ON GIBRALTAR ROCK

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 104, 26 January 1933, Page 2

ON GIBRALTAR ROCK

Vast View Obtained AIR LIKE STRONG WINE Above the Mediterranean Steps, running a windy spiral to the summit of Gibraltar Rock, the gulls tumble crazily at play. They are full of the same heady feeling which makes the visito’’ wish he could caper, Pan-like. Only a few, equipped with Government permits, ever rise from the dusty Main Street of Gibraltar to stand by the bright cannon which crowns this the Northern Pillar of Hercules (writes “M. C. E.” in the Glasgow "Evening News”). First, there comes the torrid climb via Wind-mill Hill, over white, dusty roads with their burning boulders. At the top of this hill you are glad to pause while a Tommy looks critically at your permit, thankful for the strong wind which leaps round every corner, whisGing and screaming vigorously. The path is steep and brittle, lined with dusty cactus plants, but the higher you get the more trees and shrubs there are. Spring strews the rock with masses of white narcissus. There are graceful eucalyptus trees,

with their pungent odour, oleanders with heavy, wax-like blooms, sturdy olive-trees, and delicate red-berried pepper trees. Suddenly you come across an ancient Jewish cemetery, strongly eerie and overgrown with creepers. The tombs are crumbling with age and streaked with the grease of long since spent candles. You feel, somehow, that a cloud has crossed the sun. As if to coihpensate there now comes the most beautiful part of the climb—the Mediterranean Steps, which creep and twist round to the east of the Rock, up to the summit. Narrow and roughly hewn, they are cut right out of the side of the rock.

Slowly you pick your way to the cool and windy crest, stopping ever and again to watch the white gulls wheeling over the bay, the distant line of a ship, and tlie white houses of Algeciras. Almost suddenly you are at the top on the warm concrete emplacement known ns O’Hara’s Battery. There is a rail round the Battery, which stands at the extreme southern point of the Rock, and juts over the edge, so that you have the sensation of standing over space. Away from you stretches the loug line of the Rock_wlth its razor-like edge.

where no one can safely walk. The view is map-like in its vastness, and the air intoxicates like strong wine.

To the north are the rolling brown hills of Spain, the sea road to Malaga. There is a haze over the Sierras. A brown and red fishing boat idles in true Spanish fashion in the warm shallows. To the east the incredible blue of the Mediterranean stretches into the pale horizon; to the south, the Atlas Mountains rise stark out of the sea, and the other dark Pillar of Hercules stands with its strip of yellow sand. Beyond, is the splendid coastline of the Straits, and in the utmost south a white haze which is Tangier—3'2 miles distant. On the west is the dark outline of the hills behind Algeciras, the yellow beach at the Whaling Station, the little Spanish town, and in between is the Bay, pulsing with life.

Against tlie gold streak of the sun is'a giant liner homeward bound, and over toward Spain lies one of her warships, grey and idle. These, with the white fishing boats, and tlie maze of tlie black hulks in the harbour, are the near oljects in a breath-taking panorama, over which stands “grand and grey” Gibraltar, the Sentinel of the Mediterranean.