GIBRALTAR.
[DEAR MOTHER: February 23rd,
1893.]
AEneas who "ran the round of so many chances" in this
neighborhood was a stationary stay at home to what I have to
do. If I ever get away from the Rock I shall be a traveller
of the greatest possible experience.
I came here intending to stay a week and to write my letter on
Gib. and on Tangier quietly and peacefully like a gentleman
and then to go on to Malta. I love this place and there is
something to do and see every minute of the time but what
happened was this: All the boats that ever left here stopped
running, broke shafts, or went into quarantine or just sailed
by, and unless I want to spend two weeks on the sea in order
to have one at Malta, which is only a military station like
this, I must go off to-morrow with my articles unwritten, my
photos undeveloped and my dinner calls unpaid. I am now
waiting to hear if I can get to Algiers by changing twice from
one steamer to another along the coast of Spain. It will be a
great nuisance but I shall be able to see Algiers and Tunis
and Malta in the three weeks which would have otherwise been
given to Malta alone. And Tunis I am particularly keen to
see. While waiting for a telegram from Spain about the boats,
I shall tell you what I have been doing. Everybody was glad
to see me after my return from Tangier. I dined with the
Governor on Monday, in a fine large room lined with portraits
of all the old commanders and their coats-of-arms like a
little forest of flags and the Governor's daughter danced a
Spanish dance for us after it was over. Miss Buckle, Cust's
fiancee, dances almost as well as Carmencita, all the girls
here learn it as other girls do the piano. On Tuesday Cust
and Miss B. and another girl and I went over into Spain to see
the meet and we had a short run after a fox who went to earth,
much to my relief, in about three minutes and before I had
been thrown off. There are no fences but the ground is one
mass of rocks and cactus and ravines down which these English
go with an ease that makes
me tremble with admiration. We had not come out to follow,
so we, being quite soaked through and very hungry, went to an
inn and it was such an inn as Don Quixote used to stop at,
with the dining-room over the stable and a lot of drunken
muleteers in the court and beautiful young women to wait on
us. It is a beautiful country Spain, with every sort of green
you ever dreamed of. We had omelettes and native wine and
black bread and got warm again and then trotted home in the
rain and got wet again, so we stopped at the guard house on
the outside of the rock and took tea with the officer in
charge and we all got down on our knees around his fire and he
hobbled around dropping his eyeglasses in his hot water and
very much honored and exceedingly embarrassed. I amused
myself by putting on all the uniforms he did not happen to
have on and the young ladies drank tea and thawed. This is
the most various place I ever came across. You have mountains
and seashore and allamandas like Monte Carlo in their tropical
beauty and soldiers day and night marching and drilling and
banging brass bands and tennis and guns firing so as to rattle
all the windows, and picnics and teas. I am engaged way ahead
now but I must get off tomorrow. On Washington's birthday I
gave a luncheon because it struck me as the most inappropriate
place in which one could celebrate the good man's memory and
the Governor would not think of coming at first, but I told
him I was not a British subject and that if I could go to his
dinner he could come to my lunch, so that, or the fact that
the beautiful Miss Buckle was coming decided him to waive
etiquette and he came with his A. D. C. and his daughter and
officers and girls came and I had American flags and English
flags and a portrait of
Washington and of the Queen and I ransacked the markets for
violets and banked them all up in the middle. It was fine. I
turned the hotel upside down and all the servants wore their
best livery and everybody stood up in a row and saluted His
Excellency and I made a speech and so did his Excellency and
the chef did himself proud. I got it up in one morning.
Helen Benedict could not have done it better.
I had a funny adventure the morning I left Tangier —
There was a good deal of talk about Field (confound him) and
my getting into the prison and The Herald and Times
correspondents were rather blue about it and some of the
English residents said that I had not been shown the whole of
the prison, that the worst had been kept from us. Field who
only got into the prison because I had worked at it two days,
said there was an additional ward I had not seen. I went back
into this while he and the guard were getting the door open to
go out and saw nothing, but to make sure that the prison was
as I believed an absolute square, I went back on the morning
of my departure and climbed a wall and crawled over a house
top and photographed the top of the prison. Then a horrible
doubt came to me that this house upon which I was standing and
which adjoined the prison might be the addition of which the
English residents hinted. There was an old woman in the
garden below jumping up and down and to whom I had been shying
money to keep her quiet. I sent the guide around to ask her
what was the nature of the building upon which I had
trespassed and which seemed to worry her so much — He came
back to tell me that I was on the top of a harem and the old
woman thought I was getting up a flirtation with the
gentleman's wives. So I dropped back again.
It will be a couple of months at least before my first
story comes out in The Weekly. I cannot judge of them but
I
think they are up to the average of the Western stories, the
material is much richer I know, but I am so much beset by the
new sights that I have not the patience or the leisure I had
in the West — Then there were days in which writing was a
relief, now there is so much to see that it seems almost a
shame to waste it.
By the grace of Providence I cannot leave here until the
28th, much to my joy and I have found out that I can do better
by going direct to Malta and then to Tunis, leaving Algiers
which I did not want to see out of it-Hurrah. I shall now
return to the calm continuation of my story and to writing
notes which
Chas will enjoy.
DICK.
