The tongue is formed of a chain of six dunes, or hillocks, with a seventh considerably larger at the eastern point, on which is seated a small fortress. These are the seven brothers whence the name is supposed to be derived.[47] The fortifications, like those of Gibraltar, are directed, not to command the sea, but to defend it against the land. It has no level ground in front, swept by its galleries and batteries; but, instead, a hill approaches nearly to the glacis, and looks into the works. The landscape beyond stretches away, wooded and picturesque, to the foot of the chain or block of mountains which fill up this angle of Africa, overshadowing Tetuan on the one side, Tangier on the other, and ranging along the Straits. The only sign of human habitation is a small enclosure of white walls, with a tower perched on the green mountain side, like a city on old tapestry in some Arcadian scene. All was silent in that landscape, and it might have been taken for a panorama, but for the Roman _vexillum_[48] fluttering from the tower, which showed that a Saracen eye watched the keep of the Goth. Two thousand years before Gibraltar was heard of, Ceuta was an important place. It is enumerated as one of the three earliest of cities. Since the discovery of Gibraltar their fortunes have been strangely similar. Each has been wrested from the land to which it belonged. Each is held by a foreign Power to which it is useless. Neither has been won in honourable war: the one usurped, the other pilfered--the wrongful possession of each is the tenure by which the other is held. Spain retained Ceuta when she abandoned Oran as a set-off to Gibraltar, and England, who abandoned Tangier, must have lost Gibraltar but for the help of the Moors, which was rendered because Spain occupied Ceuta; so that, if Ceuta were not Spanish, Gibraltar would not be English; and if Gibraltar were not English, Ceuta would not be Spanish. The Spaniards lose their own door-post of the Straits, and seize the post of their neighbours; the English abandon Tangier (alone of the Portuguese possessions diverted from Spain), and seize that of the Spaniards. In the history of sieges, they both present the most remarkable incidents, from the unparalleled amount of power directed against the one, and the length of time expended in attempts to reduce the other. Both have at various times exhausted the countries to which they belonged, and the nations by which they have been held. Ceuta brought on the fall of Gothic Spain. Gibraltar was the immediate cause of the war of the Spanish Succession; and finally the smuggling trade of Gibraltar furnishes the school for the proficients for whom Ceuta is the prison.