Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4) - Frederick Whymper - Страница 12

Table of Contents

The Mediterranean—White, blue, green, purple Waters—Gibraltar—Its History—Its first Inhabitants the Monkeys—The Moors—The Great Siege preceded by thirteen others—The Voyage of Sigurd to the Holy Land—The Third Siege—Starvation—The Fourth Siege—Red-hot balls used before ordinary Cannon-balls—The Great Plague—Gibraltar finally in Christian hands—A Naval Action between the Dutch and Spaniards—How England won the Rock—An Unrewarded Hero—Spain’s attempts to regain It—The Great Siege—The Rock itself and its Surroundings—The Straits—Ceuta, Gibraltar’s Rival—The Saltness of the Mediterranean—“Going aloft”—On to Malta.

In this and following chapters, we will ask the reader to accompany us in imagination round the world, on board a ship of the Royal Navy, visiting en route the principal British naval stations and possessions, and a few of those friendly foreign ports which, as on the Pacific station, stand in lieu of them. We cannot do better than commence with the Mediterranean, to which the young sailor will, in all probability, be sent for a cruise after he has been thoroughly “broken in” to the mysteries of life on board ship, and where he has an opportunity of visiting many ports of ancient renown and of great historical interest.

The modern title applied to the sea “between the lands” is not that of the ancients, nor indeed that of some peoples now. The Greeks had no special name for it. Herodotus calls it “this sea;” and Strabo the “sea within the columns,” that is, within Calpe and Abyla—the fabled pillars of Hercules—to-day represented by Gibraltar and Ceuta. The Romans called it variously Mare Internum and Mare Nostrum, while the Arabians termed it Bahr Rüm—the Roman Sea. The modern Greeks call it Aspri Thalassa—the White Sea; it might as appropriately be called blue, that being its general colour, or green, as in the Adriatic, or purple, as at its eastern end: but they use it to distinguish it from the “Sea of Storms”—the Black Sea. The Straits—“the Gate of the Narrow Passage,” as the Arabians poetically describe it, or the Gut, as it is termed by our prosaic sailors and pilots—is the narrow portal to a great inland sea with an area of 800,000 miles, whose shores are as varied in character as are the peoples who own them. The Mediterranean is salter than the ocean, in spite of the great rivers which enter it—the Rhone, Po, Ebro, and Nile—and the innumerable smaller streams and torrents.69 It has other physical and special characteristics, to be hereafter considered.

The political and social events which have been mingled with its history are interwoven with those of almost every people on the face of the globe. We shall see how much our own has been shaped and involved. It was with the memory of the glorious deeds of British seamen and soldiers that Browning wrote, when sailing through the Straits:—

“Nobly, nobly, Cape St. Vincent to the north-west died away;

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;

Bluish, ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;

In the dimmest north-east distance dawned Gibraltar, grand and gray;

‘Here, and here, did England help me—how can I help England?’—say

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turns to God to praise and pray,

While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.”

And the poet is almost literally correct in his description, for within sight, as we enter the Straits of Gibraltar, are the localities of innumerable sea and land fights dating from earliest days. That grand old Rock, what has it not witnessed since the first timid mariner crept out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic—the Mare Tenebrosum—the “sea of darkness” of the ancients? Romans of old fought Carthaginian galleys in its bay; the conquering Moors held it uninterruptedly for six hundred years, and in all for over seven centuries; Spain owned it close on two and a half centuries; and England has dared the world to take it since 1704—one hundred and seventy-three years ago. Its very armorial bearings, which we have adopted from those given by Henry of Castile and Leon, are suggestive of its position and value: a castle on a rock with a key pendant—the key to the Mediterranean. The King of Spain still includes Calpe (Gibraltar) in his dominions; and natives of the place, Ford tells us, in his “Handbook to Spain,” are entitled to the rights and privileges of Spanish birth. It has, in days gone by, given great offence to French writers, who spoke of l’ombrageuse puissance with displeasure. “Sometimes,” says Ford, “there is too great a luxe de canons in this fortress ornée; then the gardens destroy ‘wild nature;’ in short, they abuse the red-jackets, guns, nursery-maids, and even the monkeys.” The present colony of apes are the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Rock. They have held it through all vicissitudes.

