomsett, A record voyage in H.M.S. Malabar (1902).

Religion

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Methodist Solemnity (1800)
There are but two places of protestant worship in Gibraltar. The one is occupied by the chaplain to the garrison, who of course is a member of the established church of England. The other belongs to a small society of Wesleyan Methodists. The chaplain, I am informed, is an excellent fox hunter on the hills of Spain; and a very conspicuous character at a ball, or a masquerade. This information removed from me every disposition to attend on his ministrations on the sabbath I had therefore no alternative, but either to remain in the tavern, or partake with the methodists… I felt really anxious to be once more in the house of God, to enjoy its ordinances: and in hopes of something that might edify, I repaired alone to the Methodist Chapel, as their place of worship is here called. It is a small building, but neatly fitted up. I was early in my attendance, and found a reader in the clerk’s desk, who read, for about half an hour, lessons out of the scriptures, while the congregation were assembling. Small as the house is, the collection of worshippers did not quite fill it. About one half of them were soldiers, in full military dress. After singing and prayer, the minister, a plain looking man, in a voice rather monotonous and very inanimate, gave us a plain but edifying sermon, from these words in the 119th Psalm, ‘I am a companion of all those that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.” The congregation, through the whole of the exercises, were entirely orderly and serious. During the prayers, I heard from some of them an occasional Amen, uttered in a suppressed tone of voice. Except this, there was nothing observed different from an ordinary Presbyterian congregation in the United Slates, unless it was, perhaps, a little more evidence of solemnity and engaged attention, than I have sometimes witnessed.

Anonymous, ‘Travels for Health in Europe in 1820,’ The Christian Advocate (1823).

**

The Jewish Synagogue (1809)
The principal synagogue is handsome, having three aisles separated by pillars of the Doric order; the pews for the women are at the sides. There are three steps loading to the peristyle, over which are several large chests of acajou wood fixed in the wall, and intended to preserve the books and other objects of the law. Towards the centre of the middle aisle, in the place where the choir is placed in Catholic churches, a pulpit is erected for the rabbi, from which he expounds the doctrines of the Mosaic institutions, and reads the psalms and prayers in Hebrew, which the people repeat in a loud voice. The men are seated on forms, and all the assistants keep their heads covered. Without doubt, this custom is derived from the east, where it was always preserved. The contortions, gestures, and attitudes, they throw themselves into while at prayers, the confused cries of so many voices without harmony, and the want of order perceptible in the manner in which they sit, sometime i turning their backs on the altar, has not, altogether, a very solemn appearance. But this people possess the advantage of retaining the Hebrew language by teaching it to their children in their infancy, and by this means it is preserved, though rather changed. Their mode of transacting business is well known; every one is aware to what a pitch they carry usury and imposition. However, I have had the means of convincing myself, that in Poland and other countries, where the Jews are the only traders, they content themselves with a moderate profit often repeated, which is then as valuable to them as a more advantageous bargain, and not so burthensome to those who are their dupes. Their religion is not tolerated in Spain, except in Gibraltar, and they live more securely here than in any other part of Europe; and so great a number of them assemble from all parts, that, in process of time, this famous rock will be nothing more than a colony of Jews.

Marriage is one of their most solemn family ceremonies. The hall of the house of the betrothed, where the union is celebrated, is generally highly ornamented. At the end a stage is erected, on which seats arc placed, one for the bride, and others for her mother and married sisters, as girls are not allowed to assist at this solemnity. The other women, who are invited, sit round the saloon, and they are dressed with the utmost elegance, some in the ancient Jewish costume, which is very fashionable on the coast of Africa. They must assume an appearance of modesty and reserve, and they act it very naturally, permitting only now and then a few glances. The bride then enters with her mother and sisters dressed in white. Her face is covered with a tong veil, behind which her features are distinguishable. The bridegroom soon arrives with the rabbi and the bride’s father, and in their turn follow the persons invited. The ceremony is nothing more than a mixture of well known forms, both ancient and modern. A cup of wine is brought, which the new married couple drink one after the other; they then give it to the doctor, [rabbi] who performs the marriage ceremony; he passes it to the father, who, perhaps, to prove that no one can share the affections of the two lovers, breaks the glass into pieces in the presence of the whole of the company. The rabbi then reads the names and rank of the contracting parties, and the duties to which they mutually engage themselves. We know that adultery is severely condemned by the Mosaic law; but what is more surprising in this age, is to hear the anathemas and maledictions denounced against sterility. It is true that there are few Jewish marriages which are not perfectly conformable to the wish of the law-giver in this respect.

Alexandre Louis J. Laborde, A view of Spain (1809).

* *

An Annoying Church Bell-Ringer (1812)
In the town, there is an excellent garrison library in a handsome detached building. To the balls given by the military, the families of the merchants are rarely, if ever, admitted: this unpleasant line of separation has been drawn, in consequence of the great number of low and vulgar mercantile adventurers, who have settled in Gibraltar. Universal toleration exists, without, as might be expected, any inconvenience to the garrison, always excepting, however, the horrid nuisance produced by a fellow beating the bell of the Spanish Catholic church with a great hammer, many times in the course of the day, to the no little annoyance of ever}’ one in its neighbourhood. This noisy functionary is a great coxcomb in his way, and says that the English have good bells, but do not know how to ring them, and that he alone possesses taste in this way! I was informed, that an officer once, provoked by his noise, after repeatedly, but unavailing!, requesting him not to strike so hard, could not resist caning him when he descended, upon which the bellman brought his action, and obtained damages; he now, therefore, frequently shows his triumph, by the additional vehemence with which he strikes his bell.

Sir John Carr, ‘An Account of Gibraltar, its present State of Society, Manners, & c,’ The Weekly Entertainer (1812).

* *

A Protestant walks into the Catholic Cathedral (1800)
I was in Gibraltar but a very short time, until my attention was attracted to the Spanish chapel, convenient to my hotel, by the almost incessant ringing of its bells. It is a large building, of modern construction, exhibiting nothing remarkable on its exterior. But within, the profusion of ornament, comprehending pictures, crucifixes, gilding, painting, &c. gives a brilliancy and glitter to the whole, that to a stranger is very imposing. This, connected with the full-toned organ, accompanied with fine vocal musick, renders the place very attractive, but to me, much more for the gratification of curiosity and amusement, than the exercise of devotion. It is open at all hours of the day, and every evening there is quite a congregation assembled for evening prayers. If a stranger takes off his hat, it seems to be regarded as no intrusion to go quietly through the house, and look at all its exhibitions; even though he has to wind his way among the kneeling devotees, who may be scattered over the floor — offering their adorations before the pictures of saints or crucifixes, as each one likes best. There are no pews; the floor is quite vacant — except here and there some benches, where those who are disposed may sit, and give themselves to silent meditation. On one of these I have often sat, while my feelings were soothed and softened by the exquisite musick, and while I have wondered at the strange devotion going on around me. Each worshipper, as he enters, crosses or sprinkles himself with the consecrated water, contained in a large marble vase near the door; then goes to the situation preferred, generally before some painting or crucifix; where dropping on his knees, he repeats in a low whisper, his prayers, gazing on the object before him with a countenance of solemnity and awe, as if looking at the very Deity. Some, without any object before them, with closed eyes, seem to be absorbed in silent supplication. If appearances are to be trusted, there is much sincerity and reverence on the minds of many of these Roman Catholick worshippers, that do them credit; and which ought to put to shame, the profane thoughtlessness and levity, that mark the appearance of many protestants, during their pretended worship: for surely the worship is only pretended, where reverence and sincerity are wanting. The Roman Catholick worship, like the ancient temple service of the Jews, the pomp and ceremony of which it copies, is eminently calculated to affect the senses, while alas! it appears to furnish very little to enlighten the understanding, or to amend the heart. Whether the ringing of the bells is considered by them as belonging to the very matter of worship, I cannot say; but it really appears to me that nothing less will justify the serious annoyance, arising from its frequency and duration. I think, since I have been here, the bells of the chapel have rung nearly equal to the half of every day, putting the different times of their ringing together; besides a great deal at intervals through the night.

From all I have seen, it does appear to me, that the Roman Catholick religion is a most burdensome expense to the people who keep it up. The number of priests to be supported, for the daily and nightly drudgery of the chapel service; the amount of expenditure, to furnish the images and costly paintings, with which the chapel is ornamented; the loss of time, which an attendance on the various devotional exercises through the week necessarily calls for; with a large amount of etceteras, must be a grievous drawback on the temporal prosperity of any people, who are subject thereto. I never was so sensible of the greatness of the blessing, in a temporal point of view, conferred on protestant countries by the reformation, since I have been here. In the town of Sanroque, where poverty and beggary seem to have fixed their abode, every particle of grandeur appears to be monopolized by the church. The town stands on an eminence, and the church occupies the crown of that eminence. To it all the principal streets point It is large, and its exterior indicates it to be very ancient. It looks indeed like a mouldering ruin. But on stepping into it, the magnificence and grandeur of ornaments strike one with astonishment. The interest of the capital expended in the establishment, added to the annual charge of supporting its service, if expended on bibles and schools, connected with a mode of worship on the sabbath calculated to enlighten the understanding, and impress the conscience with a sense of moral duty; could not fail in a little time, not only to renovate the population, but the whole face of the surrounding country.

Anonymous, ‘Travels for Health in Europe in 1820,’ The Christian Advocate (1823).

**

On Gibraltar’s Moral and Spiritual Emptiness (1830)
Pride, and particularly the pride of dress, is here a deadly evil, among the civil part of the population; and that which grieves me greatly is, that religion docs not seem to cover any whole families. I know one instance of exception; but there may be more. There are no young persons, either male or female, for improving association: mental cultivation is exceedingly low, and the want of religion occasions a sad dearth, of all the materials for excitement to application. At present, I know of only one family with which I could associate, if I would, and the dangers arising from any seeming preference forbid that this should be much employed. I have, therefore, resolved to make few or no visits that are not truly pastoral, and these apply to all classes. Books are extremely scarce and unconscionably dear. There is nothing like a good bookseller’s shop; and no printing press but that which is in the hands of Government, nor am I aware that any printing is done but what is merely and strictly official.... Moors, Jews, and Catholics form the bulk of our population; and who can deny that ignorance, irreligion, and vice strongly mark their general character? True, they may, in many instances, be scrupulous about the formalities of their peculiar professions, and the more so from their being in the presence of those whose profession is different from their own; but what avails all this…? And then, even of the more instructed and enlightened among our population, I mean, the English inhabitants, how few are there of whom it can be fairly hoped, that they live according to the Gospel of Christ, on which all their hopes, in profession at least, are, nevertheless, entirely dependent!

William Barber, Memoirs of the late rev. William Barber (1830).

* *

An English Missionary in Gibraltar (1832)
The Missionaries, appointed but for three years, health allowing them to complete even that brief term, were ignorant of the current language of the inhabitants, or if able to decipher a Spanish book, were yet ignorant of it as a vehicle of thought to others. Each week elapsed was so much more time counted off the tale, and by so much weaker was any motive to application that at the first might have existed. No opening for labour appeared among the natives, because none was sought. And then, again, because none appeared, it was presumed that none existed; and, under this presumption of impracticability, no attempt was made. To have devoted a few hours daily to the acquisition of the language, would have appeared to the English flock nothing better than literary idleness in their shepherd; and if at any time he made an effort to benefit “the foreigners,” as he had none to assist, so neither had he any to sympathize. They over whom he presided did not direct their efforts nor their prayers to the conversion of “ the foreigners,” as their own fellow-subjects and townsmen were erroneously called; and even if animated by a superior spirit, he could scarcely hazard the alienation of their confidence or affection, by employing any considerable part of his time in behalf of strangers, of whom it was even surmised by the few who had been longest in their neighbourhood, that they could scarcely be converted.

Being a Missionary, therefore, only in name, as regarded the native population, yet separated from the invigorating society of a flourishing and ever-increasing people; enjoying no interchange of sentiment with his brethren in the ministry, nor any relief by change of labours; and at the same time knowing of no good to be attained by lengthened residence on such a station; each in turn availed himself of his privilege to go home at the expiration of the third year, and was succeeded by another, who should discharge the usual duties during an equal period. In such a situation, his energies would often flag, and, but for the sustaining grace of God, he would become weary of his position; and, indeed, it might not be amiss that he should be, if incapable of sowing the seed of life among the perishing millions around him.

It does not appear that any request had proceeded thence for the appointment of a Missionary for the native population; but that the design originated in England, probably with the Rev. Richard Watson, who entertained a strong desire that the Society should extend its agencies to the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Towards the close of the year 1824, Mr. William Barber, then a probationer for the ministry, was sent out with instructions to learn Spanish, and to try what could be effected. On his arrival, he described the state of things in the following terms, in a letter since published: — “The great majority of the civil population here are Spaniards (Roman Catholics of course) and as they hold but little or no intercourse with the English, except when needed by business, and even then talking in a foreign language, Methodism has not existed for them.” He stated, however, that a member of the English society had been for a very short time previously engaged as a Local Preacher to some ten or twelve hearers; but the prospect was not encouraging. This first Spanish Preacher lost any little religion he might have had, and eventually withdrew from our company in disgrace. Mr. Barber himself soon became utterly discouraged. The little congregation dwindled away. A small class which had met for a few weeks was dispersed; and in devising plans for the commencement of labour by himself, he thought the assemblage of a congregation at that time hopeless, and the very idea chimerical. It then appeared that little or nothing more could be done than to hold conversational meetings, in order to excite attention, and impart information. And Mr. Barber was not alone in the suggestion of this measure; for in a well-known work, published about the time of his appointment, but which he could scarcely have seen, the judicious author, suggesting Gibraltar as a new station, for the sake, chiefly, of correspondence, observes that “occasions of profitable intercourse with professing Christians might be enjoyed, and that in addition to communion of that nature with the English, by a Missionary who should have acquired sufficient fluency to conduct, once or twice a week, a kind of public family prayer, in Spanish, when the Scriptures might be read and explained, together with supplication for the benefit of those persons, either resident in Gibraltar, or visiting the place, who might otherwise not enjoy such means of religious edification.”

But our first Missionary, laboriously studying the language, suffering much from a diseased constitution, and struggling with many local difficulties, persevered to the extent of strength and opportunity; and, although he did not organize the Mission, he collected some materials, over which he prayed and toiled; and in the year 1827 the author found him encircled by Spanish acquaintances, and striving, not only in conversation, but in sermons, to bring them to the knowledge of the truth. It was his misfortune, indeed, to be dealing with persons who could not appreciate his motives, nor understand his object; but he persevered in hoping against hope, believing against sight, and commending his work to God who sent him. There is no reason to believe that his efforts were followed by the real conversion of a single soul, or that their immediate and visible result was any thing more than fraudulent profession of religious feeling by a few persons from the dregs of the Gibraltar poor, and the Spanish refugees of that period; but they are remembered as honourable evidences of his patient and faithful perseverance, and were really useful as providing himself, and others after him, with necessary experience. Had not Mr. Barber led the way, it is probable that no other Missionary would have entered on it for many years, perhaps not to the present moment, and that whatever may be deemed encouraging as to our labours with Spaniards, would not have been related in the following chapters.

The close of his career was peculiarly mournful. In consequence of the removal of his Superintendent, he was left alone in charge of the English congregation and classes, in addition to his accustomed work. He had scarcely begun to enter on his additional engagements, when the garrison and town were thrown into alarm by the appearance of an epidemic fever, similar to that already described. This began towards the end of August, 1828; and on the 26th of October he fell among the victims, after having discharged, for a few days, the duties of garrison Chaplain, he being the only surviving Minister on whom such duties could be devolved. Although extremely diffident, he had begun to acquire fluency in the use of the language; and, in spite of much discouragement, had persevered in those studies and labours by which the proposed object might be attained. He had made a journey of observation in Spain, proceeding as far as Granada, forming friendships and entering into correspondence with Spaniards; and thus he conciliated, by unaffected piety and an amiable disposition, the esteem of all who knew him; and the prospect just began to brighten, when it was suddenly overcast. Almost all the leading persons on the station were cut off by death, or dispersed, and many of the foreigners who survived left the garrison. The station was re-occupied in March or April, 1829; but the case of the foreign population remained almost unprovided for, there being no native agent capable of undertaking the work with usefulness and credit.

William Harris Hule, Memoir of a Mission to Gibraltar and Spain (1832).

* *

A Sunday service at Grand Parade (1832)
Ample time had been allowed me to see every part of the Alameda, to my-satisfaction, when the, roll of drums announced the hour in which divine service was to be performed upon the parade ground, in presence of the soldiery, according to established custom on Sunday mornings. We immediately descended to the esplanade, and stationed ourselves beneath the trees on one side to await the approach of the troops. They soon marched into the parade ground in perfect order, to the enlivening music of the band; and, forming a hollow square, they assumed an attitude of fixed attention, and unbroken silence reigned for some moments over the plain. During this time I had a full and perfect view of the different regiments, whose splendid and varied uniforms set them off to the best advantage. That of the Highland regiments was the most peculiar and the most striking in its general effect. The bright tartan kilt and cloak, and the buskined leg, bare at the knee, announced, at sight, the soldiers of bonny Scotland; and the romantic associations, which cling to the very name of a Highlander, caused me to look upon this brilliant array of Highland troops with feelings of thrilling interest. They were all picked men, of healthy, strong, muscular appearance; and the large black caps, which they wore upon their heads, were overshadowed by a profusion of long black feathers, whose mournful hue was relieved by the deep red of a single rich, heavy plume, placed at one side.

