To provide against being carried down to the Mediterranean, had it fallen calm, which might have entailed a week’s cruise, we stretched at once to the African shore. Despite the fears of my Scorpion[46] pilot, and cook, we skimmed along the edge of the stream, and shaved every headland, until we reached the last point of the Straits, to which we had to give a wide berth, on account of the “race.” Inquiring the name, the answer was, “Punta Leone.” The man may paint the lion as he likes, but he has but one name to call him by. But why call the point that looks towards Europe, Lion? A few centuries ago, and the question would not have been to be asked. Then from this spot the spectator who observed the hordes ferried in an uninterrupted stream of galleys across, and beheld the rock of Calpe, which from here, as from the north, is the very likeness of a lion crouching on the point, would have seen in the figure the emblem of the event, and turning to the hill above to look whence the beast of the desert had taken his spring, instinctively must so have named it. FOOTNOTES: [37] From _Kabyle_, (tribe) came cabala, which signified both corporation and market-place. This tax was levied in the market-place, and was a repetition of the tenth, which by the Mussulman law was levied on the spot of production. [38] “The battle of Cressy furnished the earliest instance on record of the use of artillery by the European Christians. The history of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was employed by the Moorish king of Granada, at the siege of Baza, in 1312. It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249, and Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the close of the eleventh century, which describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and Seville.”--PRESCOTT. [39] See “The Merchant and Friar.” It has been imagined that explosive powder was known to the ancients. It is singular that the priests of Delphi could always protect their Temple against barbarians (who were uninitiated) by thunder and lightning; but never against Greeks (who were initiated). Pliny speaks of the art of bringing down lightning being made common after the siege of Troy.--Lib. ii. ch. 53. Philostratus, Lib. ii. _Life of Apoll._ 1. iii. ch. 3 says that Hercules was repelled by the Indians, who launched lightnings. The Gentoo code forbids the use of fire-arms.