The Most Wonderful Fortress in the World.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 10, 9 March 1910, Page 35

The Most Wonderful Fortress in the World.

Gibraltar is not only the world’s greatest fortress; it is emphatically the place of surprises and varied interest, and, perhaps, the only impregnable fortress in the world. Always interesting to visitors are the herds of goats driven from door to door to supply milk (cows being at a decided premium); and the swarthy, picturesquelyclad Moors and Arabs, Jews from Tangiers and Tunis, Italians, Maltese, Germans, and Spaniards, intermingling with British soldiers and sailors, but one searches in vain for signs of Gibraltar’s unique military greatness. “The Rock,” indeed, is at first both an enigma and disillusionment to the newcomer.

Nothing that science and money could do to screen the forts and guns of Gibraltar from the eyes of envious enemies has been left undone. They have been painted so as exactly to match the surrounding rock and shrubs; trees and evergreen are utilised so to form a natural drapery in front; and as each gun in the "masked” batteries is fired a screen drops automatically in front to hide the smoke. But the paths to the prinepal posts are so tortuous, and the network of sentries so complete, that it would need more than human skill to gain complete information. In no other British garrison does the sentry find himself in such queer situations. The North Front on the Neutral Ground, -is the chief point gaiaifled. Here a chain of British sentries stretches from Gibraltar Bay to Mediterranean, facing the line of Spanish sentries, in their quaint white, round sentryboxes, at La Linea. From sunset to sunrise these sentries are completely isolated, during which period the fortress is bolted and barred behind them. But they have a detachment encamped at their backs, and are in direct touch, by signal and telephone, with headquarters, whilst the mere pressure of an electric button by the otltcer eomuraiuling the guard would cause a miniature earthquake on the Neutral Ground to engulf any enemy

attempting a surprise! But the sentries have power to shoot at anyone approaching within fifty yards after nightfall. The short neck of land lying between the opposing sentries is chosen as the scene of extensive smuggling operations, specially trained dogs being landed quietly on the beach, then loaded with tobacco and spirits, and despatched to force their way through the Spanish lines to agents in La Linea. The Spanish sentries’ haphazard shot?* at the smugglers are trying to the nerves of the young British sentry, to say the least. There is a magazine, perched midway up the Rock, where the sentry is locked in during his two hours’ turn of duty, at the mercy of treacherous prowlers or mischievous monkeys, Gibraltar being the only place in Europe where these latter are still found. Then there is the Sanpits Magazine, where the sentry has virtual responsibility for the immense masked batteries stretching on to the Alameda (a beautiful pleasure resort and parade ground). Here he is sejuirated from his comrades by a cemetery; and his happiness at night is not increased by remembrance of the barrack-room tale of a sailor who was murdered near the spot, and whose ghost appears nightly. An even less alluring post is that of Willis’ Guard, the ascent to which is most difficult and circuitous. Perched precipitously above the sea level, with important guns to guard, and isolated from the guard-house, amongst riotous clusters of cacti. gum-cistus, and pimento trees, the sentry needs the strongest of nerves and the poorest of memories. For a ghastly and widely-believed story is associated with this post. Soldiers relate impressively over guardroom tires how the whole of the Willis’ guard were murdered one night, and the sentry outside found strangled at his post. The crime is variously attributed to virulent Spanish malcontents. and to huge, ferocious monkeys. Certainly the latter are nowhere so plentiful as they are in the tangled, luxuriant vegetation at this spot.

nels hewn out of the heart of the solid rock, is a privilege accorded to but few. No one who entered by chance could ever hope to find the way out escape the clutches of some guard of giant gunners lurking in obscure recesses.

The Galleries are divided into three—the upper to accommodate the guns, the middle to lodge in safety all the women and children of the garrison in case of siege, and the lower as a storehouse for rain-water and a complete condensing plant (for there are no springs at Gibraltar), seven years’ provisions of tinned meats, preserved vegetables, lime-juice and flour, and a vast reserve of ammunition, shot, and shell. There are other contents in the lastnamed, too, which make it the most rigorously guarded of all spots on the Rock, and it is said that no one but the Governor has ingress.

On the very summit of the rock. 1,467 feet high, is the white and flagcapped signal station, which has powerful telescopes sweeping the seas for miles around by day and night, and in this breezy, drear, and lonely spot, often enveloped in the peculiar Mediterranean mist called the “levanter,” is another guard of artillerymen, whose chief duty it is to fire the gun which wakes the garrison up at sunrise and sends it to bed.

At the firing of the sunset gun a unique ceremony is enacted. A personage called “The Key-Sergeant” arrives opposite the convent, a bundle of ponderous keys is solemnly handed him from a safe; an escort with fixed bayonets comes from the guard-house and takes post beside him, and then, headed by the drums and fifes of one of the regiments, he proudly marches through the town to lock, bolt, and bar the massive gates and doors of the fortress. Consequently there is a great rush of Spaniards and others to reach their homes in Spain before they are locked in, and it is estimated that 10,000 leave every night, and need a strong armed British guard to keep them back before sunrise every morning. Modern “needle” guns have recently

Catalan Bay is even more isolated. At this tiny ti-hing settlement, the only accessible spot on the eastern side of the Rock, there is only a mere handful of British soldiers. The guns (one for every day in the year) in that world’s triumph of engineering, the Galleries, however, sweep the sea for a remarkable range on every side. To penetrate the mysteries of those Galleries, that marvellous series of intricate tun-

been installed on Gibraltar that are reputed to have a range of fifteen miles, and to be capable of dropping shells on the African shore opposite, whilst they are so perfectly trained on to certain mapped-out sections of the surrounding waters that it is scarcely possible for them to miss a target. In addition, there is a gun weighing 104 tons, firing a shell weighing three-quarters of a ton, the mere recoil of which bursts

doors and windows from their fasten ings.

It is safe to assert that there is no sentry’s beat in the whole of the Empire so inexpressibly lonely as a spot to be found on the inaccessible eastern surface of Gibraltar. Here an enormous area of the Rock has l»een blasted flat and covered with concrete to cateh the rains and convey them into the secret reservoirs.

Gazing at the wide, sweeping, concrete slopes, one sees a tiny hut which must be quite 1.000 feet, at least, above the sea level, and reached only by a very narrow, circuitous, and seemingly interminable path; that is the residence of the Royal Engineers responsible for the water supply.

There are other strange old bastions and batteries (some of them dating from the memorable three-years’-siege, which the Rock withstood), in out-of-the-way corners, or perched precariously on rocky heights, where soldiers are to

be found; but there is none so interesting as the St. Michael’s Cave. A detachment of artillery is stationed here in a solitary hut, reached laboriously by a steep, rocky, and wellguarded path. Rations are brought up on a mule periodically; r_nd, the gun posted there being mare or less obsolete, the chief duty- of the gunners is to guard the wonderful eave behind them. This is a natural wonder, the interior

of which is as finely- wrought upon by the external water-droppings as any cathedral. Stalactites are most picturesquely grouped overhead, and the labryinths no one has dared to penetrate.

One tunnel is said to lead to a subterranean lake on which a boat can be rowed with ease; whilst another reaches right into the bowels of the earth, and even, so engineers assert, right un-

der the sea to Africa. It is only- by (means of this tunnel that scientists can account for the arrival of the Barbary apes on the Rock. Whether an enemy would ever risk taking advantage of it is a problematical point; but, our authorities leave nothing to chance —hence'the guard.