The following morning, accompanied by Mr. D. and Mr. B., I paid a visit to the general, who bore the old Iberian name of Lara; when a very interesting conversation took place. He was much excited by a reference to some discussions with the Governor of Gibraltar, about rebuilding the forts of St. Barbara and St. Philip, and took occasion to expatiate on the mistake of the English on the subject of Gibraltar. “By it,” he said, “you may irritate Spain, but you cannot injure her or benefit yourselves. You mistake these Straits for the Dardanelles: there is no padlock on the Mediterranean. Tarifa would command the Straits if they could be commanded: you blow up and abandon Tangier which, being to windward, might have served you, and hold Gibraltar, which can never serve you in any way, unless indeed your object be to convulse Spain, and fill her with hatred of the English name.” The gentlemen present dwelt much on the dishonourable nature of the capture of the place, and on the injury they suffered by our retention of it, and the use we made of it. One of them said it would be worth their while to give Cuba in exchange. They were surprised and delighted at hearing my opinion; but the note was changed when I referred to Ceuta. Though I had been at Algeciras on several occasions, I now, for the first time, visited the walls. I commenced on the southern side, and I could trace them around the crest of a low flat hill. The towers are close to each other, and about twenty feet square, of solid Moorish _tapia_. To the north they are more remarkable. A large tower projects into the sea, and is still forty feet in height. I had to scramble over solid pieces of masonry, lying about like fragments of dislocated strata! It is not the carefully-chiselled and mathematically-adjusted blocks of the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, or Roman architecture. The materials of these walls, not their building, is the marvel. One mass, twelve feet thick, twenty-five feet high, and thirty long, has fallen fifty feet, without breaking. While examining these masses, I observed in the water large globes, and thought at first they were urns, but on closer inspection they proved to be _shot_, and I found one twenty inches in diameter, and weighing about seven hundred pounds. The governor was kind enough to permit me to have it carried away--indeed, he offered me one still larger from the store in the artillery-ground. These, it is true, might have been intended for the catapulta; but gunpowder was unquestionably known at the time to the Mussulmans. Algeciras was rased immediately on its capture, and has never been restored. That event preceded, by two years, the battle of Cressy, which England gained partly by her first use of gunpowder. Was this art, then, learned at Algeciras? There were English auxiliaries in the ranks of the besiegers.