WITH A Description of its Natural Features. LONDON: THOMAS NELSON AND SONS. EDINBURGH AND NEW YORK. 1879....

T HE year 1704 was the year of Blenheim, that wonderful victory of Marlborough’s which dissipated Lewis the Fourteenth’s dreams of universal empire. As stars are extinguished in the light of dawn, so in the lustre of this great triumph England’s minor successes by sea and land were forgotten. And to this day, while most men remember when Blenheim was won, few are mindful of the year in which Gibraltar was taken. Yet it may well be doubted whether the latter, though the less famous, was not, so f

W E read of no further attempt upon Gibraltar until 1720. At that time the Spanish fortress of Ceuta, on the African coast, was beleaguered by the Moors; and with the professed intention of relieving it, a large armament was collected in Gibraltar Bay, under the Marquis de Leda. The British Government, however, received information that the real object of the expedition was the surprise of Gibraltar; and accordingly ordered the governor of Minorca to embark immediately with a portion of his troo

B EFORE entering on a description of the Great Siege, which stands foremost among the brilliant episodes of our military history, it will be necessary for the reader’s understanding of its details to put before him a view of the Rock and its defences as they then existed. In doing so we must necessarily avail ourselves of the close and careful account furnished by Captain Drinkwater, who wrote from personal knowledge, and shared in the various experiences of the siege. We shall, however, as far

T HE blow so suddenly and effectually levelled at the Spaniards seems for a time to have paralyzed their energies. But about the beginning of December they recovered themselves to some extent, and the besieged could see a large body of their men busily engaged in making fascines, with a view to the reconstruction of their batteries. It was also ascertained that the allied Governments of France and Spain had determined upon concentrating in front of Gibraltar a force which should render resistanc

W HILE the veterans under Elliot were thus nobly maintaining the honour of the English flag on the beleaguered Rock, it must not be supposed that England was unmindful of them, or ignorant of the danger in which they were involved. The British Government hastened their preparations for the relief of the garrison, and assembled as speedily as possible a powerful fleet, under Admiral Lord Howe,—afterwards the hero of the 1st of June,—to escort a large convoy containing fresh troops and provisions.

T HE Atlantic is connected with the Mediterranean, as everybody knows, by a narrow channel of irregular configuration, the Strait of Gibraltar, which flows between the Rock of Gibraltar on the north, and the Rock of Ceuta, backed by the strange mass of Mons Abyla, or Apes’ Hill, on the south. Gibraltar was anciently called Calpe; and Calpe and Abyla were the legendary Herculis Columnæ , or “Pillars of Hercules,” which marked the limit of the mythical hero’s conquests, and formed the supposed bou

T O the earliest navigators who penetrated westward the Rock must have been a conspicuous landmark, and we have seen what fables were gradually associated with it. Suddenly rising, erect and defiant, from the mainland, with the waters whitening in surf at its very base, and apparently defining the boundary of the inhabitable world, it is no wonder that men learned to invest it with a certain mystery and awe. Its records, however, at the outset, are vague and conjectural. We are told that the Phœ