aspect and situation of the place. To
military men its details offer much interest. There is a large public
garden on the side of the mountain, between the town, which occupies the
inmost extremity, and the Governor's house near the entrance of the bay.
The batteries constructed in the rock are extremely curious, and
calculated to embarrass an enemy whose object should be to dismount
them. I thought, however, with deference to those conversant with these
subjects, that they were likely to possess an inconvenience--that of
exposing to suffocation the gunners employed in the caverns, out of
which there does not appear to exist sufficient means of escape for the
smoke.

The most amusing sight in Gibraltar is the principal street, filled, as
it is, with an infinitely varied population. Here you see, crowded
together as in a fair, and distinguished by their various costumes,--the
representatives of Europe, Asia, and Africa,--Arabs, Moors, Italians,
Turks, Greeks, Russians, English, and Spaniards, Jews, and,
occasionally, a holy friar conversing with some Don Basilio, appearing,
in his long cylindrical hat, as if blessed with a skull sufficiently
hard to have entered the side of a tin chimney-top, precipitated upon
it by a gust of wind.

Among all these a successful guess may here and there be risked at the
identity of the Andalucian leader of banditti, lounging about in search
of useful information. The contrabandistas are likewise in great
plenty.

LETTER XVII.

CADIZ. ARRIVAL AT SEVILLE.

Seville.

Cadiz is the last town in Europe I should select for a residence, had I
the misfortune to become blind. One ought to be all eyes there. It is
the prettiest of towns. After this there is no more to be said, with
regard, at least, to its external peculiarities. It possesses no
prominent objects of curiosity. There is, it is true, a tradition
stating it to have possessed a temple dedicated to Hercules; but this
has been washed away by the waves of the ocean, as its rites have been
by the influx of succeeding populations. Nothing can be more remote from
the ideas of the visitor to Cadiz, than the existence of anything
antique; unless it be the inclination to prosecute such researches: the
whole place is so bright and modern looking, and pretty in a manner
peculiar to itself, and unlike any other town,--since, like everything
else in Spain, beauty also has its originality. Nothing can be gayer
than the perspective o