Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential
Insurance Company. He cannot help feeling that the famous stronghold is
pictorially a plagiarism from the advertisements of that institution. As
the lines change with the ship's course, the resemblance is less
remarkable; but it is always remarkable, and I suppose it detracts
somewhat from the majesty of the fortress, which we could wish to be
more entirely original. This was my feeling when I first saw Gibraltar
four years ago, and it remains my feeling after having last seen it four
weeks ago. The eye seeks the bold, familiar legend, and one suffers a
certain disappointment in its absence. Otherwise Gibraltar does not and
cannot disappoint the most exacting tourist.

The morning which found us in face of it was in brisk contrast to the
bland afternoon on which we had parted from Madeira. No flocking
coracles surrounded our steamer, with crews eager to plunge into the
hissing brine for shillings or equivalent quarters. The whitecaps looked
snow cold as they tossed under the sharp north wind, and the tender
which put us ashore had all it could do to embark and disembark us
upright, or even aslant. But, once in the lee of the rocky Africa
breathed a genial warmth across the strait beyond which its summits
faintly shimmered; or was it the welcome of Cook's carriages which
warmed us so? We were promised separate vehicles for parties of three or
four, with English-speaking drivers, and the promise was fairly well
kept. The carriages bore a strong family likeness to the pictures of
Spanish state coaches of the seventeenth century, and were curtained and
cushioned in reddish calico. Rubber tires are yet unknown in southern
Europe, and these mediaeval arks bounded over the stones with a violence
which must once have been characteristic of those in the illustrations.
But the English of our English-speaking driver was all that we could
have asked for the shillings we paid Cook for him, or, if it was not, it