Francis Parkman, [by] Henry Dwight Sedgwick

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII EUROPE Wednesday evening. We have not yet reached Tarifa. Dozens of vessels come past us from Gibraltar, some of them of a most outlandish aspect to my eye. Thursday. More delay and vexation. The captain has not slept for two nights, and is half worn out by fatigue and anxiety. For myself, I...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII EUROPE Wednesday evening. We have not yet reached Tarifa. Dozens of vessels come past us from Gibraltar, some of them of a most outlandish aspect to my eye. Thursday. More delay and vexation. The captain has not slept for two nights, and is half worn out by fatigue and anxiety. For myself, I was so exasperated by our continued ill fortune that I could not stay below. We passed Tarifa light about midnight ? then were driven back four miles by a rain squall. But by nine in the morning we had fairly entered Gibraltar Bay Gibraltar.] Saturday. Yesterday I came ashore in the barque's boat, landed, got passport signed and established myself at the King's Arms. I dined at the consul's and spent the day in exploring this singular city ? the world in epitome. More of it in future. This morning I set out, in company with a midshipman, the son of Captain Newton of the Missouri, to ride round the Bay to the Spanish town of Algeciras. Sunday. . . . Sunday is the day to see the motley population of Gibraltar at one glance. Just without the walls is a parade large enoughto hold the six regiments stationed here. This evening, according to custom, everybody was thronging up there. I established myself at the foot of a bronze statue of the defender of Gibraltar ? I forget his name, General Eliot ? but there he stands towering above the trees and aloes at the summit of a hill above the parade, with the emblematic key in his hand, and with a huge cannon and a mortar on each side of him. Here I had a specimen of every nation on earth, it seemed, around me. A dozen Moors with white turbans and slippered feet lolled one side; Jews by couples in their gaberdines; the Spanish gentleman in his black cloak and sombrero ? the Spanish laborer with his red cap hanging on o...