ted on her way
between these peaceful shores. Instead of the mutual hatred which once
existed between the two sides of the Straits, they are in friendly
intercourse, and to-day, under these smiling skies, Spain looks love to
Barbary, and Barbary to Spain.

While thus turning our eyes landward and seaward, we have been rounding
into a bay, and coming in sight of a mighty rock that looms up grandly
before us. Although it was but the middle of the afternoon, the winter
sun hung low, and striking across the bay outlined against the sky the
figure of a lion couchant--a true British lion, not unlike those in
Trafalgar Square in London, only that the bronze is changed to stone,
and the figure carved out of a mountain! But the lion is there, with his
kingly head turned toward Spain, as if in defiance of his former master,
every feature bearing the character of leonine majesty and power. That
is Gibraltar!

It is a common saying that "some men achieve greatness, and some have
greatness thrust upon them." The same may be said of places; but here
is one to which both descriptions may be applied--that has had greatness
thrust upon it by nature, and has achieved it in history. There is not
a more picturesque spot in Europe. The Rock is fourteen hundred feet
high--more than three times as high as Edinburgh Castle, and not, like
that, firm-set upon the solid ground, but rising out of the seas--and
girdled with the strongest fortifications in the world. Such greatness
has nature thrust upon Gibraltar. And few places have seen more history,
as few have been fought over more times than this in the long wars of
the Spaniard and the Moor; for here the Moor first set foot in Europe,
and gave name to the place (Gibraltar being merely Gebel-el-Tarik, the
mountain of Tarik, the Moorish invader), and here departed from it,
after a conflict of nearly eight hundred years.

  [Illustration: THE LION COUCHANT.]

The steamer anchors in the bay, half a mile from shore, and a boat takes
us off to the quay, where after being duly registered by t