Coming down to modern times, Langlès supposes it to have been used by the Saracens against St. Louis. In the work of Marcus Græcus, “Liber ignium ad Comb. hostes,” it is said to be referred to, and exactly described in, Julius Africanus, ch. 44; and about the time that Roger Bacon was amusing himself with crackers, an Arab poet was describing the granulation of gunpowder in verse, Langlès “Apud Salverte,” t. ii. c. 8. If the Arabs had had it from us, they would have taken our word, or given to it a constructive name. Their term is original--_Barut._ [40] Bastions à Oréillons were constructed by a canon of Barcelona, 1514. Vauban was born one hundred and twenty years later.--See LABORDE, vol. i. p. 58. The bastion is accidentally noticed, and not as then a new construction. [41] This practice was also known in Spain. “In 1445 a report was spread that the Jews had undermined the streets of Toledo,--through which, on the festival of Corpus Christi, the procession of the Host was to pass--with the intention of _setting fire to it at the time_. The mob would have fallen on them had not the authorities proved the report to be false, and prevented the massacre.”--LINDO’S _Jews of Spain_, p. 226. [42] The bas-reliefs from the Palace of Ninus, lately brought home, exhibit battering rams in full play, and archers:--so there is nothing new under the sun. [43] It is singular how sentences like this descend and adapt themselves to the times. A Carthaginian being asked the same question above two thousand years ago, answered “June, July, and Mago.”--Port Mahon was named after its founder. [44] I have only seen this book while revising these sheets for the press. [45] Miraflores. [46] The name given to those born on the Rock. CHAPTER VI. CEUTA. Oct. 10th. I considered it quite a feat to get at this Spanish key to the Straits, having been foiled in two attempts, the one by land, the other by sea: once the Spaniards stopped me, once the Moors. Like its _vis-à-vis_, to which it stands at right angles, it is a rocky tongue, joined to the main by a low and narrow neck, and pointing down the Mediterranean. It is all rounded and smooth: in its figure it presents nothing salient, and in its defences displays nothing formidable. The place derives its character not from the fortifications, but from the gardens, and each serves the purpose of the other. The public works are all laid out as pleasure-grounds, and the cactus orchards are disposed in alleys on every rising ground, so as to form stockades.