210 APPENDIX. 



ber with gratitude. I found all requisite facilities for my 

 excursions, and I soon obtained a pass, permitting me to 

 go over any part of the rock, of which I first took advan- 

 tage by visiting the excavations and fortifications to the 

 north. Accompanied by a serjeant of artillery, who served 

 as my cicerone, I ascended by those cleverly cut roads 

 which wind along the western face of the rock, and along 

 which cannon can be conveyed. After having passed the 

 last houses in the city, we met sentinels to whom I showed 

 my permit, without which no one is allowed to go on the 

 rock. I remarked by the side of each of these posts a 

 large pole, supporting a square mat, which at first I ima- 

 gined was destined for a signal, but the use of which I 

 found was to shelter the sentry (in summer from the rays 

 of the sun), who can move it, by means of a rope, which- 

 ever way he likes. This is one of those details of the 

 admirable system by which the English, notwithstanding 

 the insalubrity of some of the colonies to which their 

 troops are sent, preserve them in better health than any 

 other nation. A little above an old Moorish castle, whose 

 solid masonry has resisted both time and weather, we 

 entered the galleries ; and as we reached those that are 

 above the landport-gate, I had the good fortune to meet 

 with the apes, a rare occurrence, as they generally roam 

 about the inaccessible acclivities on the eastern side of 

 the rock, and only leave those parts when the cold wind 

 blows on that side. Of these apes I saw more than twenty ; 

 they remained on the rocks twenty feet above us, busy in 

 the midst of the bushes searching for roots and fruits. As 

 they are never hunted, they are not very wild, and the 

 noise we made by clapping our hands scarcely made them 

 run away. The denial from the Academy of Sciences of 

 a fact so well attested as that of the presence of apes in 

 Gibraltar, is almost as absurd as the assertion of a Spa- 

 niard, with whom I travelled from Seville to Madrid, that 



