tweeds; stiff
brass-buttoned turnkeys; Jews in skull-cap and Moslems in fez; and while
you are lost in admiration of a burly negro, turbaned and in grass-green
robe, with face black and shiny as a newly-polished stove, you are
hustled by a sailor on cordial terms with himself who is vigorously
attempting to whistle "Garry Owen."

But above and before all, the sights and sounds are military. Sappers
and linesmen and artillerists pullulate at every corner; fatigue-parties
are confronted at every turn; the bayonet of the sentinel flashes in
every angle of the fortress from the minute the sun, bursting into
instantaneous radiance from behind the great barrier of craggy hill,
lights up the town and bastions and moles, until the boom of the
sunset-gun gives signal for the gates to be closed. Every tavern looks
like a canteen; the gossip is of things martial; the music is that of
the reveille or tattoo--the blare of brass, the rub-a-dub of parchment,
or the shrill sound-revel of Highland pipes (for there is usually a
Scotch regiment here). The ladies one meets all have husbands, or
fathers, or uncles in the Service; even the children--those of English
parents well understood--keep step as they walk, and the boys amongst
them compliment any well-dressed stranger with a home face by rendering
him the regulation salute. This is highly gratifying to the civilian
sojourning in the place; for he insensibly succumbs to the _genius
loci_, squares his shoulders, expands his chest, and feels that if he is
not an officer he ought to be one.

Except the enterprising gentry who devote themselves to cheating the
Spanish excise by smuggling cigars and English goods across the border,
the Scorpions live by and on the garrison, and therefore do I name their
habitat Sutlersville. "Scorpion," I should add, for the benefit of the
uninitiated, is the _sobriquet_ conferred by Tommy Atkins on the natives
of the Rock, as that of "Smiches" is merrily applied by him to the
Maltese, and of "Yamplants" to the denizens of St. Helena. There is a
tolerable infusion of English blood among the Scorpions, but it is
hardly of the healthiest or most respectable.

Gib is familiar to thousands of Englishmen, but it must be unfamiliar to
many thousands more. This is my excuse for exhuming some notes of my
stay there. Don't be afraid, I am not going to pester you with
guide-book erudition. Let others take you to the galleries and caves,
lead you up the ascent to