ECENTLY the headlines of our leading dailies spelled Gibraltar in no uncertain type. Our attention was centered for a while on this ancient northern Pillar of Hercules, and it was shown that, except for British leave, the Russian squadron must have returned home, or attempted, without adequate coaling facilities, the longer voyage to the East by way of the Cape.

While it did not require the indiscretion of a Russian admiral to emphasize its strategic value as a military and naval base, yet in times past, incredible as it may seem, it was only popular sentiment which prevented Britain's representatives from bartering its restitution to Spain, Florida at one time being the proposed exchange.

My introduction to Gibraltar was impressive. My journey had lain through central Spain; her rugged, snow-capped mountains had been left behind; the penetrating chill of the early spring had given way to the more balmy airs of the undulating Andalusian plain. As we rushed southward, the character of the country again changed, and plain was transformed to highland. The shadows lengthened, and the shades of the magnificent old cork-woods threw their dusky tones across thickly wooded ravines and glens, blending the colors of hundreds of ferns and wild flowers in their misty films. Perched high up on the rugged peaks, silhouetted against the twilight sky, I occasionally saw the remains of characteristic old Oriental hill forts, which,

with Moorish villages inhabited by a half-Moorish peasantry, still bear their Moorish names. Soon the moonless night shut out the panorama, and the stars seemed only to intensify the darkness. The dim lamp went out as the train jogged and swerved around bend and curve.

A sudden flash of blinding

white light lit up every corner of the compartment, disappeared, and flashed again. I turned for information to my traveling companion, an Englishman, and Traction Engineer of the Bobadilla Road.

"Searchlight from the Rock, about six miles off. Hear those three guns in rapid succession? They're from Upper Signal Station, Elliott's Batteries, or North Bastion, and will be repeated in a few seconds; it's the general alarm signal at Gib-sham battle, you know, state of siege for six days."

Shortly afterwards I was crossing the Bay from Algeciras on the deck of a small steamer. Ahead of me was Gibraltar.

The whole expanse from Dockyard Fort to Upper Signal Station, from Union Galleries to Europa Point, and the series of casements along the Line Wall, seemed perforated with opened doors of a great blast furnace. Guns boomed and belched forth, heavy ordnance mingled its roar with the spiteful fire of the secondary batteries and the ripping of the rapid-fire guns. The great Rock stood out dimly against its dark-blue background, like a huge, crouching seamonster,

Gibraltar's importance as a stronghold began when the Phoenicians visited it and named it Mons Calpe, and the Carthaginians erected their watch-tower from which to observe the galleys of their Roman enemies. It was held in turn by the Romans until 412 A. D., when the Goths wrested it from them. During this time, however, it practically remained uninhabited. Early in the eighth century, in the beautiful spring of the south, when the fragrant broom covered the hills with gold and the oleanders fringed the rivers with their scarlet blossoms, a flotilla of Moorish galleys containing some twelve thousand men, under their chief, Tarek-Ibn-Zeyad, thrust their prows on the beach of Algeciras, and at the foot of Mons Calpe. Here. several feet up the side of the rock, Djebel Tarek (Mount of Tarek), this leader erected a stately castle. The Gibraltar of Great Britain is the Gibal Tarik of the Moors. All that now remains of this structure is a fragment of broken wall and the Torré de Homenage, in which the Moorish Bashaws took the oath of allegiance. Their weathered and battle-scarred walls have been passive witnesses from the times of bows and arrows and battering-rams to the days of siege guns and mortar batteries. Through the period of their infidel dynasty of eight hundred years, Moorish troops used the Rock as a port of entry to their Spanish dominions, and through it poured a continual influx of Moslem immigrants who overran the country. As here the Moors first landed, so from here, when the Cross was again victorious over the Crescent and the supremacy of Spanish arms was again assured, the last remnant of that race was expelled from Spain, embarked in galleys, and' cast destitute on the shores of Africa.

From 1462 until 1704 the Rock was held by Spain, not, however, without some obstinate attempts by Mohammedan corsairs to retake their lost possession.

During the summer of this latter year, Sir George Rooke, with his squadron and a small land force, captured it after a siege of three days.

From 1309 until 1705 it stood eleven sieges, six of which were successful.

Since then the British have resisted three sieges, the last, in 1779, being known as the Great Siege of Gibraltar, during which the garrison of about six thousand men repelled for nearly four years the combined attacks of some sixty-one thousand French and Spanish troops, our American Revolution affording Spain the incentive for this siege. The sufferings of the garrison and inhabitants from starvation and scurvy, reducing them to devouring reeds and thistles; the excavation of the galleries in order to bring a flanking fire to bear on the enemies' works; how General Ross made his sortie from the Red Sands at midnight and destroyed the Spanish intrenchments on the Neutral Ground, and the failure of Chevalier d'Arcon's stupendous scheme of combined attack by land and sea-these are the most interesting episodes of the siege, whose history is crowded with minor deeds of heroism and strange incident. The British loss, all told, was 1,231 men, that of the enemy over 6,000, and the cost of the siege to the latter was over twelve million dollars.

Way

Seen from the west, across the rippling, sparkling blue of the Bay of Algeciras, the huge mass of Jurassic limestone, marble, and red sand slants its broad side abruptly 1,396 feet to Highest Point. From here, north and south, a bristling ridge divides Gibraltar into two natural divisions. below, at the base of its more gradual western slope, under the protection of its great guns, nestles its terraced town, like the steps of an amphitheater as they surround the naval arena of the Bay. The more precipitous eastern side, with its great landslides of weathered rock and residual soil, gives striking contrasts of line and mass. This side, with the exception of fortified parts and the little colony of Catalan Bay towards its northern end, is practically uninhabited by man; but, well out of his reach, a troop of wild Barbary apes holds high carnival. Here they live on the sweet roots of the palmetto, making occasional raids into gardens on the western slope. In the numerous caves and shadows of the cactus and underbrush, small rabbits, badgers, a few foxes, the genet cat and