aniards, Moors and English
Soldiers are all crowded into one long street with donkeys and geese
and priests and smugglers and men in polo clothes and soldiers in
football suits and sailors from the man-of-war. Of course, the Rock is
the best story of it all. It is a fair green smiling hill not a
fortress at all. No more a fortress to look at than Fairmont Park
water works, but the joke of it is that under every bush there is a gun
and every gun is painted green and covered with hanging curtains of
moss and every promenade is undermined and the bleakest face of the
rock is tunnelled with rooms and halls. Every night we are locked in
and the soldiers carry the big iron keys clanking through the streets.
It is going to make interesting reading.

DICK.

GIBRALTAR.

February 23rd, 1893.

DEAR MOTHER:

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 th