, and it cannot be
expected that an infirmity which at least a year's bad weather gradually
brought on should diminish before a few mild and serene days, but I
think there is some change to the better; I certainly write easier and
my spirits are better. The officers compliment me on this, and I think
justly. The difficulty will be to abstain from working hard, but we will
try. I wrote to Mr. Cadell to-day, and will send my letter ashore to be
put into Gibraltar with the officer who leaves us at that garrison. In
the evening we saw the celebrated fortress, which we had heard of all
our lives, and which there is no possibility of describing well in
words, though the idea I had formed of it from prints, panoramas, and so
forth, proved not very inaccurate. Gibraltar, then, is a peninsula
having a tremendous precipice on the Spanish side--that is, upon the
north, where it is united to the mainland by a low slip of land called
the neutral ground. The fortifications which rise on the rock are
innumerable, and support each other in a manner accounted a model of
modern art; the northern face of the rock itself is hewn into tremendous
subterranean batteries called the hall of Saint George, and so forth,
mounted with guns of a large calibre. But I have heard it would be
difficult to use them, from the effect of the report on the
artillerymen. The west side of the fortress is not so precipitous as
the north, and it is on this it has been usually assailed. It bristles
with guns and batteries, and has at its northern extremity the town of
Gibraltar, which seems from the sea a thriving place, and from thence
declines gradually to Cape Europa, where there is a great number of
remains of old caverns and towers, formerly the habitation or refuge of
the Moors. At a distance, and curving into a bay, lie Algeciras, and the
little Spanish town of Saint Roque, where the Spanish lines were planted
during the siege.[485] From Europa Point the eastern frontier of
Gibraltar runs pretty close to the sea, and arises in a perpendicular
face, and it is called the back of the rock. No thought could be
entertained of attacking it, although every means were used to make the
assault as general as possible. The efforts sustained by such
extraordinary means as the floating batteries were entirely directed
against the defences on the west side, which, if they could have been
continued for a few days with the same fury with which they commenced,
must have wor