MODERN INDIA AND THE INDIANS.

THE FIVE GATES OF INDIA-GIBRALTAR, MALTA, PORT SAID, PERIM, AND ADEN.

THE good ship Venetia,' which took me to India on the occasion of my first expedition to the East, entered the Bay of Biscay on the 15th of October, 1875. Equinoctial gales had been raging for several days previously, and the Atlantic rollers, coming broadside on, soon discriminated between the passengers, instituting a process of natural selection, which resulted in the survival of those alone who were fittest to do justice to the diurnal bill of fare provided by the Peninsular and Oriental Company with a punctuality and regularity altogether weatherproof.

To be sure our decks were crowded with a motley assemblage of men, women, and children of all sorts and conditions; for example-a Duke and Prince of the Blood Royal, an Italian Countess, a general officer or two, some A. D. C.'s, several captains, one clergyman, numerous Indian civilians of various types, stations, and degrees, from judges of the High Court to the greenest of probationers just escaped out of the clutches of the Civil Service Examiners, sundry male oddities-long-bearded, short-bearded, and beardless, wived and wifeless-divers eccentric husbandless females of uncertain ages and vague antecedents, a few solitary wives on their way to join their husbands, one or two flirting bachelors, a bevy of pretty unmarried girls, a troop of young engineers from Cooper's

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Hill, a batch of serious commercial men, an unpleasant pack of obstreperous children, and a residuum of unsortable nondescripts, not to speak of a heterogeneous crew of English sailors, Lascars, Negroes, and Chinamen. None of this miscellaneous collection of human beings made their presence felt so plainly as the children. Sea-sickness is a powerful leveller and merciless humiliator, but was powerless either to repress or depress the children. Their self-assertion was only aggravated by the prostrate condition of their natural guardians. Indian nurses easily succumb, and are generally very attenuated and miserable in appearance; but the opposite extreme is occasionally exemplified. We had one Ayah on board, who was quite a curious specimen of abnormal portliness and unnatural hypertrophy. Another was a tall graceful woman attired in a long red robe, gold necklace, bracelets and bangles. Notwithstanding her ladylike mien, she was, of course, a woman of very low caste, probably a Mhar (or Dhed). She had some very peculiar blue cross lines tattooed on her forehead between the eyebrows, and a similar mark on one temple. Like all Indian women of her station, she had invested all her savings in ornaments, and carried them on her person.

Our fourth night at sea brought us opposite the mouth of the Tagus, and in sight of the Lisbon lights. At daybreak next day we were approaching Cape St. Vincent.

Life is made up of compensations. Our patient endurance of four miserable days was rewarded by a grand spectacle. Noble cliffs rose to a great height out of the sea, some glowing with red tints as if covered with heather, others frowning with black crags, and shelving suddenly into perpendicular precipices or scarps of dark granite, riddled with countless holes and caverns by the sheer force of the Atlantic. Here and there isolated needlelike rocks, and others of fantastic shapes, separated from the cliffs by seething channels, stood out from the mainland, or seemed to thrust themselves forward as if to

court the first dash of the waves which covered their sides with sheets of foam. In the distance were lofty mountains, whose gilded summits appeared loftier through the morning mist which still clung to them. Cape St. Vincent has a lighthouse and telegraph station. We hoisted our signals, and our approach was instantly notified at Gibraltar.

At night we were in the Straits (anciently called the Straits of Hercules), with the Bay of Tangier on our right. Tangier is a sea-port of Morocco, and is now the property of the Moors under the Emperor of Morocco; the capital of the province, Fez, being about a hundred miles inland.

In four days and a half, or 108 hours from the moment of our passing the Needles, we were close to Gibraltar. The night was dark and squally, and great caution was needed. I was kept awake by the intermittent throes and gasps of our engine, which seemed to struggle for breath like a moribund monster dying hard. Very early in the morning its fitful throbbings suddenly ceased, and the silence of death followed.