The Moorish writers were ever enthusiastic over it. With them it was “the Shining Mountain,” “the Mountain of Victory.” “The Mountain of Taric”70 (Gibraltar), says a Granadian poet, “is like a beacon spreading its rays over the sea, and rising far above the neighbouring mountains; one might fancy that its face almost reaches the sky, and that its eyes are watching the stars in the celestial track.” An Arabian writer well describes its position:—“The waters surround Gibraltar on almost every side, so as to make it look like a watch-tower in the midst of the sea.”

The fame of the last great siege, already briefly described in these pages,71 has so completely overshadowed the general history of the Rock that it will surprise many to learn that it has undergone no less than fourteen sieges. The Moors, after successfully invading Spain, first fortified it in 711, and held uninterrupted possession until 1309, when Ferdinand IV. besieged and took it. The Spaniards only held it twenty-five years, when it reverted to the Moors, who kept it till 1462. “Thus the Moors held it in all about seven centuries and a quarter, from the making a castle on the Rock to the last sorrowful departure of the remnants of the nation. It has been said that Gibraltar was the landing-place of the vigorous Moorish race, and that it was the point of departure on which their footsteps lingered last. In short, it was the European tête de pont, of which Ceuta stands as the African fellow. By these means myriads of Moslems passed into Spain, and with them much for which the Spaniards are wrongfully unthankful. It is said that when the Moors left their houses in Granada, which they did with, so to speak, everything standing, many families took with them the great wooden keys of their mansions, so confident were they of returning home again, when the keys should open the locks and the houses be joyful anew. It was not to be as thus longed for; but many families in Barbary still keep the keys of these long ago deserted and destroyed mansions.”72 And now we must mention an incident of its history, recorded in the “Norwegian Chronicles of the Kings,” concerning Sigurd the Crusader—the Pilgrim. After battling his way from the North, with sixty “long ships,” King Sigurd proceeded on his voyage to the Holy Land, “and came to Niörfa Sound (Gibraltar Straits), and in the Sound he was met by a large viking force (squadron of war-ships), and the King gave them battle; and this was his fifth engagement with heathens since the time he came from Norway. So says Halldor Skualldre:—

“ ‘He moistened your dry swords with blood,

As through Niörfa Sound ye stood;

The screaming raven got a feast,

As ye sailed onwards to the East.’

Hence he went along Sarkland, or Saracen’s Land, Mauritania, where he attacked a strong party, who had their fortress in a cave, with a wall before it, in the face of a precipice: a place which was difficult to come at, and where the holders, who are said to have been freebooters, defied and ridiculed the Northmen, spreading their valuables on the top of the wall in their sight. Sigurd was equal to the occasion in craft as in force, for he had his ships’ boats drawn up the hill, filled them with archers and slingers, and lowered them before the mouth of the cavern, so that they were able to keep back the defenders long enough to allow the main body of the Northmen to ascend from the foot of the cliff and break down the wall. This done, Sigurd caused large trees to be brought to the mouth of the cave, and roasted the miserable wretches within.” Further fights, and he at last reached Jerusalem, where he was honourably received by Baldwin, whom he assisted with his ships at the siege of Sidon. Sigurd also visited Constantinople, where the Emperor Alexius offered him his choice: either to receive six skif-pound (or about a ton of gold), or see the great games of the hippodrome. The Northman wisely chose the latter, the cost of which was said to be equal to the value of the gold offered. Sigurd presented his ships to the Emperor, and their splendid prows were hung up in the church of St. Peter, at Constantinople.

GIBRALTAR: THE NEUTRAL GROUND.

In the year 1319, Pedro, Infante of Castile, fought the Moors at Granada. The latter were the victors, and their spoils were enormous, consisting in part of forty-three hundredweights of gold, one hundred and forty hundredweights of silver, with armour, arms, and horses in abundance. Fifty thousand Castilians were slain, and among the captives were the wife and children of the Infante. Gibraltar, then in the hands of Spain, with Tarifa and eighteen castles of the district, were offered, and refused for her ransom. The body of the Infante himself was stripped of its skin, and stuffed and hung over the gate of Granada.

