e
great deep were a living organism, of which the ebb and flow were like
the circulation of the blood in the human frame. Or shall we say that
this upper current represents the Stream of Life, which might seem to be
over-full were it not that far down in the depths the excess of Life is
relieved by the black waters of Death that are flowing darkly beneath?

Turning from the sea to the shore, on our left is Tarifa, the most
southern point of Spain and of Europe--a point far more picturesque than
the low, wooded spit of land that forms the most southern point of
Asia, which the "globe-trotter" rounds as he comes into the harbor of
Singapore, for here the headland that juts into the sea is crowned by a
Moorish castle, on the ramparts of which, in the good old times of the
Barbary pirates, sentinels kept watch of ships that should attempt to
pass the Straits from either direction: for incomers and outgoers
alike had to lower their flags, and pay tribute to those who counted
themselves the rightful lords of this whole watery realm. I wonder that
the Free-Traders do not ring the changes on the fact that the very word
_tariff_ is derived from this ancient stronghold, at which the mariners
of the Middle Ages paid "duties" to the robbers of the sea. If both
sides of the Straits of Gibraltar were to-day, as they once were, under
the control of the same Moslem power, we might have two castles--one in
Europe and one in Africa--like the "Castles of Europe and Asia," that
still guard the Dardanelles, at which all ships of commerce are required
to stop and report before they can pass; while ships-of-war carrying
too many guns, cannot pass at all without special permission from
Constantinople.

But the days of the sea-robbers are ended, and the Mediterranean is free
to all the commerce of the world. The Castle of Tarifa is still kept
up, and makes a picturesque object on the Spanish coast, but no corsair
watches the approach of the distant sail, and no gun checks her speed;
every ship--English, French, or Spanish--passes unmoles