At length the dead silence, which had prevailed around us, was broken by the voice of the clergyman — rendered peculiarly solemn by being heard in the open air. Kneeling before a large drum, which served as an altar, he commenced reading the beautiful ritual of the English Church, in which all present appeared to join, and which certainly was calculated to produce a powerful and devotional effect upon the mind in a scene like this.

So soon as the prayers were concluded, the clear notes of the martial band again filled the air, and the military part of the audience, resuming their line of march, retired from the spot. Those, who stood by as spectators of the service, soon after dispersed, in various directions, leaving the ground unoccupied, except by the sentinels, who, stationed at their respective posts, paced backward and forward with measured tread, apparently unmindful of every thing but the sole object of their watch.

Caroline Elizabeth Wilde Cushing, Letters, Descriptive of Public Monuments, Scenery, and Manners in France and Spain (1832).

Earning one's crust

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An uncharitable view of Gibraltar’s porters (1824)
Gibraltar contains twelve thousand souls, if that term may be applied to those degenerate Spaniards, who, for a few reals, drag enormous loads, and harness themselves to heavy carts in the morning, but are entirely idle for the rest of the day. Go to these miserable wretches in the evening, offer them employment, and they will laugh at your proposal, continue quietly smoking their cigars, lie down to sleep on a heap of stones, and number one day more, without bestowing a thought on that which is to follow. Happy in their indolence, they will rise before day-break, and solicit fresh occupation; and as soon as they have earned a certain sum, the most brilliant offers would not induce them to quit the stone or the bench, where they display their stupid pride and their degrading idleness.

Jacques Arago, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World (1824).

**

The little Andalusian at the Market (1832)
The market at Gibraltar is at the northern extremity of the town, and near the entrance from the harbour. It is outside of the inner gate. It is plentifully supplied with flesh, fish, fruits and vegetables; but they sell generally at high prices. Oranges are an exception. You see vast piles of the most delicious Andalusian oranges, that make the mouth water to look at them and what is better, they may lie procured for a trifling consideration. The Moors deal most largely in oranges. Eggs are also very abundant and cheap. Immense quantities of them are brought over from Barbary. The Barbary eggs are the smallest I have ever seen, two of them being on an average about equal to one Spanish egg. In Tunis and Tripoli you can purchase them almost for a song. Alfieri is said to have frequented the market of Florence to learn Italian; I went to that of Gibraltar to study the character of the people. There was a little black-eyed, brown-faced Andalusian, who amused me infinitely by his complaisance. I often purchased little articles of him merely for the sake of listening to his inflated praises. His vocabulary of compliments was inexhaustible, and I never left him that he did not bring his fingers to his lips, and then, throwing off his hand in a tangent, and inclining his head with the necessary quantum of gratia, address me with his effeminate Andalusian pronunciation, “Senor mio, le beso a usted la mano; y si hay algo en que le puedo server aqui (touching his breast) tiene usted un criado.” (My dear sir, I kiss your hand; and if there is anything which I can serve you, here you have a servant.)

Enoch Cobb Wines, Two Years and a Half in the Navy (1832).

**

The Jewish Shopkeeper (1832)
But the Jewish shop-keeper, aye, what say of him? What say I of him indeed! Why, I say, if you are a good judge of the article you wish to purchase, by all means go to his shop; for if he does not finally take what you offer, it will be because your offer has not come up to the original cost. If he can make one farthing of profit, he will not let the chance slip through his fingers.— But if you are not well acquainted with the goods you wish to procure, avoid the Jew as you would the very spirit of deception. He will be sure to ask you three times what he is willing to take, at the same time setting forth, with inconceivable glibness of tongue, the excellence and cheapness of his wares; and when he has sold you an article at double the original cost, it is ten to one if he has not the effrontery to tell you that you have got it by special favour, and at an actual loss to himself. I know not the exact proportion which the Jews in Gibraltar bear to the whole population, but it must be very great, if an inference may be hazarded from the number seen in the streets. They are found in all classes of society, from the rich broker and wholesale merchant down to the wretch who sells his services in the degraded commerce of prostitution. Throughout all this wide variety of rank and fortune, are observable the same cunning, versatility and restless activity. Indeed, the Jews seem to be not less distinguished by their moral qualities than by their physiognomy. A large proportion of them are porters, and many act as interpreters and guides to strangers. Wherever there is any thing to be done in either of these lines of business, there you are sure to find a Jew ready, for a trifling compensation, to render you as faithful service as Ariel did to Prospero. They have a surprising aptness for the acquisition of languages, and most of them speak all the languages common at Gibraltar with the fluency of a native. The most beautiful woman on the Rock, when we were there, was found to be a Jewess.

Enoch Cobb Wines, Two Years and a Half in the Navy (1832).

**

Pascual the Tourist Guide (1851)
Before commencing our excursions through the city, we engaged an eccentric person of the Name of Pascual Rose to act as our guide. This man… a native of Gibraltar… earned a livelihood principally by waiting upon strangers and showing them the marvels and curiosities of the place. Another source of emolument was the fees and commissions which he was accustomed to exact from every shopkeeper to whom he introduced a customer. This is a practice which prevails extensively among the valets of Spain; the traveller, therefore, cannot be too much on his guard against deception and roguery. In order to prevent actual loss, the commission of the guide is added to the original price of the article. On this account, if you have a sufficient knowledge of the language, you should always make your purchases alone, offering about half the price demanded, which is often sufficient, and can always be compromised for a third. Foreigners are invariably charged more than natives: they are expected to have long purses, and are unscrupulously taxed for accordingly. Though our conductor, Pascual, was by no means perfect, but on the contrary was full of faults and imperfections, yet he made himself extremely useful to us as a companion, and afforded us an infinite deal of amusement by his drolleries and laughable eccentricities. Such a perfect volume of rhapsodical talk I never heard issue from a human gullet before—it was truly overwhelming. Being a ‘rock-scorpion,’ his knowledge of the English language was extremely imperfect, as well as ungrammatical, though we had no difficulty in understanding him, in spite of the rapidity with which he mangled the innocent words of the noble Anglo-Saxon tongue. This fellow had introduced himself to us immediately upon our arrival, and with many extravagant commendations of his own qualifications, had solicited the honour of taking us under his charge during our stay in the city, at the same time promising with ludicrous energy to devote himself, body and soul, to our service. There was something about the clown that pleased us, so we took him forthwith upon his own recommendation.

John Esaias Warren, Vagamundo; or, the Attache in Spain (1851).

**

‘Charley’ the Moroccan Antiques Dealer (1854)
We now came into the main street, which is long and rather narrow, and full of shops. Many of these are well supplied. This is a free port, and goods are consequently quite reasonable…. What a strange medley of characters the streets present! Here are white-turbaned, white-trousered and petticoated Moors; keen bargaining, black-eyed Jews; swarthy Spaniards; bright-tartaned Highlanders; gayly-dressed English officers, beautiful women in mantillas, and red-coated soldiers, at every step. The streets are all alive with a busy, bustling population. Our party are watched closely by the shop-keepers, and a good-looking Jew has caught the ladies; we fill his shop, and even crowd his back-room. The shelves and counters are loaded with Spanish and Moorish curiosities. Andalusian scarfs, embroidered table-covers, Malaga figures, costumes, cushions, slippers, vases, coral, silks, old laces, china, and I know not what else, were the sore temptations. One thing I do know, that before the ladies left they had well-nigh emptied the store….

In our shopping expeditions we found ourselves in a curiosity store, kept by a Moor, who is known as “Charley.” He is the handsomest black man I ever saw. His eyes are wondrously fine, but his face has been tattooed in his early youth, when he was a slave in Barbary. Charley has been to Timbuctoo, has been a great traveller, speaks several languages, and has managed to accumulate some considerable cash. This man is, in my estimation, “the character” of the town. His costume is thoroughly Turkish, or, more correctly, Moorish; parts of his dress very costly. In his shop we made many a pleasant lounge, and ate his dates, which he always brought out. I think that our acquaintance was mutually agreeable; for certainly Charley, having found favor with our ladies, made extensive sales to all our party, and I fancy at leaving he must have had possession of several hundreds of dollars. His card of business is as follows:

HAGGE SAID GUESUS,
DEALER IN
MOORISH CURIOSITIES, ETC. ETC. ETC.,
No. 7 Main-street,
GIBRALTAR.

A shrewder salesman than “Charley” is not often found. I am writing from an inkstand which I purchased from him, and he said, “O, you will wish you had bought a dozen when you get home!” Well, Charley, you were right there; for my Moorish inkstand, with its castellated sides, is a general favorite, and nearly every one covets it; but I shall keep it in remembrance of as clever a darkey as I know. But he was far too clever to let me off with an inkstand, and sundry other memorials have I to show of our transactions in trade. I wanted some large vases. “Well,” said Charley, “what you want such big things; you can’t car them a-ship and not break.” And he strongly urged smaller matters; but I was set on my idols, — a pair of large vases, made in Barbary. Charley was wrong; the big things reached home in safety, and Charley, like his prophet, was a false one. I commend all travellers to the Rock to put themselves at once into commercial intercourse with Hagge Said Guesus; and I do not think that there is one of the North Star party who would not like to shake hands again with “Charley.” I had nearly forgot to say that Charley always addresses the ladies as “my dear;” and the good-humored expression which is enthroned on his handsome round visage is only clouded when a customer objects to his prices, which he prides himself upon never abating.

John Overton Choules, The Cruise of the Steam Yacht North Star (1854).

**

Moorish Traders on Waterport Street (1860)
There are some thousand Moors resident in Gib. You meet them every where; kingly and erect in their rhubarb-colored slippers, bare brown legs, and blue and white robes, Othellos every one.... You meet them at sunrise, trooping to some eastward-pointing ramp, where they may kneel toward Mecca, and think of the Prophet, as the saffron fire kindles to burning rose. There they go, past the Jews’ synagogue, and the new Moorish-looking church by the King’s Bastion, with their haiks and striped camel’s-hair-looking hoods, black and white lined. It is good to see the quiet gravity and the imperturbable regularity with which they repair to their early matin service, as if religion were something else than a thing to quarrel about. With what pride they pass those sneaking-looking Jews in their sloughing trowsers and bine and white cloaks—their prescribed costume—slinking in their mean black-tufted caps to their daily cheatings—ignoble money-lending old men and sloppy overgrown striplings, eaten up with the ulcer of selfish greed. “Don’t know what we should do without them, though, the old sixty per centers,” says Spanker. There they go, all our old friends, Mordecai, Shylock, Gehazi, Judas, and Company, with their hanging sleeves, past the great cigar-shop of Rodriguez, looking up at the old battered Moorish castle, where they hope some day or other to immure those imprudent young Christians, Driver of the Sixth and Spanker of the Eighth. I wonder that the thundering crash of that nightly gunfire does not frighten them from the place; and perhaps it would, for it can be heard even in the Ronda Mountains, where the smugglers are; but then “thirty per shent” is so very enticing. So let us return to the Moors, for the Jews are not worth stopping with and enter this shop of Hadji Ben-Azed, dealer in Barbary curiosities. Ben-Azed is a pilgrim, as the word Hadji implies, and he is quite sultanic as he leans with crossed legs against his counter. He shows us necklaces of little sharp-pointed white shells from the Morocco (Rif) coast, fit for the necks of Abyssinian princesses; bracelets of gold sequins, such as maids of Athens would clasp their white wrists with; yellow slippers, turned down at the heel, barred with bars of blue, and stamped with seals of Koran legends; and Arabian leather sacks of rare, fragrant tobacco, which smells like flowers. He pats, with regal complacency, princely cushions of red morocco, worked with gold thread, and roundels and lozenges of green velvet. He shows me clumsy pouches, stiff with tarnished lace, knives large as scythes, and huge straw hats, with brims as wide as cart-wheels. When I shrug my shoulders, and do not headlong buy, he warns me in good Spanish and bad English of one Ben-N”erood, a black merchant, who deceives The Anglis, and sells spurious cigars too cheap—”frightful thousand and one too cheap.” He assures me in a whisper that the governor had been that very day in his shop, and said, “By the Prophet! Ben-Azed, you are the honestest rogue in all Gibraltar.” That very night, just at gunfire, as I sat busy over oysters at Driver’s social board, Spanker looked up, the pepper-box in his hand, and said, “By-the-by, Blank, if you want any Moorish curiosities of the scorpions, don’t go to Ben-Azed’s in Waterport Street. He is the most awful rogue in all Gib.” So much, thought I, for regal-looking Othellos, with brown skins, serene eyes, spotless white robes, and rhubarb-colored slippers.

Walter Thornbury, Life in Spain: Past and Present (1860).

**

The Bilingual Boatman (1902)
The waters of the port are placid, and from most of the many fine vessels that touch there you descend by a ladder, of as agreeable an inclination as an ordinary flight of stairs. All you have to fear is the insidious bilingual boatman, who, unless you strictly covenant with him before entering his boat, will have you at his mercy. It is true that he has a tariff, and that you might imagine that the offense of exceeding it would be punished in a place like Gibraltar by immediate court-martial and execution; but the traveller should not rely upon this. There is a deplorable relaxation of the bonds of discipline all over the world. Moreover, it is wise to agree with the boatmen for a certain fixed sum, as a salutary check upon undue liberality. Most steamers anchor at a considerable distance from the shore, and on a hot day one might be tempted by false sentiment to give the boatman an excessive fee.

Thomas George Bonney, The Mediterranean, Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins (1902).

**

The Idiosyncrasies of the Gibraltar serving woman (1902)
Now, a word or two about the servants, for one comes a good deal into contact with them at Gibraltar. To begin with, they think themselves quite as good as their masters, only a shade poorer. This fact I have been told to my face by one. Their standard of position appears also to be to a large extent adjusted by dress – this is their vanity. One servant girl exclaimed to her mistress. ‘I am no servant today, look at my clothes!’…

Now, taken as a whole, I should say that they are good cooks, although rather inclined to make things too sweet and too salty. Like the French and Italians, they are fond of savoury and made up dishes, and understand better the preparing of entrees and omelettes than the more common processes of roasting and boiling. Soup they excel in, and you cannot beat them at milk puddings….

I have often wondered how they can possibly produce dishes the various dishes with the materials at hand, and in a place like Gibraltar where the meat is poor and fatless, chops are cut thin as wafers – the potatoes are innocent of flouriness – bread is like pipe-clay, and where moreover the water is rain, the milk goat’s, and butter, except what is brought out from England, unknown. They certainly endeavour to make up for a good many defiencies by the use of spices, and cloves are invariably put into beef-steak puddings. The house servants are eternally scrubbing! They love it! Especially where the hall – door-steps- kitchen – and outer passages are concerned; and whitewash, which they apply without stint or provocation, has to them a charm. Dusting in the English sense of the word, they understand not, but go about, weapon in hand, gaily (and with the best intention in the world) chasing the offending particles vigorously, and simply compelling them to seek for other pastures. And as to sweeping a room! To begin with, they will not use an ordinary broom for such purposes, but insist upon manipulating a twitch, and with this they literally thrash the floor. ..

Some of the servants I have chanced to meet have, I am sorry to say, afforded me forcible example of the innate cruelty of the people I am describing. One, when correcting her child, invariably thrashed it if it dared to cry! Another – an old hag of a cook – caught a poor little kitten in her kitchen, and for this offense, she promptly took the kitten up and quietly dropped it over a wall thirty feet deep! After this, she returned laughing with a fat chuckle of satisfaction. I have also seen children swinging kittens round by the tail, and dragging birds along with string attached to their feet.

Richard G. Thomsett, A record voyage in H.M.S. Malabar (1902).

Smuggling

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English officers and Spanish Smugglers fraternise in the Neutral Ground (1837)
‘Now,’ said S., ‘…let us draw out the programme of what is to be done in the way of sight-seeing whilst we are on ‘ the Rock’ — at least to the extent to which I can lionize you, during your probably very brief residence here.’

‘I place myself entirely under your guidance,’ was my reply. ‘I have leave to be ashore as long as our old tub lies in the bay — the stores cannot possibly be landed till late this afternoon, and the skipper, who is a decent little fellow, told me, moreover, in confidence, that he should not positively sail unless the wind were fair.’

'Which,’ observed S , ‘is very likely not to be for at least two or three days. It is seldom,’ continued he, ‘that a ‘ Levanter,’ as we here call an easterly wind, is welcome — however, the longer this fellow stays with us the better, since it will give me the more of your good company. To make the most of our time, I vote that to-day we take a gallop out to the Cork wood, where you will have a good specimen of wild Spanish scenery….’