The first sight of the Bay is grand beyond all expectation. It bends round in a long curve or elongated semicircle, surrounded in the distance by ranges of high hills, the towering rock of Gibraltar-said to be nearly three miles long, and 1400 feet high-overhanging the whole of one side and forming a promontory running north and south, joined to the continent of Spain by a narrow isthmus of land called the neutral ground. The latter is washed on both sides by the Mediterranean. At the furthest extremity of the promontory is Europa Point, with a lighthouse. The town of Gibraltar, resting on a long line of batteries, climbs about one-third of the western side of the rock. Rising conspicuously above the houses is a fine ruined keep-once a strong castle when the place was possessed by the Moors, and still scarred and scored with the marks of subsequent sieges.

Nearly opposite, on the shore of the bay, is the Spanish

town of Algeciras. Further inland, on a hill near the bottom of the bay, is San Roque. At both towns bull-fights are popular amusements, and not despised by some of our own people, who resort to them from Gibraltar to relieve the monotony of their cramped and cage-like existence.

The rock of Gibraltar was first known to the Phoenicians under the name of Calpe. After them the Carthaginians, Romans, and Visigoths successfully gained a footing there. It did not rank as a fortress till A. D. 711, when it was fortified by a Saracen army under Tarik (or, according to some, Tarif), a Moorish conqueror, from whom it was called Jibal Tārik, or Tārik's mountain (in Arabic Jabalu't tarik). In 1309 Ferdinand IV took the fortress after it had belonged to the Moors for 598 years, but it was retaken by them in 1462, and held by them altogether for 726 years. We took it from Spain in 1704, and to us it has belonged, notwithstanding three attempts on the part of the Spaniards to recover it, for about 175 years. On a hill, at the lower end of the bay, is a stone cairn called the Queen of Spain's chair,' because a Spanish queen is said to have seated herself there during one of the sieges, and declared she would not rise from it till she had seen the English flag hauled down. This is such a hackneyed guide-book story that one is almost ashamed to repeat it.

Opposite Europa Point, on the coast of Barbary in Africa, is Ceuta-a town close under a rocky hill (Mount Abyla) which forms a pendant to the rock of Gibraltar, and represents the second pillar of Hercules. Near it is a much higher, grander, black-looking, craggy, precipitous hill, known as the Ape's Hill, which also claims, and with more apparent justice, to represent the other pillar. From this mountain at some primeval period came the tailless apes which to this day linger on the rock of Gibraltar like wild aborigines, hopelessly struggling to hold their own against civilized settlers. Eighteen apes are still left, and every one of them is known and held inviolable. To kill or even

injure any one of them would be an unpardonable offence. Ceuta belongs to Spain, and is used by the government as a penal settlement. It is a most unpleasant place of residence, convicts being allowed to roam about loose. They cannot escape by land, as, once out of the town, they would certainly be killed by the Moors, between whom and the Spaniards inveterate enmity subsists. I believe some eccentric person, or persons, once started the idea that it would be well for England to restore Gibraltar to Spain and take Ceuta in exchange.

On landing at Gibraltar we lost no time in making our way to Europa Point, passing the Alameda-a name given to a kind of public square, or esplanade, planted with trees, which is an institution in all Spanish towns, and treated as consecrated ground by the inhabitants. The drive led up a hill over the lower slope of the rock, which on the town side is much less steep than towards the Spanish frontier. The vegetation is quite tropical. Prickly pears, cactuses, and pepper trees appeared to be growing luxuriantly, and aloes were as plentiful as blackberry bushes. Europa Point commands an unequalled view of the Straits, the coast of Africa, and Gibraltar Bay. The rock itself from this point reminded us of the Bastei in the district called Saxon Switzerland, near Dresden.

Returning to the town under a royal salute which announced the landing of H. R. H. the Duke of Connaught, we found it no easy matter to thread our way through the long principal street-crowded as it was with a motley multitude of Moors from Fez, Arabs, Negroes, Jews, Scorpions (or natives of Gibraltar familiarly so called), Spanish peasants, muleteers, English soldiers and sailors. The neutral ground on the northern side, opposite the Spanish lines, affords a striking view of the celebrated galleries which perforate the rock-here most precipitous. We could see the muzzles of monster guns protruding through innumerable port-holes. This, of course, would be the direction of an attack in case of a war with Spain. The