The third siege occurred in the reign of Mohammed IV., when the Spanish held the Rock. The governor at that time, Vasco Perez de Meira, was an avaricious and dishonest man, who embezzled the dues and other resources of the place and neglected his charge. During the siege, a grain-ship fell on shore,73 and its cargo would have enabled him to hold out a long time. Instead of feeding his soldiers, who were reduced to eating leather, he gave and sold it to his prisoners, with the expectation of either getting heavy ransoms for them, or, if he should have to surrender, of making better terms for himself. It availed him nothing, for he had to capitulate; and then, not daring to face his sovereign, Alfonso XI., he had to flee to Africa, where he ended his days.

Alfonso besieged it twice. The first time the Granadians induced him to abandon it, promising a heavy ransom; the next time he commenced by reducing the neighbouring town of Algeciras, which was defended with great energy. When the Spaniards brought forward their wheeled towers of wood, covered with raw hides, the Moors discharged cannon loaded with red-hot balls. This is noteworthy, for cannon was not used by the English till three years after, at the battle of Creçy, while it is the first recorded instance of red-hot shot being used at all.74 It is further deserving of notice, that the very means employed at Algeciras were afterwards so successfully used at the great siege. After taking Algeciras, Alfonso blockaded Gibraltar, when the plague broke out in his camp; he died from it, and the Rock remained untaken. This was the epoch of one of those great pestilences which ravaged Europe. Fifty thousand souls perished in London in 1348 from its effects; Florence lost two-thirds of her population; in Saragossa three hundred died daily. The sixth attack on the part of the King of Fez was unsuccessful; as was that in 1436, when it was besieged by a wealthy noble—one of the De Gusmans. His forces were allowed to land in numbers on a narrow beach below the fortress, where they were soon exposed to the rising of the tide and the missiles of the besieged. De Gusman was drowned, and his body, picked up by the Moors, hung out for twenty-six years from the battlements, as a warning to ambitious nobles.

At the eighth siege, in 1462, Gibraltar passed finally into Christian hands. The garrison was weak and the Spaniards gained an easy victory. When Henry IV. learned of its capture, he rejoiced greatly, and took immediate care to proclaim it a fief of the throne, adding to the royal titles that of Lord of Gibraltar. The armorial distinctions still borne by Gibraltar were first granted by him. The ninth siege, on the part of a De Gusman, was successful, and it for a time passed into the hands of a noble who had vast possessions and fisheries in the neighbourhood. Strange to say, such were the troubles of Spain at the time, that Henry the before-named, who was known as “the Weak,” two years after confirmed the title to the Rock to the son of the very man who had been constantly in arms against him. But after the civil wars, and at the advent of Ferdinand and Isabella, there was a decided change. Isabella, acting doubtless under the advice of her astute husband, whose entire policy was opposed to such aggrandisement on the part of a subject, tried to induce the duke to surrender it, offering in exchange the City of Utrera. Ayala75 tells us that he utterly refused. His great estates were protected by it, and he made it a kind of central depôt for his profitable tunny fisheries. He died in 1492, and the third duke applied to Isabella for a renewal of his grant and privileges. She promised all, but insisted that the Rock and fortress must revert to the Crown. But it was not till nine years afterwards that Isabella succeeded in compelling or inducing the Duke to surrender it formally. Dying in 1504, the queen testified her wishes as follows:—“It is my will and desire, insomuch as the city of Gibraltar has been surrendered to the Royal Crown, and been inserted among its titles, that it shall for ever so remain.” Two years after her death, Juan de Gusman tried to retake it, and blockaded it for four months, at the end of which time he abandoned the siege, and had to make reparation to those whose property had been injured. This is the only bloodless one among the fourteen sieges.

In 1540 a dash was made at the town, and even at a part of the fortress, by Corsairs. They plundered the neighbourhood, burned a chapel and hermitage, and dictated terms in the most high-handed way—that all the Turkish prisoners should be released, and that their galleys should be allowed to take water at the Gibraltar wells. They were afterwards severely chastised by a Spanish fleet.