‘All right,’ said I, ‘I put myself under your charge, y estoy a, la disposición de usted as we used to say in the north of Spain.’ ….

In nearly as brief a space of time as it has taken to relate the foregoing, S had donned his becoming Andalusian costume. I had slipped into a pair of clean white ‘ducks’ (which with the regimental shell-jacket and forage cap, was all the fancy dress I could sport on the occasion), we had laid in a tolerable supply of provisions; and being at last duly mounted — my friend on his handsome grey barb — the reader’s humble servant on the aforesaid ‘Toro,’ a very sorry specimen, indeed, of the Equine tribe — off we sallied through the Landport gate, on our proposed expedition to the Cork wood. Spite of the before mentioned ‘Levanter,’ which is said invariably to throw both a moral and physical damper on ‘the Rock ‘ and its occupants, S and myself (he glad to have escaped from the recent irksome duties of a guard — I from the irksome confinement on board of ship, and both glad to fall in once more with an old comrade and friend) felt in the highest possible feather — ready for anything — as the saying is — or was — from ‘pitch and toss’ to ‘cock-fighting.’ '

‘This is the only time,’ observed my friend, making his fiery little barb respond to the metallic pressure of his armed heel, — ‘this is the only time I can remember to have ever welcomed a ‘Levanter’ on ‘the Rock.’ You have no idea,’ continued he, ‘with what aversion the much-dreaded visitor is ever regarded in this place. El Levante, generally speaking, puts a stop here to business and pleasure, damps at once our garments and our spirits. Under the malignant influence of yon fleecy vapours, which you may now behold shrouding the bare, grey, and venerable summit of ‘ the Rock ‘ (and which are always the attendants of this unwelcome messenger of Eolus), and whilst the leaden mantle of their upas shade is flung around, everything appears melancholy and depressed.’

When a regular Levanter has regularly set in, its deadening effects could scarce be credited by one who has not personally experienced their influence. The gay contrabandista then no longer carols forth his accustomed song — the graceful señorita closes her pantomimic and expressive fan — her large glancing eye then becomes, if possible, less bright — the sturdy African Jew Gallego seized with unusual lassitude, lays down his heavy burden and stretches himself at length — the vigilant sentry struts less alertly on his post — wine is not bottled from the
cask — nay, the merry peal of the very marriage bell has ere now been stopped, and the ceremony itself deferred, until the benign influence of the ‘Poniente’ should have dissipated the noxious vapours ever attendant on this — as the Scorpions call it: maldito — namely, accursed Levante.’

‘However, old fellow,’ added he, ‘it has been truly said, that it is an ill wind which blows no good — since, therefore, it will keep you here, let it e’en ‘ blow and crack its cheeks.’

‘¡Viva Levante y muera el Poniente!’ next shouted out my wild and exhilarated companion at the very top of his voice, as he charged amongst and nearly unseated one of a party of horsemen, who were jogging quietly away from Gibraltar across the sandy plain, extending between the northern face of ‘the Rock’ and the Spanish Lines, and which, I was informed, goes by the name of the ‘Neutral Ground.’

These caballeros were contrabandistas or smugglers, proceeding, probably on their usual vocation; most of them stalwart, fine-looking fellows, and, from their appearance, not likely to allow themselves to be ill-treated or otherwise molested with impunity. A volley of imprecations: of carajos, of punyetas, and demonios, were instantly showered forth, descending in continuous torrents upon our devoted heads. I even fancied, as we shot by, that I could see sundry hands fumbling amongst the folds of the faja for the ever ready cuchillo, and began to fear the consequences of the exuberant spirits of my friend. No mischief, however, ensued. On pulling up, he appeared to be instantly recognised, and addressed by the smugglers as el capitán loco, or the ‘mad captain.’ An exchange of civilities and cigars took place. I was in due form presented to his most brigand-looking acquaintances, and we jogged on amicably together; whilst a previous, though now nearly forgotten, knowledge of the Spanish language enabled me, though with some difficulty, to take part in the conversation, which was kept up with animation betwixt them and my loco friend.

‘Whither are you bound?’ asked he, addressing a fine athletic whiskerando-looking fellow, rigged out in, as I subsequently learnt, the most approved majo (pronounced ‘makho’) costume of Andalusia, who appeared to act as chief of the party, and responded to the appellation of José Alvarez.

‘Pues! Caballero! that we cannot exactly say,’ replied he, significantly, as he withdrew the cigar from his mouth, and emitted at the same time a dense volume of smoke; ‘but somewhere into the hills yonder, towards Jimena.’

‘Then,’ replied el loco, ‘our road lies partly the same way. I wish to show my friend here, who has just arrived at the Plaza, San Roque, the Almoraima, and La Venta del Aqualcahijo.’

‘Or, do you wish,’ asked Jose, with a knowing wink, ‘to present him either to Dolores or La Paquita?’

‘Don Guilielmo,’ continued he, addressing himself to me, and pointing at S., ‘es un demonio con las muchachas — a terrible fellow amongst the girls.’

‘Pero, however,’ continued he, in rather an admonitory, though most friendly tone, but pointing very significantly to the folds of his broad sash, where, no doubt, slumbered his formidable clasp-knife, ‘be careful how you proceed in that quarter. Dolores has many admirers, confesses to a sturdy young friar, and moreover, those carboneros are dangerous fellows — more so when set on by a priest; nor have they yet forgotten that unpleasant business which occurred last year at the Venta del Aqualcahijo, where we are now going.’

‘No tenga usted cuidad — never you mind,’ replied my friend, very good-humouredly, though evidently rather taken aback. ‘My companion here shall taste a little of Juanita’s gazpacho at the venta; and I’ll treat you all to either seco or dulce. We will return by the Almoraima, and beat up the quarters of the old padre, Don Juan.”

‘Y de Dolores tambien,’ whispered, sotto-voce, Jose Alvarez, as he
took the proffered cigar, offered in token of friendship by the ‘loco.’

Anonymous, ‘My First Visit to the Rock’, Bentley’s Miscellany (1837).

**

Smuggling under the Protection of the Garrison Guns (1839)
Throughout most of the nineteenth century the British authorities were extremely reluctant to clamp down on contraband, going as far as shooting at Spanish customs boats following the smugglers’ brigantines back into Gibraltarian territorial waters. The official British position was candidly defined by Lord Castleragh, the British Foreign secretary between 1812 and 1822 and an enthusiastic proponent of the doctrine of free trade:

The goods themselves are forced in[to Spain], by scores of large and small smuggling boats, who watch their time when the Spanish guarda costas are not on the alert; steal from under the Rock, run along the shore, and land their goods by previously planned stratagems. If chased, they retire under cover of Europa Point, and our guns do not hesitate to fire on any Spanish boat chasing within range of the fortress; our policy being to give encouragement and protection to the smugglers!

Between the end of the Peninsular War and the beginning of the twentieth century, several Spanish boats were sunk in this way, giving both the Spanish ambassador in London and the regional governors across the border much cause for remonstrance. Writing in 1856, for example, Arthur William Alsager Pollock related how ‘a Spanish war vessel, chasing one of these smuggling boats, ran rather too close under one of our batteries, which opened fire and sank her.’ ‘The other day,’ echoed the famous novelist W. M. Thackeray, ‘a Spanish revenue vessel was shot to death under the thundering great guns of the fort, for neglecting to bring to, but it so happened that it was in chase of a smuggler.’ All this, not surprisingly, ensured that Gibraltar earned a reputation as the world’s premier smuggling depot. One writer in 1850, for example, described Gibraltar as ‘exceedingly convenient for… contraband traffic.’ ‘Certain it is,’ wrote another in 1839, ‘that smuggling between [Algeciras] and Gibraltar is carried on more extensively and openly than I have seen elsewhere.’

From Gibraltar to Cadiz there are three roads; the shortest, a wild track across the mountains, is likewise the most dangerous on account of the mala gente who infest it; the second is by Los Barrios; and the third by Algeciras and Tarifa. This last, though by far the longest route, is the most agreeable, as the road from the Fortress to Tarifa winds for the most part along the side of the mountains overhanging the sea, and commands delightful views of the country inland, and of the lake-like Straits with the wild mountain coast of Africa.

I had determined on taking this road, but one morning, while in the act of bargaining with an alqnilador for a pair of horses, I heard that a vessel was on the point of sailing for Cadiz with a favourable wind. This induced me to alter my plans; and I hurried on board with my luggage. Alongside the Mistico [a two-masted, latteen-sailed craft], as she lay in the tier off the Mole, was another of larger size, deeply laden, and with a numerous crew of as savage-looking armed ruffians as Spain, the land of bandits, could supply. They were smugglers, and were preparing to work out of the Bay under cover of the night.

Punctuality being unknown in Andalucia, the sun was low in the west ‘ere we weighed anchor. The breeze was very light, and as it was from the east, we were to leeward of the Rock, and made at first scarcely any progress. The evening was calm and bright; the mountains behind Algeciras had put on their richest mantle of purple, and the western sky was of the most brilliant orange, which was reflected in broken lights on the gently-rippled bosom of the Bay. As I was gazing in this direction, a bright light sprung up on the dark mass of the mountains,—another, and another succeeded it, — till in a short time the whole Sierra was studded with blazing fires rapidly extending, and producing, as they were mirrored in the Bay, it was difficult to say whether a more beautiful or singularly wild effect. These were the fires of the carboneros, or charcoal-burners.

By the aid of sweeps and sails we crept along beneath the Rock, passing the town, batteries, and Alameda in succession, and when off the little village of Rosia, our attention was attracted by two black spots on the bright surface of the Bay at some distance to the west. These we soon discovered to be a small smuggling-boat pursued by one from the Spanish guardacosta off Algeciras. There was just light enough for us to discern that the chase contained but two men, while in her pursuer there were six. This gave the latter great advantage; the little smuggler nevertheless boldly held her way across the Bay, as fast as her pair of oars could urge her towards the town of Gibraltar. We watched them as they skimmed the blushing waters, not without an anxious concern in the fate of the little chase, which seemed resolved to die game. The revenue-boat was gaining on her rapidly,—every stroke lessened the intervening distance, and I fully expected to see her fall a prey to her pursuer, more especially when she all at once seemed to relax in speed, as though well nigh exhausted. Great was my astonishment when the other boat, now not fifty yards astern, instead of pushing forward to seize her, suddenly stopped short and put about.

It was soon explained to me that smugglers cannot be seized at sea within a league of Gibraltar; and that, as the little boat had entered the British waters, further pursuit on the part of the guardacosta’s cutter would have been dangerous. “Es todo verdad — eso, Senor Ingles —It’s all truth — that, Mr. Englishman,” said one of the passengers, “a cosario cannot go in pursuit of a contrabandista’s boat when it is under the protection of the British flag. Ave Maria! I remember some years since that a falucho was fishing in the Bay, when up comes a cosario (a revenue cutter); the boat flies towards the Plaza and gets within the line, but my good cosario does not mind that two-figs, and what does he? he comes up with the falucho, and finding contraband on board, he seizes it me, and without saying ‘Perdon, Senores !’ he takes it me off to Malaga. Well, sirs, they were just thinking of selling said falucho, when down comes an express from the Governor of the Fortress yonder, saying, that if they did not immediately set free the vessel with all her crew and cargo, he’d send a fleet, and in less than a creed turn Malaga to dust.”

“And what was the result?”

“They let the vessel go, por supuesto, what else should they do? No, no, my sirs!” added he, with a knowing and solemn air, “ those are sacred things, those!—son cosas sagradas, esas!’

George Dennis, A summer in Andalucia (1839).

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‘The Gibraltar Trader’ (1845)
The shipping — principally misticos and other small craft — is a source of considerable interest. Of these, the Gibraltar trader is perhaps the most striking — and a most suspicious-looking craft she is. She lies rather low in the water, sharp in the bows, and carries enormous lateen sails. Her cargo looks peaceable enough, but not so her crew, who are far too numerous to be required for the management of such a vessel if she were honest, and have a desperado look about them which seems to intimate some other employment besides peaceable navigation—a suspicion which is more than confirmed by the no way equivocal appearance of two large swivel-guns poking out their wide black muzzles from under a tarpawling amidships. In short, she is a smuggler — a lawless freetrader — and her numerous and daring crew require the guarda-costa to be well armed and well manned before she presumes to ask OUT questions. These vessels are fair traders in the bay of Gibraltar, but contrabandistas on the Spanish coast, whose honesty must not be questioned on the open sea, but are recognised smugglers near the shore. Hence the fruitful ground of squabbles betwixt our cruisers and the Spanish coast-guard. When detected landing contraband goods, they are of course liable to seizure; but we consider ourselves bound to protect them in all other circumstances, however suspicious. It appears not very dignified for a great power like England to protect the smuggling trade on the coasts of helpless Spain, who has no strength to retaliate or resist. But besides that the trade is profitable — that excuse betwixt nations for everything that is lawless — and opens a considerable mart for British produce, it is obviously the duty of Great Britain to protect her own subjects on the high seas, and to prevent their being kidnapped by the cruisers of any other nation, in circumstances where the charge of contravening the laws of that nation within its own jurisdiction cannot be fully substantiated. Hence the watchful jealousy with which our ships of war regard the motions of the guarda-costas near the entrance to the Mediterranean; and perhaps the most exciting signal now made from the signal-tower on the Rock, is that which telegraphs “a Gibraltar vessel pursued by a Spaniard.” A short time ago, a collision with the Spanish authorities in this respect occurred, which occasioned violent excitement and indignation against the English. It appears that a Gibraltar vessel had been boarded at sea by one of the coast-guard, and being found laden with contraband goods, was made prize of and carried into Barcelona. There could be little doubt that the goods were destined for the Spanish market; but still the vessel was captured at a distance from the coast, where she had a perfect right to be with any goods she might think fit to carry. So at least argued the captain of a British gun-brig, who, on being informed of the circumstance, sailed directly into the harbour of Barcelona, took possession of the vessel, and carried her back to Gibraltar. It is reported that the governor of Barcelona was deprived of his post for having suffered this insult; but whether he had the power to prevent it I do not know. There is no country in Europe which gives employment to so many smugglers as Spain. In fact, it would appear as if the greater part of the trade of the country were in their hands. Such is the effect of prohibitory duties and impolitic fiscal regulations.

William Robertson, ‘Journal of a Clergyman,’ Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (1845).

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A petty smuggler in action (1853)
Side by side with the organised gangs there were many individuals who tried their hand at smuggling. This type of contraband appears to have been a spontaneous, largely unregulated affair, attracting mainly women and children who were prepared to sequester the dutiable goods within their person. Rafael Sanchez Mantero, paraphrasing the work of the English historian George Hills before him, describes this type of contraband as ‘el trafico de hormigas’ (‘the smuggling of ants’) – principally due to the fact that it involved a steady and almost never-ending stream of individuals carrying small quantities of goods hidden within their person. The methods used by these smugglers ranged from the simple to the downright bizarre. At the more inventive end of the scale, items were being carried over in hidden coat pockets, under cartloads of manure, inside false-bottomed boxes, concealed within the tubular framework of fruit and vegetable carts. In the following extract we follow the progress of a lone Spanish smuggler as he boards the old Gibraltar-Algeciras ferry and then tries to bluff his way past the customs post on the Spanish side.

Gibraltar is a free port, and is a depot for the commerce of various nations. It is the head-quarters of the Spanish smuggler, who, notwithstanding the difficulties and dangers he has to encounter in the pursuit of his calling, carries on a thriving business. There are smugglers here of all grades. I was much amused by one of the inferior class of these worthies, in crossing over in a small steam-boat to Algeciras, a Spanish town on the opposite side of the bay. As soon as the boat shoved off from the mole, the gentleman untied a small bundle, containing a variety of articles, and with great composure began to stow them away upon his person, lie first placed about half a dozen silk handkerchiefs under his shirt, then put away a dozen or more gloves in the sleeves of his coat, pulled up his trousers, and filled his boots with stockings, and, finally, stowed away about one hundred cigars in the red sash which he wore around his waist. On our arrival on the other side, I had the curiosity to watch our smuggler, to see how he would behave on landing. He did not manifest any hurry to get on shore among the first, and when lie landed on the mole, lingered about among the officers, speaking familiarly to his acquaintances, and finally sauntered off deliberately, to disgorge his contraband articles in the back-room of one of the best shops of the city.

