The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins

The Mediterranean: Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins

Portals of the ancient worldBay of Tangier at sunriseTarifaThe Rock of GibraltarWonders of its fortificationsAfternoon promenade in the Alameda GardensAscending the RockView from the highest pointThe Great SiegeCeuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coastThe rock of many names. The Pillars of Hercules! The portals of the Ancient World! To how many a traveller just beginning to tire of his week on the Atlantic, or but slowly recovering, it may be, in his tranquil voyage along the coasts of Portugal and Southern Spain, from the effects of thirty unquiet hours in the Bay of Biscay, has the nearing view of this mighty landmark of history brought a message of new life! That distant point ahead, at which the narrowing waters of the Strait that bears him disappear entirely within the clasp of the embracing shores, is for many such a traveller the beginning of romance. He gazes upon it from the westward with some dim reflection of that mysterious awe with which antiquity looked upon it from the East. The[Pg 2] progress of the ages has, in fact, transposed the center of human interest and the human point of view. Now, as in the Homeric era, the Pillars of Hercules form the gateway of a world of wonder; but for us of to-day it is within and not without those portals that that world of wonder lies. To the eye of modern poetry the Atlantic and Mediterranean have changed places. In the waste of waters stretching westward from the rock of Calpe and its sister headland, the Greek of the age of Homer found his region of immemorial poetic legend and venerable religious myth, and peopled it with the gods and heroes of his traditional creed. Here, on the bosom of the wide-winding river Oceanus, lay the Islands of the Blestthat abode of eternal beauty and calm, where the life of mortals is most easy, where there is neither snow nor winter nor much rain, but ocean is ever sending up the shrilly breezes of Zephyrus to refresh man. But for us moderns who have explored this mighty river Oceanus, this unknown and mysterious Atlantic to its farthest recesses, the glamor of its mystery has passed away for ever; and it is eastward and not westward, through the Pillars of Hercules, that we now set our sails in search of the region of romance. It is to the basin of the Mediterraneanfringed with storied cities and venerable ruins, with the crumbling sanctuaries of a creed which has passed away, and the monuments of an art which is imperishablethat man turns to-day. The genius of civilization has journeyed far to the westward, and has passed through strange experiences; it returns with new reverence and a deeper awe to that enclave of mid-Europe which contains its birthplace, and which is hallowed with the memories of its glorious youth. The grand cliff-portal[Pg 3] which we are approaching is the entrance, the thoughtful traveller will always feel, to a region eternally sacred in the history of man; to lands which gave birth to immortal models of literature and unerring canons of philosophic truth; to shrines and temples which guard the ashes of those dead but sceptered sovereigns who rule our spirits from their urns. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41263
Author: Allen, Grant
Release Date: Nov 2, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Ball, E. A. R., -1928, Bonney, T. G. (Thomas George), 1833-1923, Griffiths, Arthur, 1838-1908, Traill, H. D. (Henry Duff), 1842-1900