In the wars between the Dutch and Spaniards a naval action occurred, in the year 1607, in the port of Gibraltar, which can hardly be omitted in its history. The great Sully has described it graphically when speaking of the efforts of the Dutch to secure the alliance of his master, Henry IV. of France, in their wars against Philip of Spain. He says: “Alvares d’Avila, the Spanish admiral, was ordered to cruise near the Straits of Gibraltar, to hinder the Dutch from entering the Mediterranean, and to deprive them of the trade of the Adriatic. The Dutch, to whom this was a most sensible mortification, gave the command of ten or twelve vessels to one of their ablest seamen, named Heemskerk, with the title of vice-admiral, and ordered him to go and reconnoitre this fleet, and attack it. D’Avila, though nearly twice as strong as his enemy, yet provided a reinforcement of twenty-six great ships, some of which were of a thousand tons burden, and augmented the number of his troops to three thousand five hundred men. With this accession of strength he thought himself so secure of victory that he brought a hundred and fifty gentlemen along with him only to be witnesses of it. However, instead of standing out to sea, as he ought to have done, he posted himself under the town and castle of Gibraltar, that he might not be obliged to fight but when he thought proper.

“Heemskerk, who had taken none of these precautions, no sooner perceived that his enemy seemed to fear him than he advanced to attack him, and immediately began the most furious battle that was ever fought in the memory of man. It lasted eight whole hours. The Dutch vice-admiral, at the beginning, attacked the vessel in which the Spanish admiral was, grappled with, and was ready to board her. A cannon-ball, which wounded him in the thigh soon after the fight began, left him only a hour’s life, during which, and till within a moment of his death, he continued to give orders as if he felt no pain. When he found himself ready to expire, he delivered his sword to his lieutenant, obliging him and all that were with him to bind themselves by an oath either to conquer or die. The lieutenant caused the same oath to be taken by the people of all the other vessels, when nothing was heard but a general cry of ‘Victory or Death!’ At length the Dutch were victorious; they lost only two vessels, and about two hundred and fifty men; the Spaniards lost sixteen ships, three were consumed by fire, and the others, among which was the admiral’s ship, ran aground. D’Avila, with thirty-five captains, fifty of his volunteers, and two thousand eight hundred soldiers, lost their lives in the fight; a memorable action, which was not only the source of tears and affliction to many widows and private persons, but filled all Spain with horror.”76

MOORISH TOWER AT GIBRALTAR.

England won Gibraltar during the War of the Succession, when she was allied with Austria and Holland against Spain and France. The war had dragged on with varied results till 1704, when it was determined to attack Spain at home with the aid of the Portuguese. The commanders of the allied fleets and troops—i.e., the Landgrave George of Hesse-Darmstadt, Sir George Rooke, Admiral Byng, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Admiral Leake, and the three Dutch admirals—determined to attack Gibraltar, believed to be weak in forces and stores. On the 21st of July, 1704, the fleet, which consisted of forty-five ships, six frigates, besides fire and bomb-ships, came to an anchor off the Rock, and landed 5,000 men, so as to at once cut off the supplies of the garrison. The commanders of the allied forces sent, on the morning after their arrival, a demand for the surrender of Gibraltar to the Archduke Charles, whose claims as rightful King of Spain they were supporting. The little garrison77 answered valiantly; and had their brave governor, the Marquis Diego de Salinas, been properly backed, the fortress might have been Spain’s to-day. The opening of the contest was signalised by the burning of a French privateer, followed by a furious cannonading: the new and old moles were speedily silenced, and large numbers of marines landed. The contest was quite unequal, and the besieged soon offered to capitulate with the honours of war, the right of retaining their property, and six days’ provisions. The garrison had three days allowed for its departure, and those, as well as the inhabitants of the Rock, who chose, might remain, with full civil and religious rights. Thus, in three days’ time the famous fortress fell into the hands of the allies, and possession was taken in the name of Charles III. Sir George Rooke, however, over-rode this, and pulled down the standard of Charles, setting up in its stead that of England. A garrison of 1,800 English seamen was landed. The English were, alone of the parties then present, competent to hold it; and at the Peace of Utrecht, 1711, it was formally ceded “absolutely, with all manner of right for ever, without exemption or impediment,” to Great Britain.

The Spaniards departed from the fortress they had valiantly defended, the majority remaining at St. Roque. “Like some of the Moors whom they had dispossessed, their descendants are said to preserve until this day the records and family documents which form the bases of claims upon property on that Rock, which, for more than a century and a half, has known other masters.”