Anonymous, ‘Journeyings in Spain,’ The Knickerbocker: Or, New-York Monthly Magazine (1853)

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Turning a blind eye to Contraband (1877)
I found at Gibraltar, somewhat to my surprise, the Spanish and English authorities living on terms of perfect understanding and mutual amity, the Spaniards acknowledging that the English meet their wishes in everything that lies in their power to oppose the contraband trade, and the English quite charmed with the politeness and even indulgence with which the Spaniard allow them a free intercourse across the ‘lines’, and the still freer use of the territory about St. Roque as the field for those hunting, shooting, and horse-racing sports, without which the pent-up garrison and the best part of the population would find the Rock a much less endurable prison than military rule unavoidably makes it. Smuggling goes on from Gibraltar by land and sea, and the chief articles in which it is carried on are tobacco which in Spain is a Government monopoly, tea, coffee, sugar, and other colonial goods, upon which heavy duties are demanded at the Spanish Custom-houses. The smuggling of cotton tissues and other English manufactured goods has of late greatly decreased, and almost ceased the Spanish authorities told me, because ‘protection has given so great a development to Catalan industry that home competition has driven foreign produce from the Spanish market’. Tobacco is the chief offender; and these same Spanish authorities contend that the tobacco with which their Government supply the consumer is infinitely better than the stuff which is smuggled in, and that contraband only affects their monopoly by the lowness of the prices at which the smuggled goods are sold. With respect to this latter statement I must observe that public opinion in Spain somewhat disputes its correctness, for there is no end to the complaints of the ‘infamous cigars’ and cigarettes of the Regia on the part of the amateurs who have nothing else to smoke. Suffice it, however, to assert that there must be something in the unlawful importation of tobacco to make it a profitable business, and that it constitutes the chief grievance of the Spanish revenue officers against their neighbours. The so-called ‘lines’ which separate the British from the Spanish territory across the narrow neck or isthmus which makes the Rock a peninsula are only a few hundred yards distant from the gates of Gibraltar. The Spaniards have on their own side so barred the way across the sandy flat, and allowed so narrow a way through, that persons walking, riding, or driving past their lines, must as they go past brush past their Custom-house officials and Carabineros, or Custom-house guards. Here, nevertheless, an endless number of petty smugglers go through with the forbidden merchandise secreted about their person. Large cartloads of tobacco used till lately to be driven up to the last limits of British territory, where, in the open air and in full day-light, those creatures, hundreds and hundreds at a time, divested themselves of their clothes and padded themselves all over with the contents of the carts, put their rags on again, and, thus laden, went their way into Spanish ground. This practice is now discontinued. The Spanish Consul, Don Francisco Yehra de Sanjuan, with the zeal of a newly appointed functionary, remonstrated with the English authorities about these open-air toilets which he described as offensive to common decency, and the police from the Rock have now orders to bid the women and children to ‘move on’ and the carts to ‘move off’. In spite of this restrictive measure, however, there is little doubt that this same contraband trade by land is still carried on very nearly to the same extent, and one might ask why the Spanish Carabineros do not submit suspected persona, laden mules, and vehicles to so strict a search as to put a stop to the lawless traffic; but the movement of people across the line, only allowed from sunrise to sunset, is very brisk, and cannot be easily interfered with; and it is extremely probable that the speculators, of whom all that rabble of women and children are the mere agents, have the means of inducing the Carabineros to wink at the tricks those monstrously-stout boys and girls and those big women in an ‘interesting state’ play upon them. Independently of their alleged venality it is also possible that these wretchedly-paid officials, being themselves Spaniards, are not without some sneaking sympathy with the instincts of their offending countrymen, and are loath to look too closely under the clothes of pedestrians, or into the packs of laden mules, or boxes and boots of the spring vans used here as hackney carriages. For these officials are aware, and everybody is aware, of the sore distress prevailing at this moment all over Spain, and especially in these Southern Provinces, and they, perhaps, consider that any efficient check put on that contraband trade which is the only resource of vast numbers of the population would at once bring them to the verge of actual starvation. For such is the result of unwise laws, especially with regard to oppressive taxation, that the very officials who are charged with their execution, listening rather to humane feelings than to a proper sense of their duty, are too often disposed to connive at, and thus indiscreetly to encourage, their infraction. And, after all, even the higher Spanish authorities seem to think that such smuggling as is here still going on by land and across the lines is almost beneath their notice; and that as far as any extensive trade is concerned, Gibraltar, unapproachable as it is by carriage road from any part of Spain, may be looked upon as an island and its main intercourse must be by sea.

As an isolated spot, Gibraltar is not much more favourable to the Spanish smuggling trade than Tangiers, Tetuan, and the Spanish dependencies, Ceuta, Melilla, or any other port across the straits would be, and indeed there is already a loud complaint against the French authorities at Oran - a place where large cargoes of tobacco from Gibraltar are landed, and whence they are afterwards stealthily conveyed to various points on the coast of Spain; for so lucrative, as it seems, is this clandestine and criminal tobacco trade that it can easily bear the expenses of two or more voyages. Gibraltar, however, in the Spaniard’s opinion, offers to the smuggler the especial advantage of immediate proximity. Algeciras, at only five miles’ distance across the Bay, is visited almost hourly by small ferry steamers and boats, with shoals of smugglers as their only passengers. And small craft of every description carry on the same intercourse with Estepona, Marbella, and all the coast as far as Cadiz on the other. Steamers of larger size, of Spanish and other lines, take passengers on board with little attention to what they take with them as luggage, and as they proceed along the coast, they are in the dark, or even by daylight, approached by fishing boats, into which bales of tobacco and other forbidden merchandise are dropped, probably without the knowledge, possibly with the connivance, of the captains. For so universal, so all-pervading, is this smuggling business, if you believe the Spanish authorities, that many of the richest merchants, shipowners, and shipmasters, as well as all the well-to-do mountain population of these districts, are more or less actively engaged in it; and enrich themselves by it.

Anonymous, ‘The Smuggler’s Rock,’ The Times (1877).

Crime and Punishment

2008-08-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

The hanging of the infamous Pirate Benito De Soto (1833)
The trial and execution of the pirate Benito de Soto has to rank as one of the most sensational in Gibraltar’s long juridical history. On 19 February 1828, De Soto and his band chanced upon the ‘Morning Star’, an English steamer en route from Ceylon to England. After boarding the ship, de Soto and his men murdered most of the male passengers and raped the female ones. They then locked all the remaining passengers in the cabins and tried to set the ship alight, hoping to leave no trace of their misdeeds. As the pirate ship sailed away, however, a few of the passengers broke out from their confinement and managed to escape. A few months later, De Soto’s ship sunk near the straits of Gibraltar and the pirates were forced to land at Cadiz. Most of the fugitives were quickly apprehended, but De Soto managed to escape to Gibraltar with the aid of some false papers. While there he is said to have spent his time drinking at Basso’s tavern (situated on modern-day Crutchett’s ramp) and plotting his escape. Unfortunately for the pirate, one of the survivors of the ‘Morning Star’ happened to be in Gibraltar at the time and recognised him. After a short trial in front of Governor Don, de Soto was found guilty and sentenced to hang from the gibbet’s arm. The execution took place on 25 January, 1830, in front of a large and hostile crowd, his last words to the assembled congregation, according to several witnesses, being ‘adios todos.’ After de Soto’s corpse was cut down from the gibbet, his head was struck off and stuck on a pike.

Soto secured his admission to the garrison by a false pass, and took up his residence at an inferior tavern in a narrow lane, which runs off the main street of Gibraltar, and is kept by a man of the name of Basso. The appearance of this house suits well with the associations of the worthy Benito’s life. I have occasion to pass the door frequently at night, for our barracks (the Casemate) is but a few yards from it. I never look at the place without feeling a vivid and involuntary sensation of horror—the smoky and dirty nooks—the distant groups of dark Spaniards, Moors, and Jews, their sallow countenances made yellow by the light of dim oil-lamps—the unsealed rafters of the rooms above, seen through unshuttered windows, and the consciousness of their having covered the atrocious Soto, combine this effect upon me. In this den the villain remained for a few weeks, and during this time seemed to enjoy himself as if he had never committed a murder. The story he told Basso of his circumstances was, that he l«rd come to Gibraltar on his way to Cadiz from Malaga, and was merely awaiting the arrival of a friend. He dressed expensively—generally wore a white hat of the best English quality, silk stockings, white trowsers, and a blue frock coat. His whiskers were large and bushy, and his hair, which was very black, profuse, long and naturally curled, was much in the style of a London preacher of prophetic and anti-poetic notoriety. He was deeply browned with the sun, and had an air and gait expressive of his bold, enterprising, and desperate mind. Indeed, when I saw him in his cell and at his trial, although his frame was attenuated almost to a skeleton, his face pale yellow, his eyes sunken, and his hair closely shorn, he still exhibited strong traces of what he had been—still retained his erect and fearless carriage, his quick, fiery, and malevolent eye, his hurried and concise speech, and his close and pertinent style of remark. He appeared to me such d man as would have made a hero in the ranks of his country, had circumstances placed him in the proper road to fame; but ignorance and poverty turned into the most ferocious robber one who might have rendered service and been an honour to his sunken country. I should like to hear what the phrenologists say of his head; it appeared to me to be the most peculiar I had ever seen, and certainty, as far as the bump of destructive-ness went, bore their theory fully out. It is rumoured here that the skull has been sent to the savants of Edinburgh; if this be the case, we shall no doubt be made acquainted with their sage opinions upon the subject, and great conquerors will receive a larger assurance of how much they resemble in their physical natures the greatest murderers.

When I visited the pirate in the Moorish castle where he was confined, he was sitting in his cold, narrow, and miserable cell, upon a pallet of straw, eating his coarse meal from a tin plate. I thought him more an object of pity than vengeance; he looked so worn with disease, so crushed with suffering, yet so affable, frank, and kind in his address; for he happened to be in a communicative mood, a thing that was by no means common with him. He spoke of his long confinement, till I thought the tears were about to start from his eyes, and alluded to his approaching trial with satisfaction; but his predominate characteristic, ferocity, appeared in his small piercing black eyes before I left him, as he alluded to his keeper, the Provost, in such a way that made me suspect his desire for blood was not yet extinguished. When he appeared in court on his trial, his demeanour was quite altered; he seemed to me to have suddenly risen out of the wretch he was in the cell to all the qualities I had heard of him; he stood erect and unembarrassed; spoke with a strong voice, attended closely to the proceedings, occasionally examined the witnesses, and at the conclusion protested against the justice of his trial. He sometimes spoke to the guards around him, and sometimes affected an air of carelessness of his awful situation, which, however, did not sit easy upon him.

Even here the leading trait of his mind broke forth; for when the interpreter commenced his office, the language which he made use of being pedantic and affected. Soto interrupted him thus, while a scowl sat upon his brow that terrified the man of words, “I don’t understand you, man; speak Spanish like others, and I’ll listen to you.” When the dirk which belonged to Mr. Robertson, and the trunk and clothes taken from Mr. Gibson, and the pocket-book containing the ill-fated Captain’s handwriting were placed before him, and proved to have been found in his room, and when the maid-servant of the tavern proved that she found the dirk under his pillow every morning on arranging his bed; and when he was confronted with his own black slave, between two wax-lights, the countenance of the villain appeared in its true nature,—not depressed or sorrowful, hut vivid and ferocious: and when the patient and dignified Governor, Sir George Don, passed the just sentence of the law upon him he looked daggers at his heart, and assumed a horrid silence, more eloquent than words.

The criminal persisted up to the day before his execution in asserting his innocence, and inveighing against the injustice of his trial; but the certainty of his fate, and the awful voice of religion, at length subdued him. He made an unreserved confession of his guilt, and became truly penitent; gave up to his keeper the blade of a razor which he had secreted between the soles of his shoes for the acknowledged purpose of adding suicide to his crimes, and seemed to wish for the moment that was to send him before his Creator.

I witnessed his execution, and I believe there never was a more contrite man than he appeared to be; yet there were no drivelling fears upon him—he walked firmly at the tail of the cart, gazing sometimes at his coffin, sometimes at the crucifix which he held in his hand. The symbol of Divinity he frequently pressed to his lips, repeated the prayers spoken in his ear by the attendant clergyman, and seemed regardless of every thing but the world to come. The gallows was erected beside the water, and fronting the neutral ground. He mounted the cart as firmly as he walked behind it, and held up his face to Heaven and the beating rain, calm, resigned, but unshaken; and finding the halter too high for his neck, he boldly stepped upon his coffin and placed his head in the noose, then watching the first turn of the wheels, he murmured “adios todos,” and leaned forward to facilitate his fall….”

Anonymous, Select Tales: Being a Compilation of Singular, Interesting, Remarkable and Autentric Narratives (1833).

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Loitering Rateros (1856)

The principal business… done in Gibraltar is smuggling. It being a free port, all sorts of articles are introduced to be smuggled along the coast as far as Cadiz. The English thus find an excellent market for their cottons; thereby making the Rock, in a commercial as well as a military point of view, a source of great injury to Spain. It detracts nothing from the immorality of the practice that the English engaged in it have confederates on the Spanish side, and even among the officers of the Customs themselves. On the contrary, it doubles it; for besides the violation of the law, it seduces the integrity of its guardians. Cigars are the chief article smuggled; and as their manufacture is the most active one in Spain, the honest industry of the nation is disastrously affected by this illicit practice. But Gibraltar is the rendezvous of larger rascals than Jewish guides or smugglers: many a gipsy thief and Spanish ratero (foot-pad) congregate here, if not to ply their trade, to gather intelligence that will aid them elsewhere. There is very good shooting on the Spanish main, particularly the woodcocks in the corkwood — and parties are often made for an excursion. It has happened that these parties, especially when small, have been Jogged from the Rock, and come upon unawares, when their guns had been just discharged or their ammunition had given out, and cleaned out by these roving bandits. Such cases, however, are rare, and every year less likely to be repeated. These rateros are perhaps so deeply imbued with Espanolism as to think it no wrong to plunder the English, who have dispossessed their country of, and still withhold Gibraltar, more than the Gael, in times gone by, thought it sinful to make a creagh upon the Saxon.

Charles Wainwright March, Sketches and Adventures in Madeira, Portugal, and the Andalusias of Spain (1856).

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Eighteenth-century punishments remembered(1889)
The list of punishments devised to control the eighteenth-century soldiery was as inventive as it was sadistic. ‘Running the gauntlet’ saw a victim run between two rows of soldiers, each furnished with a heavy cane and under orders to hit the offender as hard and as often as possible. This form of punishment, we are told, proved very popular at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but had to be stopped when it was discovered that the demand for new canes was causing massive upper rock deforestation! By contrast, ‘Riding the horse,’ another early eighteenth-century punishment, relied more on the relentlessness of gravity than on the brutality of one’s fellow soldiers. In this instance, the victim was forced to sit astride the top of wooden triangle composed by two planks nailed at an angle of forty-five degrees to each other. Canon balls were tied to each of his ankles, weighing anything between forty to sixty pounds. The victim was forced to remain in this indecorous position for anything between half an hour to four hours – or until his patellar ligaments and fibular tendons were stretched to the point that he could never walk again. Most famous of all the tortures at the time was the notorious whirligig, a semi-inquisitorial device originally intended to punish prostitutes and other loose-moraled women, but which increasingly came to be used against drunken soldiers. This, in the words of a contemporary commentator, was ‘a circular wooden cage, about six feet high, and of sufficient diameter to receive the body of a human being,… placed on a pivot [so] that it revolved with the greatest velocity when set in motion.’ The whirligig’s advantage as a form of punishment was twofold: it could be easily transported around the Rock and also had the benefit of greatly intimidating those who witnessed the poor wretch being spun towards insentience in its interior. In fact, many whirligigs are known to have occupied more or less permanent places throughout the garrison, with the area in and around modern-day Giro’s passage being dubbed as 'Whirligig Lane' by the military troops. In the following extract a bemused nineteenth-century journalist casts a retrospective eye on some of the punishments used within the garrison a century earlier.

The celebration of the tercentenary of the Armada raised a transitory interest in Spanish history and, consequently, in anything connected with our occupation of the mighty Rock-fortress of Gibraltar… A perusal of the archives of the garrison since it came into our possession in 1704 gives a little insight into the curious customs and mode of carrying on the government of the place; and the following extracts, collected from the General Orders published between 1700 an 1800, will no doubt prove interesting.

Desertion seems to have been a source of much trouble to successive governors of Gibraltar. In September 1757 the following general order was issued: ‘Four men will be shot for desertion on Windmill Hill in presence of he whole garrison – By order of the court-martial.’ These poor fellows fared badly; and no doubt a similar fate would have befallen the four me referred to in the next extract, but for the kind recommendation of the Spanish general: ‘In accordance with the convention, the Spaniards have returned to the garrison four deserters. The Spanish general having been pleased to beg the governor not to inflict the full penalty, it is hereby ordered that three of them have a yellow paper put in their hats, written ‘Traitor to the King, Country and Religion,’ and the other, who has added robbery to his crime, has a green paper with ‘Traitor to the King, Country, and Religion, and a Thief’, and be marched through the ton.’

In some cases it would appear that ‘one more chance’ was given, according to the humanity or temper for the time being of the governor; for instance: ‘James Jewett, of Brigadier Clayton’s regiment, has been shot; he, with five other men, having been condemned for desertion. At the place of execution, two were deprived, and the remainder drew lots for their lives, Jewitt being the loser.’ And not only were the soldiers themselves sufferers, but he officer came in for a share of the penalty when he deserter escaped altogether: ‘Be it known for the future that if any officer’s servant desert when absent from the regiment, the said officer shall replace him with a good recruit, or pay twenty-five dollars for the non-effective.’

