English rule, from Ceuta and the green
Morocco coast, always it looked mysterious,
unexpected, threatening, impregnable, but
never so magical as through that first darkness
from the French steamer's side.

There is an exquisite sense of contrast in
coming into Gib out of Spain. At once from
the land of black fans and red sashes round
the waist you pass to English bonnets and
black coats: from quails and garlick to roast
beef and pudding. Yesterday, you were in a
bull-ring; now you see a cricket-ground and
a race-course, though it does run round a
churchyard. Yesterday, stunted brown-caped
soldiers, mean and beaten; to-day, bold
scarlet-jackets, big-boned, large-hearted, and
of an honest white and red. Yesterday,
high grated windows with bars that are but
ladder steps for daring lovers—to-day, grimy
glazed windows and the snug dirtiness of
Wapping. Yesterday homeless, comfortless
posadas that you walked into uncared for and
ungreeted: to-day, the Old King's Arms
spreading its gallows-sign across the main
street, and with some faded emblazonry of
the old periwig Elliot age. Only a few miles
over the bay, in Algeciras, there is guitar
tinkling, knife fighting,and everything national
and Spanish: here, all the grave decorum and
level-paved streets of an English market-town,
old vulgar names breathing of Chatham or
Rotherhithe—such as Bombproof Lane and
Barrack Alley—greet us on every side.

The men we meet here are not dry, brown-
faced, under-sized Andalucians, but plethoric,
red-faced majors; no dancing-footed and Arab-
blooded majos, but puff-faced privates, in white
blouses, talking at the corners of streets,
about how many "goons" such a battery held,
in the broadest and cheeriest Lancashire.
As for the shops, they are real higglers', and
chandlers', just as you see about the Minories;
and out of their dim snuffy recesses, break
at intervals, real old Englishwomen, real,
genuine, motherly, old laundresses and char-
women, such as puff at your winter fire in
the Temple, or stir the dust about (which
they call sweeping) in Gray's Inn.

Not that the Spanish element is at all dead
in that cluster of houses under the great
batteried rock. No; you still see the pale
brown girls with the shining black hair, the
dusty muleteer with the embroidered gaiters
and string of pack-mules; still the quick-
eyed Spanish children, munching melons, or
wrestling in the old Roman way, that you
see in bas-reliefs, holding each other's wrists.
You still hear in every shop, Spanish curses
and Spanish greeting. The cigar-shops are
Spanish; the names over the doors are all
Joses, Pepes and Pedros, or if not Spanish,
Jewish.

And is there nothing to remind you that
you are close to Africa, scarce a gun-shot
distance from the pirate-country of the Lower
Atlas? Surely. There are some thousand
Moors resident in Gib. You meet them
everywhere. Kingly and erect in their
rhubarb-coloured 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 towards Mecca, and think of the
Prophet, as the saffron fire kindles to burning
rose. There they go, past the Jew's
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 slouching trowsers and blue,
white cloaks and black-tufted caps.

Let us enter this shop of Hadji (or
pilgrim) Ben-Azed, dealer in Barbary
curiosities. 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 blue and stamped with
seals of Koran legends; 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 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-Nerood, 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." Nevertheless, that very night,
just at gun-fire, as I sat busy over oysters at
Driver's social board, Spanker looked up, the
pepper-box in his hand, and said: "By-the-
bye, 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." [Nota Bene.—Scorpion
is a military term of contempt for
Gibraltar tradesmen.] So much, thought
I, for regal-looking Othellos, with brown
skins, serene eyes, spotless white robes, and
rhubarb-coloured slippers.

But what sort of a place is Gib? Well,
it is a curious huddle of semi-Spanish houses,
flocking together down as near to the water
as the strong lines of ugly-looking forts will
let them; and, because they cannot take up
all of what would in another place be quay,