Rooke went absolutely unrewarded. He was persistently ignored by the Government of the day, and being a man of moderate fortune, consulted his own dignity, and retired to his country seat. The same year, 1704, the Spanish again attempted, with the aid of France, to take Gibraltar. England had only three months to strengthen and repair the fortifications, and the force brought against the Rock was by no means contemptible, including as it did a fleet of two-and-twenty French men-of-war. Succour arrived; Sir John Leake succeeded in driving four of the enemy’s ships ashore. An attempt to escalade the fortress was made, under the guidance of a native goat-herd. He, with a company of men, succeeded in reaching the signal station, where a hard fight occurred, and our troops killed or disabled 160 men, and took the remnant prisoners. Two sallies were made from the Rock with great effect, while an attempt made by the enemy to enter through a narrow breach resulted in a sacrifice of 200 lives. A French fleet, under Pointé, arrived; the English admiral captured three and destroyed one of them—that of Pointé himself. To make a six months’ story short, the assailants lost 10,000 men, and then had to raise the siege. Although on several occasions our rulers have since the Peace of Utrecht proposed to cede or exchange the fortress, the spirit of the people would not permit it; and there can be no doubt whatever that our right to Gibraltar is not merely that of possession—nine points of the law—but cession wrung from a people unable to hold it. And that, in war, is fair.

Twenty years later Spain again attempted to wring it from us. Mr. Stanhope, then our representative at Madrid, was told by Queen Isabella: “Either relinquish Gibraltar or your trade with the Indies.” We still hold Gibraltar, and our trade with the Indies is generally regarded as a tolerably good one. In December, 1726, peace or war was made the alternative regarding the cession; another bombardment followed. An officer78 present said that it was so severe that “we seemed to live in flames.” Negotiations for peace followed at no great distance of time, and the Spaniards suddenly drew off from the attack. Various offers, never consummated, were made for an exchange. Pitt proposed to cede it in exchange for Minorca, Spain to assist in recovering it from the French. At another time, Oran, a third-class port on the Mediterranean shores of Africa, was offered in exchange; and Mr. Fitzherbert, our diplomatist, was told that the King of Spain was “determined never to put a period to the present war” if we did not agree to the terms; and again, that Oran “ought to be accepted with gratitude.” The tone of Spain altered very considerably a short time afterwards, when the news arrived of the destruction of the floating batteries, and the failure of the grand attack.79 This was at the last—the great siege of history. A few additional details may be permitted before we pass to other subjects.

The actual siege occupied three years and seven months, and for one year and nine months the bombardment went on without cessation. The actual losses on the part of the enemy can hardly be estimated; 1,473 were killed, wounded, or missing on the floating batteries alone. But for brave Curtis, who took a pinnace to the rescue of the poor wretches on the batteries, then in flames, and the ammunition of which was exploding every minute, more than 350 fresh victims must have gone to their last account. His boat was engulfed amid the falling ruins; a large piece of timber fell through its flooring, killing the coxswain and wounding others. The sailors stuffed their jackets into the leak, and succeeded in saving the lives of 357 of their late enemies. For many days consecutively they had been peppering us at the rate of 6,500 shots, and over 2,000 shells each twenty-four hours. With the destruction of the floating batteries “the siege was virtually concluded. The contest was at an end, and the united strength of two ambitious and powerful nations had been humbled by a straitened garrison of 6,000 effective men.”80 Our losses were comparatively small, though thrice the troops were on the verge of famine. At the period of the great siege the Rock mounted only 100 guns; now it has 1,000, many of them of great calibre. In France, victory for the allies was regarded as such a foregone conclusion that “a drama, illustrative of the destruction of Gibraltar by the floating batteries, was acted nightly to applauding thousands!”81 The siege has, we believe, been a favourite subject at the minor English theatres many a time since; but it need not be stated that the views taken of the result were widely different to those popular at that time in Paris.

Gibraltar has had an eventful history even since the great siege. In 1804 a terrible epidemic swept the Rock; 5,733 out of a population of 15,000 died in a few weeks. The climate is warm and pleasant, but it is not considered the most healthy of localities even now. And on the 28th of October, 1805, the Victory, in tow of the Neptune, entered the bay, with the body of Nelson on board. The fatal shot had done its work; only eleven days before he had written to General Fox one of his happy, pleasant letters.