Summary vengeance was also placed in the power of he sentries, as would appear from the following: ‘Yesterday, during bathing, one of the soldiers had the audacity to swim off and desert. Sentries are now commanded to fire on any man who swims beyond fifty yards and refuses to return when ordered.’

Punishments were heavy and swift; and no doubt the discipline f he garrison required a strong hand. For example: ‘Private Thomas ____ to receive ten hundred lashes with a cat-o-nine-tails, so much of the punishment as he can bear to be received at one time in the Grand Parade, and the rest afterwards; the last fifty lashes will be administered by the common hangman between the Southport and Waterport gates, where he will be drummed out of the garrison with a halter round his neck.’

Occasionally, when special works were being executed and labour was costly, it was found to be an advantage to give prisoners a chance of avoiding some part of their sentence. In 1749, General Bland issued the subjoined order: ‘Men sentenced by court-martial to corporal punishment may commute the same by working on the new road to the signal station, as follows: fifty to one hundred lashes, one day’s work; one hundred to two hundred lashes, two days’ work; and so on – By order, General Bland.’…

The post of executioner at the period must have been anything but a sinecure. He required special protection. ‘Samuel Lewis having been duly appointed executioner for this garrison, the governor orders that no person shall offer any abuse to the said Lewis, either by throwing stones or striking or upbraiding him on account of his unpleasant duties – on pain of the severest punishment.’ And the above Order being ineffectual, we find shortly afterwards that ‘Notwithstanding the Order lately issued, the governor finds that Lewis the executioner has been abused by soldiers and others throwing stones at him, breaking his head, and maltreating him grossly. Whoever shall be found, hereafter, acting in a similar manner in face of these Orders shall be whipped severely by the said executioner until he is satisfied.’

The jailer, even, was not allowed to possess a feeling heart, as the following Order implies: ‘It is reported that the provost-sergeant of the Moorish castle does not inflict the whole of the punishment awarded to prisoners under his care. Now it is ordered that, in future, when this occurs, he shall receive the remainder himself.’

The common executioner was not the only person to become obnoxious to the inhabitants. On the occasion of the visit to the garrison of the Alcalde of Tetuan it became necessary to appoint a man specially to protect him and his suite: ‘During the visit of the Alcalde of Tetuan an orderly sergeant shall be attached to the Moor who is his secretary, to prevent the sailors or soldiers abusing him and his countrymen.’

Gambling and billiard-playing were rife then, as now: ‘Billiards shall not be played after second gun-fire in the evening, on peril of having the table broken to pieces and burned on the public parade.’ - ‘Gaming, especially, the game of Devil-and-the-Taylors and Skittles will not be allowed in any winehouse.’ –’Between June 1st and September 13th no soldier will be allowed to play at fives.’

Robbery had to be dealt with in the absence of police and detectives. Among the troops, petty pilfering of the food and clothing have been discovered, an Order was issued to meet the case: ‘It having been divulged that soldiers have a method of surreptitiously disposing of their necessaries, which they call “fighting a cock,” the governor now positively orders that this practice be discontinued, otherwise the men belonging to the barrack-room where this custom takes place will pay the value of the said necessaries.’ And as this was not successful, possibly from favouritism, the governor determined to make some one responsible: ‘ It being evident that no robberies can be committed but what may be discovered by the sergeants and corporals, it is ordered that they pay for all if the offender is not brought to light.’ When a robber was caught he was made an example of: ‘John ____, who committed the robbery at the storehouse, will be executed at guard-mounting to-morrow morning at the said storehouse. The body, with a label on the breast, on which is written the word “Plunderer,” to remain hanging till sunset.’

Not only were the rations of the soldiers stolen, but the charges actually abstracted from the guns, for what purpose other than mischief is mysterious: ‘Some evil person having been so unsoldier-like and scandalous as to have drawn the charges and stolen the gunpowder from eighteen guns, a reward of one hundred dollars is offered for the detection of the infamous thief. The punishment is death.’

At last, a General Order was promulgated, calling upon the civil inhabitants to turn themselves into special constables for the putting down of crime: ‘Every night, certain inhabitants armed with a permit from the town-major must patrol the streets to prevent robberies. The military patrols are not to interfere with them, but must render assistance if required. And during the day, officers and non-commissioned officers commanding guards are to send out patrols frequently with their arms unloaded to kill every dog they see going about the streets. They are not to fire at any dog, but to kill by stabbing or some other way.

The extermination of dogs here referred to must have been a wholesome practice worthy of imitation at the present time, when the street of the garrison are overrun by mongrels of all shapes and sizes. Many of these are, however, only day-visitors from Spain, trained to smuggle tobacco which is fixed upon their backs and sides like pack-saddles; in which state they are sent off to their homes in the Spanish lines, running the chance of a stray shot from some carabinero.

Horses and donkeys appear to have been a source of annoyance to the governor at some period, for he gives notice that, ‘Any donkeys loose in the town are to become the property of the person taking them away; and any straying on the ramparts are to be shot by the sentries.’ ‘If any horses are found on the hill to-morrow, the governor will order out a firing-party and shoot them.’ And, again, he aims a blow at disorders which happened yesterday, ‘the governor expressly forbids any more horse-racing.’ But this has since been rescinded, as racing is now one of the chief amusements of the garrison.

The sentries at the English lines required continual watching and strict discipline to keep them up to their duties. The Orders dealing with them are very numerous, and a few of the most quaint are selected. Here is a funny one: ‘The court-martial assembled to decide whether a sentry quitting his post before relieved, or found sleeping on duty, should be punished by ‘running the gauntlet’ cannot be continued, and the duty of the garrison being very heavy, no time can be spared to collect them.’

The following may have acted as a suggestion to Lord Wolseley: ‘It is inte4nded shortly to issue a little treatise or pocket-book for the instruction of officers and soldiers of this garrison, wherein they may learn why is in future to be considered a breach of duty deserving punishment. From it they will discover that a sentry-box and a shower of rain can justify a sentry in acting in a manner that has hitherto been looked upon as a most notorious breach of discipline.’

When the gates were locked at evening gunfire, a special salute was required for the keys: ‘All guards to rest and beat a march to the keys, town-guard excepted.’ And a good attempt at keeping sentries awake was devised by this Order: ‘All sentries who do not cry out ‘All’s well’ every two minutes shall be punished with two hundred lashes.’

The art of saluting gracefully was duly impressed upon the troops, even at this early date: ‘When a soldier passes an officer, he shall look him respectfully in the face and carry his hand gracefully to his head in salute.’

From the next excerpt it would appear that some special distaste for the duty was felt by the sergeant-major referred to, or surely a verbal command to attend the court-martial would have met the case: ‘Captain_____ being appointed president of the court-martial to be holden tomorrow, the sergeant-major of his regiment will attend the said court and write down the proceedings.’

At the commencement of the present century, an epidemic of smallpox visited the Rock. This caused the issue of an Order stating that ‘Cowpox being not so contagious as smallpox, a general inoculation for the former disease is hereby ordered.’ And afterwards, the sight of victims being obnoxious to the inhabitants, an Order was put out defining that ‘People marked with the smallpox are not to be permitted to stand at their doors or go into the streets. No mackerel to be suffered to come into town. By Order,’ Where the ‘mackerel joke’ - if it is a joke - comes in, is not sufficiently explicit. And when scurvy attacked the troops, thirty thousand lemons and two thousand pounds of onions were issued in accordance with the Order quoted below: ‘Lemons and onions will be issued to the troops without stint, on account of the prevailing scurvy.’

The following summary Order speaks for itself: ‘ships coming into the bay without showing their colours are to be fired upon, and the cost of the shot recovered when the port-dues are collected.’

The creditors of the civil and military inhabitants had evidently been ‘walking round’ the governor previous to the publication of the following: ‘When the bounty-money is paid, all good soldiers are expected to pay their debts, and it is recommended to all volunteers, also to apply at least half of the amount in a similar liquidation.’

Fishermen supplying fish to the garrison seem to have been somewhat arbitrarily dealt with. An Order was early promulgated that no fish whatever was to be offered for sale until the governor’s table was supplied; but in 1759 this edict was modified by Lord Home, as follows: ‘It having been represented to the governor that the practice of bringing fish to the convent for election by His Excellency’s servant, before being allowed to dispose of same to the general public, was a hurt to them, Lord Home hereby cancels that Order; but commands that they do not sell or dispose of any of their fish before the governor’s servant has bought what may be required for his table; and the servant employed for that purpose will have orders to be early at the market every morning, and to acquaint the officer of the guard as soon as he has bought sufficient.’

It is apparent that considerable jealousy and bickering were engendered by the fish question. The governor having been supplied, various favoured individuals got the next pick, to the annoyance of the general public; and upon representing the matter to the authorities, the following General Order came out: ‘Whereas several fishermen have offended by bringing their best fish into the town for particular persons, instead of displaying it in the public market - it is ordered that all fish must be sold there in future, and none hawked or sold about the town on pain of the man being seized and the fish forfeited.’

What gave rise to the next extracted Order is not disclosed ‘The governor hopes that for the future no person living in the garrison will send out any letter, parchment, or anything else into Spain through the Landport gate, without first acquainting him and obtaining his sanction.’ Nor why there should have been any necessity to give Orders like the following: ‘Any man who has the misfortune to be killed is to be buried by the guard where it happens, and his clothes sent to his regiment.’

The ‘powdered-hair-and-queue’ period was one of considerable anxiety to be government, as would appear from the following precise General Order: ‘In consequence of some officers not having hair long enough, and finding it difficult to form a queue to their head, it is ordered that such officers may, for a period restricted to two months, during which time the hair will grow, be permitted to affix a queue otherwise. But on no account will the two months be extended.’

Again: ‘On account of the scarcity of flour, no soldier will be allowed to powder his hair till further orders: and to economise cartridges, each man will have a charge of powder issued t him in a cane, and a loose ball, which he will carry in the cock of his hat.’ The last mandate was, however, due to the scarcity of provisions and ammunition at a moment of peril. Butter, too, ran short: ‘In consequence of the scarcity of butter, an additional supply of bread will be issued as an equivalent.’

Then, on the unexpected arrival of more troops, the following Order became necessary: ‘In consequence of the want of barrack accommodation, it is ordered that the four regiments of Kerr, Pearce, Egerton, and Bisset sleep their men three in a bed, and as many beds in a room as possible. These arrangements to be made in the morning.’

Various governors have been much exercised how to prevent suicides, and their detestation of the crime may be assumed from a perusal of the following Orders: ‘It is the General’s Order that Edmund _____ of the _____th regiment be placed upon the gibbet at the top of the hill, as a mark of ignominy for his abominable stupidity and wickedness in disobeying the laws of God by committing suicide.’ ‘A man of the ____th regiment has been so wicked and cowardly as to hang himself. The commanding officer is ordered therefore to put all possible disgrace on such a heinous crime, and treat the corpse with the greatest ignominy. No funeral service shall be held over it; but the body shall be hung, heels upwards, for two hours, and then flung over the line wall like a cat or dog.’ ‘Yesterday was discovered the skeleton of a soldier at the foot of the rock, broken to pieces and otherwise unrecognisable. The only marks to distinguish which regiment he belonged to were the letters ‘J. Y.’ on his stockings. Any regiment having lost such a man will apply to the town-major forthwith and claim his bones.’

There were the good old days, when the Commander-in-chief was permitted to carry an umbrella without giving offence to the nation: ‘No soldier or officer (except the Commander-in-chief) shall carry an umbrella when on duty.’ Still, there was an evident wish on the part of the government to retain as far as possible the military appearance of the troops: ‘The General desires to express his astonishment at meeting an officer coming from Spain dressed in a large straw hat and an umbrella; and, as if to add to the burlesque, another officer riding behind him. The General forbids any such indecency in future, and will not grant permits to any officer dressed in such an unmilitary manner.’

Funerals must have been performed in rather a perfunctory way to necessitate this Order: ‘Chaplains attending funerals will please see that the grave is fully six feet deep before allowing the corpse to be lowered, and more particularly in the case of sailors buried without coffins. And also to see that the grave is properly filled up.’

Here is an encouraging notice, such as we may never expect to see issued in these red-tapey days: ‘Several valuable suggestions having been made to the governor lately by officers of the garrison, which have been or may be adopted and prove advantageous to the king’s service, he wishes to invite further useful observations and hints from officers of all ranks, assuring them that such beneficial discoveries will be publicly acknowledged at the proper time by the proper authorities.’

The following Orders refer to the salutes to be fired on the king’s birthday: ‘All the guns in the garrison to be fired on the king’s birthday.’ ‘This year (1788) fifty guns will be fired for the king, and twenty-one for the queen.’

We have saved the most important notice till the conclusion, because we believe the offer contained therein has not yet been accepted, and it may meet the eye of the delinquent or his descendants: ‘Some gentleman visiting the governor has taken a hat belong to Mr ____, and left his own in its place. The governor gives notice that the owner of the remaining one may exchange hats at the convent, if he pleases.’

Anonymous, ‘Gibraltar a hundred years ago,’ Chambers Journal (1889).

**

Incorrigible Convicts (1894)
The prison lay within the New Mole, and was really part of the dockyard and Admiralty premises. Its enclosure was bounded on one side by the sea, the waters of Gibraltar Bay; on the other by the fortifications, under which the main building nestled, a long, low, two-storeyed wooden edifice, little better than a shed or barrack, with bunks or sleeping-room for twenty, shut off by bars, like large cages, on each side of a central passage. From this building there rose a strange hum of voices, a dull murmur, angry and menacing, as it seemed, like the surly growls and grumbles of imprisoned animals, an impression presently maintained as I entered the prison and saw its inmates ranging up and down beyond the strong bars of their little dens with the quick, stealthy movement of active wild beasts taking exercise in a limited space. Another less doubtful noise fell on my ears at intervals, shrieks and piercing yells – raging, passionate cry, surely, of a mad lunatic! – accompanied by the rattle of chains, and interspersed with peremptory commands to be still.

“It’s that Unsworth. He’s broken out again,” said the chief warder, who, with one of the visitors, a comrade on the staff of the garrison, met me at the threshold of the prison.

“Where is he?” asked Colonel S -----.

“In the ‘Separates,’ ” and so saying he led us to a detached block of strongly-built stone cells, standing in their own narrow yard, a dozen or so in number, each with double doors. The inner one of wood was opened by running back a bolt, leaving the outer one, an iron gate, still securely fast, and through the bars of the latter I saw the refractory Unsworth, a huddled-up heap, in the far corner. As we appeared be sprang towards us with a bound, uttering the most frightful imprecations.

I shall not easily forget this, the first “incorrigible” I had ever seen. Not the last, I fear, for some prisoners still obstinately defy authority.

Arthur Griffiths, Secrets of the Prison-house: Or, Gaol Studies and Sketches (1894).

Military Life

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Diary of a Frustrated Soldier (1727)
Many chroniclers have left us accounts of the ennui of garrison life. However, none of them have matched the sheer existential emptiness of S. H, an anonymous soldier posted on the Rock in the early eighteenth century.

March 9, 1727
Came a deserter who reports that while our guns were firing at them an officer pulled off his hat, huzzaed and called God to damn us all, when one of our balls with unerring justice took off the miserable man’s head and left him a wretched example of the Divine justice.

April 12, 1727
A recruit who refused to work, carry arms, eat or drink was whipped for the fifth time, after which being asked by the officer he said he was now ready to his duty.

May 7, 1727.
This morning Ensign Stubbs of Colonel Egerton’s regiment retired a little out of the camp and shot himself.

June 17, 1727.
Today two corporals of the Guards boxed over a rail until both expired, but nobody can tell for what reason.

October 11, 1727.
One of Pearce’s regiment went into the belfry of a very high steeple, threw himself into the street, and broke his skull to pieces.

October 16, 1727.
Will Garen, who broke his back, was hanged.

December 9, 1727.
Last night a deserter clambered up within a little of Willis’s battery and was assisted by a ladder of ropes by our men. When the officers came to examine his face, they found him to have deserted out of the Royal Irish two months ago. Asking the reason of his return, he said he chose rather to be hanged than continue in the Spanish service, so is to have his choice.

January 2, 1728.
Here is nothing to do nor any news, all things being dormant and in suspense, with the harmless diversions of drinking, dancing, revelling, whoring, gaming and other innocent debaucheries to pass the time—and really, to speak my own opinion I think and believe that Sodom and Gomorrah were not half so wicked and profane as this worthy city and garrison of Gibraltar

From the diary of ‘S.H,’ an unknown soldier resident in the garrison of Gibraltar, 1727.

