International complications are never to be recklessly brought on. But
shall the assailing traveler quail before a gesture? My store of Spanish
passwords is exhausted, but there is one solvent yet remaining,--the
universal countersign. With undiminished cheerfulness, I select from my
pocket a stamped silver disk of well-known design, hold it significantly
a moment in full view, and then confidently proceed up the staircase.

The armed figures vanish from view. There is a foreboding silence as I
near the heavy entrance-way at the top. But before I can pound for
admittance, the great door swings deferentially open, a guard within
salutes still more deferentially, I advance, friend, and proffer the
countersign,--and the Monte Orgullo is won!

The view from this hill of Mars well merits the climb and any attendant
risk to the home State Department. The air is warm and still. In front,
the sea stretches to the horizon, smooth as the fair Glimmerglass loved
by Deerslayer. To the right flows a clear, quiet river, the Urumea, to
meet it,--a river on whose nearer bank below us lies buried many a brave
English soldier, their graves marked by white headstones; and from the
farther shore of which once flew leaden rain and iron hail from
conquering English guns. Behind us lies the city, asleep in the warm
afternoon haze, and in the distance are the forms of purplish Pyrenees
hills; while farther around opens the bright little bay,--the _Concha_
or Shell, happily so called,--with villas fringing it's curve, and an
islet-pearl in its centre. A wistful touch of peace and sunshine is over
all the scene, as one views it, in the irony of fact, from this
storm-centre of war.

There are barracks within the walls, and monster guns and other usual
martial furnishings, and the fortifications themselves have, to some