The Rock itself is a compact limestone, a form of grey dense marble varied by beds of red sandstone. It abounds in caves and fissures, and advantage has been taken of these facts to bore galleries, the most celebrated of which are St. Michael’s and Martin’s, the former 1,100 feet above the sea. Tradition makes it a barren rock; but the botanists tell us differently. There are 456 species of indigenous flowering plants, besides many which have been introduced. The advantages of its natural position have been everywhere utilised. It bristles with batteries, many of which can hardly be seen. Captain Sayer tells us that every spot where a gun could be brought to bear on an enemy has one. “Wandering,” says he, “through the geranium-edged paths on the hill-side, or clambering up the rugged cliffs to the eastward, one stumbles unexpectedly upon a gun of the heaviest metal lodged in a secluded nook, with its ammunition, round shot, canister, and case piled around it, ready at any instant. … The shrubs and flowers that grow on the cultivated places, and are preserved from injury with so much solicitude, are often but the masks of guns, which lie crouched beneath the leaves ready for the port-fire.” Everywhere, all stands ready for defence. War and peace are strangely mingled.

Gibraltar has one of the finest colonial libraries in the world, founded by the celebrated Colonel Drinkwater, whose account of the great siege is still the standard authority. The town possesses some advantages; but as 15,000 souls out of a population of about double that number are crowded into one square mile, it is not altogether a healthy place—albeit much improved of late years. Rents are exorbitant; but ordinary living and bad liquors are cheap. It is by no means the best place in the world for “Jack ashore,” for, as Shakespeare tells us, “sailors” are “but men,” and there be “land rats and water rats,” who live on their weaknesses. The town has a very mongrel population, of all shades of colour and character. Alas! the monkeys, who were the first inhabitants of the Rock—tailless Barbary apes—are now becoming scarce. Many a poor Jocko has fallen from the enemy’s shot, killed in battles which he, at least, never provoked.

The scenery of the Straits, which we are now about to enter, is fresh and pleasant, and as we commenced with an extract from one well-known poet, we may be allowed to finish with that of another, which, if more hackneyed, is still expressive and beautiful. Byron’s well-known lines will recur to many of our readers:—

“Through Calpe’s Straits survey the steepy shore;

Europe and Afric on each other gaze!

Lands of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor

Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate’s blaze;

How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,

Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,

Distinct though darkening with her waning phase.”

In the distance gleams Mons Abyla—the Apes’ Hill of sailors—a term which could have been, for a very long time, as appropriately given to Gibraltar. It is the other sentinel of the Straits; while Ceuta, the strong fortress built on its flanks, is held by Spain on Moorish soil, just as we hold the Rock of Rocks on theirs. Its name is probably a corruption of Septem—Seven—from the number of hills on which it is built. It is to-day a military prison, there usually being here two or three thousand convicts, while both convicts and fortress are guarded by a strong garrison of 3,500 soldiers. These in their turn were, only a few years ago, guarded by the jealous Moors, who shot both guards and prisoners if they dared to emerge in the neighbourhood. There is, besides, a town, as at Gibraltar, with over 15,000 inhabitants, and at the present day holiday excursions are commonly made across the Straits in strong little steamers or other craft. The tide runs into the Straits from the Atlantic at the rate of four or more knots per hour, and yet all this water, with that of the innumerable streams and rivers which fall into the Mediterranean, scarcely suffice to raise a perceptible tide! What becomes of all this water? Is there a hole in the earth through which it runs off? Hardly: evaporation is probably the true secret of its disappearance: and that this is the reason is proved by the greater saltness of the Mediterranean as compared with the Atlantic.

In sailor’s parlance, “going aloft” has a number of meanings. He climbs the slippery shrouds to “go aloft;” and when at last, like poor Tom Bowling, he lies a “sheer hulk,” and—

“His body’s under hatches,

His soul has ‘gone aloft.’ ”

“Going-aloft” in the Mediterranean has a very different meaning: it signifies passing upwards and eastwards from the Straits of Gibraltar.82 We are now going aloft to Malta, a British possession hardly second to that of the famed Rock itself.

MALTA.