**

A History of the Siege of Gibraltar (1785)
John Drinkwater was born at Warrington in 1762. The son of an ex-navy surgeon, he joined the Royal Manchester volunteers at the age of fifteen and was almost immediately posted to Gibraltar. A scrupulous observer of the events unfolding around him, Drinkwater kept a detailed journal of the Franco-Spanish siege of the Rock (1779-1783) that was published upon his return to England in 1785. The book went through four editions in as many years and earned its author widespread admiration and a small fortune. In 1787 Drinkwater travelled to Gibraltar a second time with the second battalion of the Royal Regiment of foot. He was publicly thanked by General Eliott, now Lord Heathfield, for his book and was given sufficient funds to establish a Garrison Library. He subsequently accompanied his regiment to Toulon (where he acted as military secretary during the city’s English occupation) and then to Corsica (where he served as deputy-judge-advocate to the English forces stationed there). On his way back to England, he witnessed the Battle of Saint Vincent, which he later went on to describe in the anonymously-published 'A Narrative of the Battle of Saint Vincent.' Now firmly settled in England, Drinkwater began a steady rise through the ranks of the military establishment that reached its peak when he was offered the under-secretaryship of state for war in 1807. He changed his surname to Bethune upon inheriting his brother-in-law’s estate, and was said to be preparing an enlarged edition of 'A History of the Siege of Gibraltar' when he died, aged eighty-one, in January, 1844.

On the military situation halfway during the siege:-
The situation of the Garrison by this time was again become very interesting. The blockade was, if possible, more strict and vigilant than before. Chains of small cruisers were stationed across the Straits, at the entrance of the Bay, and on every side of the Rock; and the late disagreeable intelligence from Tangier seemed now confirmed, by our never having heard from that quarter during the month. What little assistance we therefore received came from Minorca; but the supplies from that place were so trifling and sold at such enormous prices that few were able to purchase them. We had not been favoured with a cargo of cattle for a long period: and the scurvy began to gain considerable ascendancy over the efforts of our surgeons. Our distresses, in short, promised to be more acute and fatal than those we had already experienced.

The enemy’s operations on the landside had been for many months so unimportant as scarcely to merit our attention. However, on the morning of the 1st of October we observed they had raised an epaulement, about 6 or 700 yards advanced from their lines. The preceding night our out-guards had been alarmed with an unusual noise on the neutral ground, like that of men at work: several large fires also appeared, and some attempts were made to bum our advanced barriers with devils, and other combustibles, which were soon thrown off without taking effect; and notice was given to the Lines, Landport, and other guards. This alarm, however, was not general in the Garrison. As the morning advanced, the noise ceased; and we discovered that they had set fire to the fishermen’s huts in the gardens; but when the day permitted us to examine further, we observed the above-mentioned work.

The epaulement was about thirty yards in extent, of a simple construction, composed of chandeliers, fascines, and a few sand-bags; and was erected near the windmill or tower on the neutral ground, distant about 1100 yards from our grand battery. The enemy’s guns were elevated and batteries manned; which, with other preparations in the lines, seemed to argue that they expected we should fire and were determined to oppose it. These appearances, probably, induced the Governor not to take any particular notice of their work in the day; but at night orders were sent to throw a few light balls to discover if they were making any addition. The inhabitants immediately took the alarm, upon being told that the enemy had thrown up an advanced work, and that their batteries were manned; and at night very few remained at the north end of the town.

It now seemed evident the enemy had determined on a more ferocious attack, in case the second blockade was unsuccessful: but we were at a loss to imagine what motives could influence them to act the opposite to the established mode of approaching a besieged garrison by erecting a work so distant and which had no connection with their established lines.

On the arrival of a ship laden with fresh fruit-
Few articles ever arrived more seasonably than this cargo of fruit. The scurvy had made dreadful ravages in our hospitals, and more were daily confined: many however, unwilling to yield to the first attacks, persevered in their duty to its more advanced stages. It was therefore not uncommon, at this period, to see men who some months before were hale, and equal to any fatigue supporting themselves to their posts upon crutches, and with that assistance scarcely able to move along. The most fatal consequences, in short, to the Garrison, were to be apprehended from this terrible disorder, when this Dane was happily directed to our relief. The lemons were immediately administered to the sick, who devoured them with the greatest avidity. The salutary effects were almost instantaneous: in a few days men who had been considered as irrecoverable left their beds to congratulate their comrades on the prospect of once more becoming useful to their country.

Mr Caincross, a surgeon of great eminence, who was present at this time and the remaining part of the siege, has favoured me with the following information relative to the scurvy, and the mode of using this vegetable acid; which, with his permission, I insert for the benefit of those who may hereafter be under similar
circumstances:

“The scurvy which attacked the Garrison of Gibraltar differed in no respect from that disease usually contracted by sailors in long voyages; and of which the immediate cause seemed to be the subsisting for a length of time upon salted provisions only, without a sufficient quantity of vegetables, or other fresh foods. The circumstance related in the Voyage of that celebrated circum-navigator, the late Lord Anson, of consolidated fractures disuniting and the callosity of the bone being perfectly dissolved, occurred frequently in our hospitals: and old sores and wounds opened anew from the nature of the disorder.

“Various antiscorbtitics were used without success, such as acid of vitriol, sour crout, extract of malt, essence of spruce, etc., but the only specific was fresh lemons and oranges, given liberally or, when they could not be procured, the preserved juice in such quantities, from one to four ounces per diem, as the patient could bear. Whilst the lemons were found, from one to three were administered each day as circumstances directed. The juice given to those in the most malignant state was sometimes diluted with sugar, wine, or spirits, but the convalescents took it without dilution. Women and children were equally affected, nor were the officers exempted from this alarming distemper. It became almost general at the commencement of the winter season, owing to the cold and moisture; and in the beginning of spring, when vegetables were scarce.

The juice was preserved by adding to sixty gallons of expressed liquor about five or ten gallons of brandy, which kept it in so wholesome a state that several casks were opened in good condition in the close of the siege. The old juice was not however so speedily efficious as the fruit, though, by preserving longer in its use, it seldom failed.”

On shortages during the siege:-
Though it was generally imagined in England, that the Garrison had been amply provided with every article and necessary of life when Sir George Rodney arrived with the transport and relief from England, our wants, in reality, were far from being supplied. In the articles of ammunition and salt provisions, the Garrison had probably as much as they could dispense with; but of fresh provisions, wine, fruits, sugar, etc., we began to find a great scarcity; and the price of what remained was consequently much enhanced. The assistance we received formerly from Barbary had now been suspended for several months; the Enemy seemed determined to prevent our deriving support from the element that almost surrounded us; and their cruisers were too numerous and vigilant to expect anything from the west. Thus situated, the Garrison turned their eyes on the island of Minorca, whence we had already received some very acceptable supplies, and whose situation, from the great scope of sea-room, offered a flattering probability of the boats being oftener able to escape the Enemy’s cruisers.

The productions of that island are various; and those articles which it did not afford, could be purchased from the prizes that were daily carried thither by the privateers. Several garrison-boats were therefore sent to Minorca, some of which returned, in the course of October, laden with the wine of that island, sugar (an article become exceedingly scarce), and cheese; with sometimes a few live stock. These articles were all sold by auction, according to a regulation established by the Governor, and, though they seldom were purchased by the lower ranks, yet afforded upon the whole a partial relief to the Garrison.

On the military Garrison-
The present military establishment of Gibraltar consists of six companies of artillery, nine regiments of the line, and a company of artificers commanded by engineers; composing an army of upwards of 4000 men, officers included. Before the late bombardment the troops were quartered in the barracks at the Southward, and in quarters fitted up out of the old Spanish buildings in town. The officers were distributed in the same manner; but in case of reinforcements, and since government quarters were not sufficient for their accommodation, billet-money was allowed in proportion to rank, and the officers hired lodgings from the inhabitants.

The regiments, on their arrival in the garrison, are entitled to salt provisions from the stores in the following proportion. One ration for each sergeant, corporal, drummer, and private, consisting of 7 1b. of bread, delivered twice a week, beef 2 1b. 8oz, pork 1b, butter 10oz, peas half a gallon and groats 3 pints: every commissioned and warrant officer under Captain receives two rations, a Captain three, a Major and Lieutenant-Colonel four, a Colonel six. In times of profound peace, officers generally receive compensation in money for their provisions, or dispose of them to the Jews, of whom there are great numbers in the garrison and who are always ready to purchase, or take them in barter. The troops are paid in currency, which let the exchange of the garrison be above or below par, never varies to the non-commissioned and privates. A sergeant receives weekly, as full garrison-pay, one dollar, six reals, equal to nine-pence sterling, per diem; a corporal, and drummer, one dollar, one real, and five quartils, in sterling about six pence, per diem; and a private, seven reals, or four-pence half-penny sterling, per diem. Offices receive their subsistence according to the currency: thirty six pence per dollar is par. During the late bombardment, the exchange for a considerable time, was as high as forty-two pence, by which those gentlemen who were under the necessity of drawing for their pay, lost six-pence in ever; three shillings; and it seldom was lower than forty pence whilst the siege continued. The coins current in Gibraltar are those used in Spain. All accounts are kept in dollars, reals, and quartils: the two former, like the pound sterling, are imaginary, the latter is a copper coin.

On Gibraltarian curiosities-
Amongst the natural curiosities of Gibraltar, the petrified bones found in the cavities of the rocks have greatly attracted attention of the curious. These bones are not found in one particular part, but have been discovered in various places at a considerable distance from each other. From the rocks, near Rosia Bay (without the lime-wall) great quantities of this curious petrification have been collected, and sent home for the inspection of naturalists. Some of the bones are of large diameter; and, being broken with the rock, the marrow is easily to be distinguished. Colonel James, in his description of Gibraltar, mentions an entire human skeleton being discovered in the solid rock, at the Prince’s Lines; which the miner blew to pieces: and in the mining of the late blockade, a party of miners, forming a cave at Upper All’s-well, in the lines, produced several bones that were petrified to the rock, and appeared to have belonged to a large bird: being present at the time, I procured several fragments, but in the bombardment of 1781 they were destroyed with other similar curiosities.

The hill is remarkable for the number of apes about its summit, which are said not to be found in any other part of Spain. They breed in inaccessible places, and frequently appear in large droves with their young on their backs, on the western face of the hill. It is imagined they were originally brought from Barbary by the Moors, as a similar species inhabit Mons Abyla, which, on that account, is generally called Ape’s-hill. Red-legged partridges are often found in coveys; woodcocks and teal are sometimes seen; and wild rabbits are caught about Europa and Windmill-hill. The garrison-orders forbid officers to shoot on the western side of the rock; parties, however, often go in boats round Europa Point to kill wild pigeons, which are numerous in the caves.

Eagles and vultures annually visit Gibraltar from Barbary, on their way to the interior parts of Spain. The former breed in the craggy parts of the rock, and, with the hawk, are often seen towering round its summit. Moschetoes are exceedingly troublesome towards the close of Summer, and locusts are sometimes found. The scorpion, centipes, and other venomous reptiles abound among the rocks and old buildings; and the harmless green lizard and snake are frequently caught by the soldiers who, after drawing their teeth, treat them with every mark of fondness.

With regard to the climate of Gibraltar, the inhabitants breathe a temperate and wholesome air for most part of the year. The Summer months of June, July and August, are exceedingly warm, with a perpetual serene and clear sky: the heat is however allayed, in a great measure, by a constant refreshing breeze from the sea, which usually sets in about ten in the forenoon, continuing till almost sunset; due to its invigorating and agreeable coolness, it is emphatically called the Doctor. The cold in winter is not so excessive as in the neighbouring parts of the country. Snow falls but seldom, and ice is a rarity: yet the Grenadian mountains in Spain, and the lofty mountains in Africa, have snow lying on them for several months. Heavy rains, high winds, and most tremendous thunder, with dreadfully-vivid lightning, are the attendants on December and January. The rain then pours down in torrents from the hill, and descending with great rapidity, often chokes up the drains with large stones and rubbish, and sometimes does great injury to the works; but these storms never are of long duration; the sky soon clears up; the heavy clouds disperse; the cheering sun appears, and sufficiently compensates for the horrors of the preceding night. It is during this season that the water that serves the garrison for the ensuing summer is collected. The aqueduct, which conducts it to the Fountain in the centre of the town, is extremely well executed; and was constructed by a Jesuit, when the Spaniards were in possession of Gibraltar. It is erected against the bank of sand, without South port beginning to the southward of the eight-gun bastion, and, collecting the rain-water that filters through the sand, conducts it to the South port, and thence to the Fountain. The water, thus strained and purified, is remarkably clear and wholesome.

On the end of the hostilities-
The duke, on the 5th, informed the governor that the blockade by sea was discontinued; in consequence of which, a placard was published in the garrison, signifying that the port of Gibraltar was again open. About noon, an elevated gun was wantonly fired over their works, which was the last shot fired in this siege.

This return of tranquillity, this prospect of plenty, and relief from the daily vexations of so tedious a siege, could not fail to diffuse a general joy throughout the garrison. Indeed, such feelings are seldom experienced; they baffle all attempts to describe them: far beyond the pleasure resulting from private instances of success or good fortune, ours was a social happiness; and the benevolent sentiments acted upon the heart with additional energy, on the prospect of meeting those as friends with whom we had been so long engaged in a succession of hostilities.

The duke, on the 6th, informed the governor that the preliminaries had been signed on the 20th of January at Paris, and that Gibraltar was to remain in the possession of Great Britain. From this period, operations on both sides were suspended; each party anxiously awaiting official accounts from England of the peace. Toward the close of the month, the duke began to withdraw some of the ordnance from the advanced batteries, and to remove materials from the parallel to the camp. The garrison, on the other hand, were employed in making repairs, and in arranging various matters, which could not before be attended to. Several ships, and a number of boats, arrived from England and Portugal; so that provisions became every day more abundant, and consequently the prices of articles more moderate.

In the beginning of March, a schooner arrived from Barbary, with a letter accompanying a present of bullocks for the governor. We were ignorant of the contents of the letter: but, it was imagined, the subject was to request a renewal of our friendship. Two officers and 24 Corsicans, who in their passage to Gibraltar had been chased ashore on the coast of Barbary by the Spaniards, arrived also in this boat. The former informed us, that, upon the commencement of the attack of the battering-ships on the preceding 13th of September, the Moors at Tangier repaired to their mosques, imploring Heaven on behalf of their old allies; and that, on receiving accounts of the defeat of the enemy, they made public rejoicing, and gave every demonstration of their affection for the English nation.

When the cessation of hostilities took place, parleys were almost daily passing between the governor and the duke; and the Spanish aides-de-camp never omitted expressing their surprise that the governor had not yet heard from England. Their patience as well as ours was nearly exhausted, when the long-expected frigate arrived on the 10th of March: but, for some time, even when she had got into the bay, she kept us in suspense, by steering close along the Spanish shore, and showing no colours. At length, however, the British ensign was displayed, and the anxious garrison saluted her with a general huzza. She was the Thetis frigate, Captain Blankett; and, soon after she anchored, Sir Roger Curtis (who had been knighted for his conduct on the 14th of September) landed with dispatches for the governor. The Duke de Crillon sent a parley to the garrison in the evening, which was answered the succeeding day. The subject of this correspondence probably was to appoint an interview between the generals, as, on the 12th, his Grace, attended by his suite, came down to the extremity of the western boyau, and sent an aide-de-camp to inform the governor he was arrived. General Eliott, attended by Lieutenant Koehler, his aide de camp, soon afterwards rode out by Lower Forbes’s, and was met by the Duke on the beach, half-way between the works and Bayside barrier. Both generals instantly dismounted and embraced. When the common salutations were over, they conversed about half an hour, and then returned to their respective commands. The cannon in the Spanish batteries were now all dismounted; and large parties were daily removing them, with ammunition, also various materials, from their post at the Devil’s Tower to the lines and camp. As their guards were now considerably diminished, numbers of deserters were daily coming over to the garrison. They were principally foreigners; and the reason they gave was a dislike to the Spanish service.

The duke, on the 18th, sent the governor a present of a grey Andalusian horse. The 22nd, the St. Michael man-of-war sailed for England, where she happily arrived safe. The day following, the governor, accompanied by General Green, the chief engineer, with their aides-de-camp, met the duke in the Spanish works: they were conducted by his Grace through the whole, and afterwards to the cave at the Devil’s Tower. The governor dined with the duke at San Roque, and returned in the evening. The 31st, the Duke de Crillon, accompanied by the Marquis de Saya, Prince de Mazarano, Counts de Jamaique and de Serano, Don ——, the intendant, and Captain Tendon, returned the visit. The governor received his Grace near Forbes’s; and on entering the garrison, a salute was fired of 17 pieces of cannon from the Grand battery. When the duke appeared within the walls, the soldiers saluted him with a general huzza; which being unexpected by his Grace, it was said greatly confused him. The reason, however, being explained, he seemed highly pleased with the old English custom, and, as he passed up the main street, where the ruinous and desolate appearance of the town attracted a good deal of his observation, his Grace behaved with great affability.

