1874 - John L. Stoddard - Gibraltar - Part 6
A Guarded Causeway.
Not just a defensive battery, these guns were used over the years to attack enemy forces facing the Rock from the Neutral Ground. It was often referred to as the Devil's Tongue.
Europa Point.
The photograph was probably taken from the lighthouse which occupied more or less the most southerly point of Gibraltar - The flat area was known as Windmill Hill, the white buildings were mostly barracks.
It was already evening when we left Gibraltar and glided swiftly toward the Orient. As we swept eastward through the Straits the coast of Africa was the first to vanish, suggestive of the disappearance of the Moorish race, which for centuries ruled both shores.
Next, the dim outlines of the Spanish mainland faded from our view, and finally the mighty fortress of the Anglo-Saxon dropped behind the darkening curtain of the night. Scarcely a ripple stirred the surface of the classic sea; and our tall masts, compared with the bright stars toward which they pointed, hardly varied from the perpendicular, so slight was the great steamer's oscillation.
The deep, ineffable peace of boundless space seemed brooding over the water which we cleft so noiselessly. The Milky Way - the jewelled viaduct of the sidereal firmament - stretched just above us, tremulous with splendour.
The solemn beauty of the scene intensified the dominant ness that man still finds it needful to protect himself in such a way against his brother man; to the huge rock, swarming with soldiers, bristling with batteries, girdled with scowling galleries, honeycombed with caves of ammunition, and secretly encompassed by ingenious mines, contrived to hurl a thousand souls into eternity - what is it all, despite its fine appearance and mechanical perfection, but a sad proof of the comparatively insignificant moral height to which humanity has raised itself above the cave men of the past ?
Our savage ancestors crushed one another's skulls with stones and clubs. We use for the same purpose metal balls of various dimensions. But in both instances the motive is the same. Yet such is the illusion created by the brilliant uniform, the bugle, and the pageantry of war, that the advancement of the race is often measured principally by the size and strength of instruments expressly made for human slaughter.
Alas, how far we are, even at the dawn of the twentieth century, from the time when all such fortified headlands as Gibraltar shall serve as nothing more than signal stations to direct the carriers of commerce and report their progress; and when the gold now lavished on the enginery of war shall be applied to the relief of suffering, not to its creation; to the improvement, not the degradation of humanity.
Sunset Near The Pillars Of Hercules
" O War, War. War ! Thou false-baptized, that in thy vaunted name Of Glory stealest o'er the heart of man, To rive his bosom with a hundred darts, Disrobed of pomp and circumstance, stand forth, And show thy written league with Sin and Death. The victor's plume, the conqueror's sword, the wreath Of blood-dashed laurel, - what will these avail The spirit parting from material things? One slender leaflet from the Tree of Peace, Borne dovelike o'er this waste and warring earth, Were better passport at the gate of heaven".
Evening on the Straits
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