| 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 |
| 1 | 187 | 374 | 560 | 747 |
|
part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any
portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that
the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the
low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was
once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at
Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps--there is plenty there), got closed out
when the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel,
are full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock
of Gibraltar--but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting
one.
There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so
uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress
costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed
Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and
veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and
turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and
long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and
Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink--and
Jews from all around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they
are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years
ago, no doubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our
pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling
procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of
complacency and independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen
or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this
7
8
Page
Quick Jump
|