The officers of the garrison were introduced by corps to the duke, at the convent. When the artillery were mentioned, he received them in the most flattering manner: “Gentlemen,” said his Grace, addressing himself to them, “I would rather see you here as friends, than on your batteries as enemies, where,” added he, “you never spared me.” The duke afterwards visited the batteries on the heights. At Willis’s he made some remarks on the formidable appearance of the lower defences; observing, whilst he pointed towards the Old Mole battery, that, “had not his opinion been overruled, he should have directed all his efforts against that part of the garrison.” The good state of our batteries in so short a period produced some compliments to the chief engineer; and, when conducted into the gallery above Farringdon’s battery, his Grace was particularly astonished, especially when he was informed of its extent, which at that time was between 500 and 600 feet. Turning to his suite, after exploring the extremity, “These works,” he exclaimed, “are worthy of the Romans.” After dinner (at which were present the generals and brigadiers in the garrison, with their suites), he passed through the camp to Europa, each regiment turning out without arms, and giving three cheers. The youth and good appearance of the troops much engaged his attention. When his curiosity was gratified in that quarter, he returned, and was conducted about 8 o’clock without Land Port, being saluted with 17 cannon on his departure. His horse started at the flash of the guns, and almost, if not entirely, unhorsed him; but he escaped without being hurt. The duke, in the course of the conversation at dinner, paid many handsome compliments to the governor and garrison for their noble defence. “He had exerted himself (he said) to the utmost of his abilities; and, though he had not been successful, yet he was happy in having his sovereign’s approbation of his conduct.”

Before the Duke de Crillon entered the garrison, the Comte de Rufigniac, colonel in the French service (who, the reader may remember, was very pressing for admittance into the garrison some few days after the defeat of the battering-ships, and who, for the sole purpose of seeing the place, had remained behind his brigade), was admitted into the garrison without the duke’s knowledge; and, being in the Fleche at Land Port when the duke was approaching from Forbes’s, his Grace could not avoid seeing him. As he had entered without the duke’s permission, his Grace requested he might not see him at the convent; and the count, being informed of this, withdrew into the garrison, apparently much chagrined at the duke’s particularity. When his Grace returned, it was said, orders were given not to permit the count to go back by way of the lines. The following evening, however, after satisfying his curiosity in the garrison, he returned.

The 2nd of April the Duke de Crillon quitted the camp to repair to Madrid. He was succeeded in command by Lieutenant-General the Marquis de Saya, or Zaya, who had accompanied his Grace into the garrison, and (what was very singular) had served as an officer at the preceding siege of Gibraltar in 1727. Deserters still continued coming over to us, and the Spaniards were employed in removing materials from the neutral ground to the lines. Letters often passed between the marquis and General Eliott; but, though the latter requested to pay his compliments at San Roque, the etiquette observed by the former (orders having been received from Madrid to prevent all intercourse) would not for some time permit him to receive the governor. The 15th of April Sir Roger Curtis sailed in the Brilliant frigate on an embassy to the Emperor of Morocco: he took with him, as a present, four brass 26-pounders (which had been weighed from the wreck of the battering-ships), with proportional ammunition.

His Majesty having been pleased to confer upon the governor the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, as a mark of his royal approbation for the defence of Gibraltar; and having signified his pleasure by Sir Roger Curtis, that Lieutenant-General Boyd should act as his Majesty’s representative in investing General Eliott with the insignia of the order, which ceremony was to be performed in as splendid and magnificent a manner as the state of the garrison would permit; the engineers, soon after the arrival of the Thetis, began to erect a colonnade upon the rampart of the King’s bastion, that the honours might be conferred where the victory was gained. By the 23 rd of April (St. George’s Day) the colonnade was finished; and, every preparation for the ceremony being completed, the governor commenced by communicating to the troops the thanks of their king and country for their defence of Gibraltar. Detachments from all the regiments and corps, with all the officers not on duty, were assembled in three lines on the Red Sands at eight o’clock in the morning; and the governor taking post in the centre of the second line, and the usual compliments being paid, his Excellency addressed himself to the garrison as follows:

“Gentlemen — I have assembled you this day, in order that the officers and soldiers may receive, in the most public manner, an authentic declaration transmitted to me by the Secretary of State, expressing the high sense his Majesty entertains of your meritorious conduct in defence of this garrison. The King’s satisfaction upon this event was soon divulged to all the world, by his most gracious speech to both Houses of Parliament. The House of Lords and the House of Commons, not only made the suitable professions in their addresses to the throne, but have severally enjoined me to communicate their unanimous thanks by the following resolutions:

‘Resolved, nemine dissentientc, by the Lords spiritual and temporal, in Parliament assembled, that this House doth highly approve and acknowledge the services of the officers, soldiers, and sailors, lately employed in the defence of Gibraltar; and that General Eliott do signify the same to them.’

‘Resolved, nemine contradicente, that the thanks of this House [Commons] be given to Lieutenant-General Boyd, Major-General de la Motte, Major-General Green, chief engineer; to Sir Roger Curtis, Knt., and to the officers, soldiers, and sailors, lately employed in the defence of Gibraltar.’

The governor then proceeded: “No army has ever been rewarded by higher national honours: and it is well known how great, universal, and spontaneous were the rejoicings throughout the kingdom upon the news of your success. These must not only give you inexpressible pleasure, but afford matter of triumph to your dearest friends and latest posterity. As a further proof how just your title is to such flattering distinctions at home, rest assured, from undoubted authority, that the nations in Europe and other parts are struck with admiration of your gallant behaviour: even our late resolute and determined antagonists do not scruple to bestow the commendations due to such valour and perseverance.

“I now most warmly congratulate you on these united and brilliant testimonies of approbation, amidst such numerous, such exalted tokens of applause: and forgive me, faithful companions, if I humbly crave your acceptance of my grateful acknowledgments. I only presume to ask this favour, as having been a constant witness of your cheerful submission to the greatest hardships, your matchless spirit and exertions, and on all occasions your heroic contempt of every danger.”

A grand feu-de-joie was then fired by the line, each discharge commencing with a royal salute of 21 guns. Three cheers closed the ceremony. The commander-in-chief, general and field officers afterwards withdrew; and the detachments (formed two deep) marched into town, and lined the streets leading from the convent, by the Spanish church and Grand Parade, to the King’s bastion. About half-past eleven o’clock, the procession began to move in the following order: all uncovered, and two deep, except the troops underarms.

Marshal.
Music, 12th Regiment, playing “See the conquering Hero comes.”
Artillery
Quarter-master-general, and Adjutant-general, Town-major, and Deputy;
With other Staff of the Garrison.
First Division of Field Officers,
Youngest first.
Music 58th Regiment.
The Commissioner’s secretary, bearing on a crimson velvet cushion
the Commission.
The Commissioner’s aides-de-camp.
Lieutenant-general Boyd, the King’s commissioner.
The Governor’s Secretary, bearing, on a crimson velvet cushion
The Insignia of the Order of the Bath.
The Governor’s aides-de-camp, as Esquires.
GENERAL ELIOTT,
The Knight elect;
supported by Generals De La Motte and Green.
Aides-de-camp to the Major-Generals.
Major-general Picton.
His Aide-de-camp.
The Brigadier-Generals, eldest first.
Their Brigade Majors.
Music, De La Motte’s.
Second Division of Field Officers, eldest first.
Music, 56th Regiment.
The Grenadiers of the Garrison.

No compliment was paid to the knight elect; but, as the commissioner passed, each regiment, with the officers, saluted. When the procession arrived at the colonnade, the general and field officers placed themselves on each side of the throne; the artillery formed under the colonnade, and the grenadiers fronting the bastion, along the Line-wall. The proper reverences being made to the vacant throne, the commissioner desired his secretary (to read the commission: which being done, he addressed the knight elect in a short complimentary speech, taking the riband at the conclusion, and placing it over the governor’s shoulder, who inclined a little for that purpose: three reverences were then a second time made, and each took his seat on a crimson velvet chair on each side of the throne, the commissioner sitting on the right hand. The governor was no sooner invested than the music struck up “God save the King.” The grenadiers fired a volley, and a grand discharge of 160 pieces of cannon was fired from the sea-line. The procession then passed forward through the colonnade, and returned in the same order. The detachments were afterwards dismissed, and each non-commissioned officer and private received a pound of fresh beef and a quart of wine. The generals, with their suites, and the field-officers, dined at the convent. In the evening the colonnade was illuminated with different-coloured lamps, and transparent paintings in the back scene: and Sir George Augustus Eliott, with the lieutenant-governor and principal officers of the garrison, assembling at the King’s bastion about nine o’clock, there was a display of fireworks from the North and South bastions, and the Spanish church; the principal of which were fired from the latter, being opposite to the company.

Thus in festivity and with honour, ended the labours of the garrison of Gibraltar. During a period of three years, seven months, and twelve days (that is, from the commencement of the blockade to the cessation of arms), we had experienced a continued series of watchfulness and fatigue, the horrors of famine, and every harassing and vexatious mode of attack which a powerful, obstinate, and revengeful enemy could devise. On reviewing the transactions of this period, two circumstances cannot fail to strike the attentive reader; viz. the very slow manner in which the enemy proceeded in their early operations, and the impossibility of maintaining so strict a blockade as to prevent all communication by sea. To evince these, and other circumstances not unimportant to military readers, I have been reduced to greater accuracy and minuteness than ordinary historians are obliged to observe; and instead of the acuteness of investigation, or a splendid sententiousness, I have been necessitated to pursue the narrative, almost uninterruptedly, in the tedious form of a journal. I have not presumed to intersperse many animadversions of my own: the only merit to which I can lay any claim, is that of a faithful narration of facts; and I confess I would at any time rather walk in the beaten track of truth, than mislead the judgment of my readers in the wilds of fancy and conjecture.

Johnm Drinkwater, A History of the Siege of Gibraltar (1785).

**

General Orders to Sentries (1825)
Gibraltar being a military fortress, there were always severe restrictions upon people’s freedom of movement. During most of the nineteenth century, for example, civilians were not to go out unless carrying a ‘lighted lanthorn’; similarly, during the 1840s, only English officers were allowed to go out after midnight. To enforce these regulations, sentries were posted at all major locations, including the beaches, cliffs and other inaccessible areas. Since time-keeping was always a difficulty at the time, their actions were coordinated against the timetable provided by the garrison guns – fired at regular times during the afternoon and early evening. Thus, sentinels in the Line Wall area were instructed to challenge passers-by after second gunfire (i.e. around ten o’clock), although those ‘in the Streets and Thoroughfares of the Garrison generally’ were not to challenge till after midnight.

No.1. A Sentry is to be constantly alert and attentive to every thing that passes within his sight or hearing, by day and night; he is never to sleep on his post, nor to leave it unless relieved by an Officer or Non-commissioned Officer of his guard; he is not to quit his Arms, nor lean on the Muzzle of his Firelock, nor to sit down, read, sing or whistle, smoke or converse with any person but in the execution of his orders, nor is he to go into his Sentry-box, either by day or night, except it rains.

No. 2. A Sentry is at all times to give immediate notice to the Guard of the approach, on the Sea Line, of any Strange Ships or Boats, or, by Land, of any Body of Troops, or of any thing which he is not accustomed to see, or when he hears the fire of Musquetry or Cannon, or perceives signals by Rockets, &c. He is also to acquaint the Guard of any riot, disturbance, or fire within the Garrison.

No. 3. He is to suffer no person, except the Officers and Noncommissioned Officers of his Guard, or Officers of the Navy and Army in Uniform, to stand nearer than five yards of his Post.

No. 4. He is not to suffer any person to dirty, or lay any filth or rubbish, or commit any nuisance, within the District of his Post.

No. 5. He is to suffer no person to remove, or do any damage to any Artillery, Ammunition or Stores, or any thing under his charge, or to open the Magazines, except such as are properly authorized by the Officer Commanding his Guard; and, when relieved, he is to mention to the Corporal the deficiencies of the Post.

No. 6. He is to allow no person to go into the Embrasures or on the Parapet Walls, except the Governor, General Officers and their Staff, the Chief Engineer, Engineers on Duty, or Royal Sappers and Miners when employed, the Officer Commanding the Royal Artillery, Officers, and Soldiers acting under their Command, Field Officers on duty, and the Officers of his Guard, the Town Major and Town Adjutant.

No. 7. During the day he is to present his Arms to the Governor, General Officers, Admirals, Captains of the Navy and Field Officers, and to all armed Parties passing his Post, and to carry Arms to all other Officers; on these occasions, he is to stand fronting a mark made at each post, from which, at no time, he is to be distant more than five yards.

No. 8. When it rains and the Sentries are ordered to cloak, and unfix Bayonets, the Sentry in his Box is to pay all Officers the compliment of standing up straight, and handling his Arms.

No. 9. The Sentries on the Line Wall and Covert Way, are to face outwards, and those within the Lines, towards the object of their Post.

No. 10. At night, after second Gun-fire, the Sentries on the Line Wall within the Town are to challenge all persons approaching their Posts, and are only to permit Officers, Rounds, Patroles and Reliefs, to pass: any Inhabitant, appearing on the Line Wall after that hour, is to be sent to the Main Guard. Sentries, posted in the Streets and Thoroughfares of the Garrison generally (and the Saluting Battery and the direct Road to Rosia are to be considered as such), are not to challenge till after 12 o’clock. The Sentries on the Sea Line from Parson’s Lodge to Monkey Cave, and on all other parts of the Rock, except the Streets and Thoroughfares, are to begin to challenge, after second Gun-fire, in the same manner as in Town, and to apprehend all Inhabitants they may find there after that hour. The Sentry, on a person approaching his Post, is to port his arms, and call out, ‘who comes there?’ and, on the person replying, ‘Officer, Relief or Inhabitant,’ to say, ‘pass Officer, Reliefer Inhabitant,’ unless required, as above, to detain the latter; and to pass the word ‘all’s well,’ every quarter of an hour, in a distinct tone of voice, from right to left.

No. 11. In the approach of Rounds or Detachments, the Sentry nearest the Guard is to challenge, and, on the reply, ‘Rounds or Detachment,’ he is to say, ‘Halt Rounds or Detachment,’ and call to the Guard, ‘Guard turn out.’

No. 12. When the Sentry nearest the Guard sees an armed Detachment, or any Person to whom the Guard is to turn out, coming towards him, he is to give notice to the Guard, and, when within thirty paces, he is to call, ‘Guard turn out;’ and ‘ Guard turn in,’ if directed, by word or sign, for the Guard not to be turned out.

No. 13. A Sentry, in the execution of his duty, though he is strictly to comply with his Orders, is not to use personal violence where his own safety is not in question, or where he has not positive Orders to do so; but, when persons, either through inattention or design, act in contradiction to the directions he is ordered to give, he is to call to the Guard, and acquaint the Officer with the circumstance.

No. 14. Sentries are to walk on their Posts in a Soldier-like manner with supported Arms, or may occasionally stand ordered.

No. 15. The Orders, given to Sentries on their Posts, are communicated from the Chief in Command, through the proper Channels, to the Officers and Non-commissioned Officers commanding Guards; but, as the Chief may think proper himself at any time, either personally, or by means of some of his Staff, to interrogate the Sentries, and to demand what Orders they have received from the Corporals; and, as similar enquiries may be made by General Officers, Field Officers of the day, the Town Major, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers, belonging to the Guard, the Sentries are, upon no pretence, to hesitate to give an account of the Orders they have received, when so required by the persons above enumerated.

No. 16. Whenever any sentry along the Line wall observes a soldier swimming more than a hundred yards from the Shore, he is to give immediate notice to the Officer, or Non-commissioned Officer, commanding the Guard to which he belongs, who will order him to fire upon the Soldier swimming beyond that distance, unless the latter return when called to.

No.17. As Boats may endeavour to approach the Garrison during the Night, the Sentries are to be particularly alert along the whole of the Sea Line, and to challenge every Boat within reach of their Posts; and, in case of not receiving a satisfactory answer, they are to give notice to the Commanding Officer, or Non-commissioned Officer, of the Guard, who will give orders for firing upon the Boat, if it persist in disobeying the above Orders.

General regulations and standing orders for the garrison of Gibraltar (1825).

**

The Old Cock of the Rock: Portrait of a fast-living Military Governor (1833)
Charles O’Hara was governor of Gibraltar between 1795 and 1802. He kept two mistresses and is said to have siphoned off over a 9000 pounds a year in revenue from the over ninety taverns which flourished in Gibraltar at the time. ‘General O’Hara,’ wrote a somewhat unkind contemporary, ‘was an old man, the laxity of whose discipline had been so great, that the civil inhabitants of the garrison could not show themselves without being more or less exposed to the outrages of an intoxicated and insolent soldiery, who were allowed to get drunk at pleasure, in the blackstrap houses (wine-houses) which abounded in every quarter.’ He was, nonetheless, very popular among the troops.

It is impossible for me to recur to the period of my sojourn in Gibraltar, and yet to ay nothing of the governor. General O’Hara. His appearance, indeed, was of that sinking cast which, when once seen, is not easily forgotten. General O’Hara was the most perfect specimen I ever saw of the soldier and courtier of the last age, and in his youth had fought with Granby and Ligonier. One could have sworn to it by his air and look—nay, by the very cut of his coat— the double row of sausage curls that projected on either flank of his toupee—or the fashion of the huge military boots, which rivalled in size, but far outshone in lustre, those of a Dutch fisherman or French postillion. Never had he changed for a more modern covering the Kevenhuller hat, which had been the fashion of his youth. There it was, in shape precisely that of on equilateral triangle, placed with mathematical precision on the head, somewhat elevated behind, and eloping in an unvarying angle downwards to the eyes, surmounted by a long stiff feather rising from a large rosette of black ribbon on the dexter side. This was the last of the Kevenhullers: it died, and was buried with the governor, for no specimen has since been discovered, and the Kevenhuller hat, like the mammoth and the mastodon, has become extinct for ever.

