The Mediterranean by Grant Allen

Portals of the ancient world -- Bay of Tangier at sunrise -- Tarifa -- The Rock of Gibraltar -- Wonders of its fortifications -- Afternoon promenade in the Alameda Gardens -- Ascending the Rock -- View from the highest point -- The Great Siege -- Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coast -- The rock of many names.

The "Pillars of Hercules! " The portals of the Ancient World! To how many a traveller just beginning to tire of his week on the Atlantic, or but slowly recovering, it may be, in his tranquil voyage along the coasts of Portugal and Southern Spain, from the effects of thirty unquiet hours in the Bay of Biscay, has the nearing view of this mighty landmark of history brought a message of new life! That distant point ahead, at which the narrowing waters of the Strait that bears him disappear entirely within the clasp of the embracing shores, is for many such a traveller the beginning of romance. He gazes upon it from the westward with some dim reflection of that mysterious awe with which antiquity looked upon it from the East. The progress of the ages has, in fact, transposed the center of human interest and the human point of view.