Gibraltar is over 1,400 feet high and is composed of limestone. Under its present conditions of fortification it is declared to be impregnable. It looks it. At the foot of the great rock is a town of 30,000 inhabitants, of whom 6,500 are soldiers, composing the British garrison. In this town is to be found a cosmopolitan mixture of men, and the character of it shifts from time to time according to conditions of traffic through the straits. There is enough to entertain a visitor for a day. Life there for a long time must grow monotonous. The impressions, however, of a single day at Gibraltar are not forgotten. You carry away the conviction that, whatever might happen to anything else in this world, Gibraltar is likely to stay. SUPPLEMENTARY READING Spanish Cities _C. A. Stoddard_ Spain and Morocco _Henry T. Finck_ Castilian Days _John Hay_ Tales of the Alhambra _Washington Irving_ Spain _Edmondo De Amicis_ The Story of Spain _E. E. and Susan Hale_ Spain: Its Greatness and Decay (1479-1788) _Martin Hume_ Modern Spain (1788-1898) _Martin Hume_ A Record of Spanish Painting _C. G. Hartley_ Gibraltar and Its Sieges _J. H. Mann_ Gibraltar _H. M. Field_ [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO, SPAIN] _SPAIN AND GIBRALTAR_ _Toledo, the Ancient Capital_ ONE Rodrigo, last of the Gothic Kings of Spain, heard in his palace at Toledo that the Moors had crossed from Africa to Gibraltar. A little army led by Tarik landed in 711 and marched northward, conquering as it went. King Rodrigo, with a great force of Spaniards, met them in Andalusia. He commanded the center. The wings were led by King Witiza’s sons, who, hoping to recover the country that Rodrigo had taken from their father, joined the Moors, and pressed with them into battle. Rodrigo was surrounded and cut down. The Moors marched northward, taking city after city in the name of Mohammed, till all Spain was theirs. The last of the Gothic kings had fallen. From that day to this Toledo has never regained her position as the capital of Spain. In the royal palace Tarik found twenty-five crowns of the old Gothic kings, golden and richly jeweled; the Psalms of David written on goldleaf with dissolved rubies, and the emerald table of Solomon. Those crowns may still be seen; but no one has ever seen the other treasures. The Moorish kings, though they ruled Toledo mildly, had no end of trouble from the haughty nobility, who, robbed of their high position, were always in revolt against the conquerors. At last Sultan Hakim decided to punish his unruly subjects. He gave them a governor of their own race, who pretended to hate the foreigners, but was secretly in league with Hakim.