Notwithstanding the strictness of the discipline which he scrupulously enforced in the garrison which he commanded, no officer could be more universally popular than General O’Hara. In person he had been—and, though somewhat bent by years, even then was— remarkably handsome. His life had been divided between the camp and the court, and he had been distinguished in both. He was a bachelor, and had always been noted as a gay man; too gay a man, perhaps, to have ever thought of narrowing his liberty by the imposition of the trammels of wedlock. General O’Hara had always moved in the very highest circles of society at home; and notwithstanding an office of considerable emolument, which, I believe, he held in the household, had dissipated his private fortune, and become deeply involved in his circumstances. It was this cause alone which had induced him, late in life, to submit to the banishment peculiarly disagreeable to a man of his habits, attached to the acceptance of the chief command at Gibraltar.

The general was a bon vivant, an unrivalled boon companion—one to whom society was as necessary as the air he breathed. He never dined alone, and his hospitality was extended to every rank of the officers in the garrison. In his own house, and, above all, at his own table, he delighted to cast off all distinction of rank, and to associate on terms of perfect equality with even the humblest of his guests. The honours of the table were done by his staff, and the general was in nothing distinguished from those around him, except by being undoubtedly the gayest and most agreeable person in the company.

It was impossible that one who had spent a long life in the highest end most distinguished circles of society in England should be unfurnished with an abundant store of interesting and amusing anecdotes; and, in truth, anecdote-telling was at once his forte and his foible. His forte, because he did it well—his foible, for, sooth to say, he was sometimes given to carry into something of excess. He would entertain his guests by the hour with the scandalous tittle-tattle which had been circulated at court or the club-houses some thirty years before; and did more than hint at his own bonnes fortunes among the celebrated beauties of the British court, and the Bonarobas of France, Italy, and Spain. He sang, too—and beautifully. I have seldom heard a finer voice, or one more skilfully managed.

Such was General O’Hara, or, as he was more generally called, the ‘Old Cock of the Rock;’ and no man certainly could be more respected for his rigid yet lenient (for these epithets are far from incompatible) discharge of his military duties, or more beloved for his engaging qualities as a social companion. For myself, during my sojourn in Gibraltar, I was much indebted to his kindness. The general had been intimately acquainted with my grandfather, who had passed his life in the unprofitable pursuit of court favour. My father he had likewise known in the blossom of his early prosperity, which, alas! was never destined to ripen into fruit. He spoke of both kindlv, gave mе a general invitation to his table, and was lavish of those petty attentions which cost little to the giver, but which, coming from a person of his station and dignity, are always felt to be flattering by one so far his inferior in age and rank.

Having said thus much of General O’Hara, I would yet say something more, and tell the reader that before we quitted Gibraltar he died. There was no hypocrisy in the heavy looks of the soldiers, as they followed his remains to their last earthly tenement. He was, of course, buried with all the military honours due to his high rank. I had never before seen the funeral of a general officer. There was his horse—the well-known charger on which we had all so often seen him mounted—bearing the boots and spurs of his departed master; on the coffin, likewise, lay other mournful insignia—the sword, the lash, and — not the least prominent memorial in the group—the Kevenhuller hat and its tall unbending feather. There I gazed on it for the last time.

The ceremony was altogether very impressive. The troops marched slowly with arms reversed; the report of minute-guns was heard from the bastion, and the colours were displayed half-mast high by all the ships in the bay. When the body had been consigned to the vault, and the service was concluded, loud and successive peals of artillery were heard to reverberate from rock to ocean, the anthem best fitted to grace the obsequies of a gallant soldier.

Anonymous, The Novelist’s Magazine (1833).

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English Officers and Spanish Mistresses(1842)
The population of Gibraltar is not permitted to exceed given limits, because in case of a siege it is desirable, that there should be no unnecessary draught on the provisions of the place, and also because destructive diseases have sometimes originated there from the too great density of the population. There is, however, a law, that any officer above a given grade may introduce there a single individual, by becoming responsible for the good behaviour of the person thus introduced. A gentleman there informed me, that wishing to secure admission for a pious and worthy old seaman, who had long been a petty officer in the British navy, he applied to a friend of his, an officer in the army, to aid him in the case. The officer, on applying to the commanding officer of the town, was told, that the only object of the law in question was to enable officers in the army to introduce each one a mistress from Spain, and that, therefore, his request could not be granted. Such are some of the evils of military life, as they exist in time of peace.

Charles Rockwell, Sketches of Foreign Travel: And Life at Sea (1842).

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Sketch at your Peril (1847)
The military nature of the garrison ensured that security was always one of the establishment’s highest priorities. ‘From the character of the place as an important military fortress,’ wrote the Peninsular war veteran Cyril Thornton in 1833, ‘it was necessary that [civilians] should be in a great degree subject to military regulation, and submit to certain restrictions on their freedom.’ This obsession with control and surveillance expressed itself in a much hated system of permits, which seemed to be needed for anything from fishing to owning a donkey. If you wanted to walk past the Landport Barriers (the gates through which Gibraltar was accessed by land), you needed a permit. If you wanted to pasture your goats on the Rock’s grassy slopes, you needed a permit. If you wanted to pick up ‘some Palmetto roots, grass, plants, or shrubs,’ you needed a permit. When the Gibraltar police was formed in 1830, two out of its first three arrests were for permit violations – the second of these happening at 8 am on 29 July, 1830, when Inspector Richard Whitelock, my great great-great grandfather, stopped a Portuguese lighterman ‘for refusing to show his permit and using abusive language.’ Even those ‘who wish[ed] to draw or to ramble unmolested over the rock’ needed to obtain a special dispensatory document from the town-major, as Dorothy Wordsworth was to discover for herself in 1847.

While we were waiting in the carriage, I took up my sketch-book, and for something to do began copying an outline of a bit of the rock near to us, when to my amusement up came a red-coat, with his ‘pray, ma’am, have you a permit from the governor to sketch?’ This question, in English, sounded most strange. In Spanish I had thought it tyrannical enough; in my mother-tongue it seemed to me ludicrous, and I fairly laughed in the poor man’s face as I answered “No,” shutting my book most meekly, and declaring that I would on no account have taken out my pencil, had I known it was contrary to order. The sentinel was courteous as possible, and thought it necessary to apologise for doing his duty.

Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal of a Few Months Residence in Portugal and Glimpses of the South of Spain (1847).

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On Tyrannical Governors (1855)
We have a picture of these old Governors of a century or two ago, drawn by a master-hand. I fancy I see them in their iron-bound cocked hats, gold lace epaulettes, and pig tails, powder and bag wigs—not forgetting the top-boots and spurs— the personification of English pride and insolence, when exchanging diplomatic courtesies with a Spanish Governor. We have it in a book, which pretends to historical accuracy, and no one can doubt the fidelity of the description. In a memorable case when his Spanish Excellency disputed the “supreme will” of an English Governor, and threatened retaliation, our bland ancestor, cocked his hat on his head, placed his arms a-kimbo, and, in the true English vernacular, exclaimed, “Why, sir ! If you dare to give me any of your d¬¬¬¬_____d nonsense, I will kick you from Hell to Hackney!” Now as this may be impeached as an apocryphal tale, or coarse caricature, I will furnish a case from the historiuncula of a Governor of Gibraltar. In 1712, Colonel Bennett, the engineer, whose Remarks on Gibraltar I have already quoted, wrote home to the authorities, complaining of the Governor’s mal-appropriation of the government money and materials, which were used in repairing the houses, of which the Governor received the rents, and put them into his own pocket. “‘Of which I often complained’ says Colonel Bennett, ‘and thereby have drawn upon me the Governor’s displeasure, inasmuch as that he has threatened to hang me, to break my bones, and has given me the lye….’ The following details, from one of the numerous pamphlets published in London, during the last century, respecting Gibraltar, will furnish a tolerable notion of the state of society, and of the model military Governors… The author, writing in 1749, contemporaneous with Governor Eland’s reign, says:— ‘For forty years a good Governor has not been found in Gibraltar, and most likely never will.’ Col. Congreve is specially mentioned. The author says:— ‘This gentleman set most of the bad examples which his successors have too well imitated. He forced some people out of their houses, others, on various pretences, out of the garrison, and then disposed of their possessions. Seventeen officers exhibited their complaints to the Secretary of War, and were all suspended; but the Governor was displaced, and was succeeded by Col. Cotton, a deputy of Lord Portmore….” Cotton was an expensive man. He improved upon Congreve’s plans in every act of oppression, and had, like the tyrants of old, his dungeons and other apparatus to drain the purses of the poor foreign inhabitants; but began too early with the English, he having taken it for granted that every person in the garrison was his slave, and every house his estate; but raising his demands too high, a spirit of rebellion broke out at last which had nearly dethroned him…. Godby followed [Cotton], but retired. His successor, Bowes, plundered merrily for some time, as Cotton’s deputy, and shared the plunder with persons at home. The market was annihilated. Contractors were appointed… Abuses multiplied. The officers suffered as much as the civilians. Memorials were presented by both, upon which the Governor declared it to be mutiny and disaffection…. Matters, however, went on from bad to worse…. Our author says:— ‘the whole art of plundering [was] so magically conducted, that it never [came] to the ear of His Majesty, nor [was] laid before the Legislature. If an officer complains, he is broke; if a merchant, he is kicked out of the town; if a housekeeper, he is dispossessed; if a foreigner, he is dungeoned and stript; and if a Barbary Jew, he is transmitted to a brother Bashaw at Tetuan, where, perhaps, he is hanged outright. So that these poor creatures, that are endeavouring to encourage commerce, are crucified between two Thieves….” The author winds up thus: — ‘What horrid outrages have been there acted! The least crime hurries a Wretch out of the gates, where he has often been exposed to the inclemency of the elements for months, till he can find a proper sum of money to expiate his crime. This is so frequent with the foreigners who reside there, that we see them hurried away with hardly any emotions of pity. What scenes of misery have poor people been drove to by the inhuman barbarity of a merciless and unrelenting tyrant!’ These are extracts from a work published in 1749, and may be presumed to apply to Governor Bland, and, indeed, to all his predecessors!

Anonymous, How to Capture and Govern Gibraltar: A Vindication of Civil Government (1855).

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Gibraltar’s military character(1860)
Every where in Gib the perpetual sense of vigilance and defiance fills your mind: you pass down Big Gun Alley, where a huge bombshell of the old siege is let into the corner of the street hall, and, lo! but a turn from Main Street, with its cigar-shops, stores, chandlers, clock-makers, and Moorish curiosities, you are on the outer road, which is walled in with batteries. The King’s Bastion — this is where you stand — faces the Spaniards of Algeciras, grinning at them with its fang teeth: how neat, clean, and firm the stone-work is that the convicts still chip and hammer at, with its bomb-proof barracks, its terraces, and slanting roofs for yawning guns!

Yonder, a little reef in the sea, is a low line of wall for fresh batteries; and this long jetty with guns is the famous Devil’s Tongue that Drinkwater mentions. Line after line, all along the rock, first the harbor, then the Ragged Staff, then the bleak headland, Europa Point, where the great attack was once made, are every where mechanical-looking sentries, red or blue, threatening and defiant to angry, scowling-looking Spaniards, who talk of Gib as a place only lent to us, and one day to be given back with thanks. Every where pyramids of black cannon balls, like so many negroes’ heads collected as tribute, and near the Parade, where the rock walls us in on one side, are stacks of gun-carriages, rows on rows of rusty dismounted guns, mischievous and cumbrous; and with these, piles of carriage-wheels in heaps like black cheeses. Every where Death’s playthings laid up in ordinary. The civilian in Gib seems a mere tolerated accident, and the young military “blood” delights to tell you that, in case of revolt or war, the government, to whom nearly all the houses and shops belong would sweep them away at one swoop, and plant fresh batteries upon their sites…. This rock has been more scorched with gunpowder and fire than any other citadeled height in the world. The Moors, all through the Roman times, claimed it as the legacy of their Carthaginian ancestors. Finally, under Tarik, they won it; and the Crescent, that never widened to the full moon of universal conquest (glory be to God), blew from the hill of the Apes, the Phoenician toll-bar, beyond which the Tyrians were unwilling, in their proud commercial greed, to let strangers pass. The Moors lost it in 1400, and regained it thirty years afterward, when the Spanish governor had spent all its armament money in buying sherry estates. A hundred years after a Guzman won it back, and it remained Spanish. Charles the Fifth fortified it against the dreadful Barbarossa. The sagacious Rooke swooped down on it during the war of Succession, finding it garrisoned by only eighty men, who all ran away except the curate of Santa Maria, who remained to steal the sacrament plate. George the First would have given up the rock at Utrecht, but he did not. The great subsequent siege need not be mentioned; suffice it to say that, in 1783, after four years’ perpetual fire, Eliott, standing on the King’s Bastion, saw the French and Spanish fleets below, burnt, wounded, scorched, splintered, and riddled, skulk off to Cadiz and Marseilles, while from the rock, black with their gunpowder, splintered and notched, broke a thunder clap of English cheers. “Naught can make us rue if England to herself prove bold and true.”

Walter Thornbury, Life in Spain: Past and Present (1860).

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The English Soldiery as seen by a Spaniard (1891)
I acknowledge that it is irritating, and produces on anyone who, like myself, visits Gibraltar for the first time, and arrives from the land side, the effect of an insult to see those numerous English soldiers walking fearlessly about on that soil which is quite Spanish as the rest of the surrounding country, and that which stretches away in the distance - face to face with the Spanish soldiers who, in their turn, guard the line of our frontier, and who, leaning on their muskets, with eyes fixed on the stolen treasure, seem to mourn the spoliation of which our mother country has been the victim, and seem to vow in the depths of their souls to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the sacred cause which, for the moment, they represent.

I do not know whether it was wrath, or grief, or both, that I felt on finding myself within the English city, on touching this enormous wound, this chronic cancer, which lowers and disgraces us in the face of the whole world – on seeing a foreign flag wave from the gates and forts and the public buildings of the city – on assuring myself beyond doubt that I had passed beyond the limits of my country. Never did I feel more deeply pained by our civil wars, our intestine strife, our political dissensions, than now, when I came quite close to an evil which we have forgotten, and whose disappearance ought to be the steadfast ain of our lives…

During my stay at Gibraltar my attention was greatly attracted by the troops. The many soldiers I saw in the streets – the importance of Gibraltar from a military point of view – and the great number of barracks included within its precinct, made me think – as I afterwards found, rightly – that the army must be the most important element of the population. The garrison of Gibraltar is usually composed of some 6000men, under the command of the Governor-General.

The English soldiers sport an elegant uniform, but one which produces a certain effect of affectation. Nearly all of them wear, when in barracks, a kind of cap, slit along the top, with small ribbons falling over the shoulder (like what, among us, are vulgarly called coñas ); while others have small caps which scarcely cover one side of the head , and have to be kept on by a strap passing beneath the chin. This is an oddity which seemed to me one of the many eccentricities of the English, in which I can see nothing warlike, but, on the other hand, a great deal that is ridiculous. The infantry wear scarlet jackets and blue trousers; the artillery uniform is entirely of the latter colour – as in most European armies – and the cavalry corps wear one which is somewhat greenish. There are some regiments of Scotchmen who wear (the privates, but not the officers) certain short petticoats with many folds, which have little or nothing of a military character, and in which they go about, showing their legs (which are bare) up to a considerable height. This piece of unseemliness forms part of a costume in a high degree indecent, and unworthy of a cultivated and civilised England. The campaigning uniform is completed by a monumental helmet of white felt, covering the head down to the eyes, which seemed to me in the highest degree heavy and uncomfortable. When walking about the town, many of them carry a little thin cane, not long enough to reach the ground, a fraud which rather takes away from them than gives them anything like a martial air. We, who are accustomed to the trimness and serviceable neatness of our Spanish soldiers (I am speaking without bias) cannot help being surprised by the sight of the English troops carrying their muskets on the left shoulder and employing the left hand in many of the operations necessary in using it. This detail readily catches the attention of foreigners, and made me smile at the recollection of those Uruguyan soldiers, who have always been my delight, in the farce ‘The Cousins of Captain Grant.’

To look at them, you would not take the English soldiers to be the ambitious rulers of half the world; and though this army has – and justly – a high reputation for valour and endurance, its principal advantage lies in the support of the famous naval force, and in the universal instruction and skill which can be acquired by all, from the officers to the lowest private.

Don Eliseo Guardiola Valero, ‘A Spaniard’s Impressions of Gibraltar,’ Review of Reviews (1891).