shore, wherefrom juts forth a rocky tongue of land surmounted by a tower. It is the Pharos of Tarifa, and in another half hour we are close enough to distinguish the exact outlines of the ancient and famous city named of Tarif Ibn Malek, the first Berber sheikh who landed in Spain, and itself, it is said--though some etymologists look askance at the derivation--the name-mother of a word which is little less terrible to the modern trader than was this pirate's nest itself to his predecessor of old times. The arms of Tarifa are a castle on waves, with a key at the window, and the device is not unaptly symbolical of her mediæval history, when her possessors played janitors of the Strait, and merrily levied blackmail--the irregular _tariff_ of those days--upon any vessel which desired to pass. The little town itself is picturesquely situated in the deepest embrace of the curving Strait, and the view looking westward--with the lighthouse rising sharp and sheer against the sky, from the jutting cluster of rock and building about its base, while dimly to the left in the farther distance lie the mountains of the African coast, descending there so cunningly behind the curve that the two continents seem to touch and connect the channel into a lake--is well worth attentive study. An interesting spot, too, is Tarifa, as well as a picturesque--interesting at least to all who are interested either in the earlier or the later fortunes of post-Roman Europe. It played its part, as did most other places, on this common battle-ground of Aryan and Semite, in the secular struggle between European Christendom and the Mohammedan East. And again, centuries later, it was heard of in the briefer but more catastrophic struggle of the Napoleonic wars. From the day when Alonzo Perez de Guzman threw his dagger down from its battlements in disdainful defiance of the threat to murder his son, dragged bound before him beneath its walls by traitors, it is a "far cry" to the day when Colonel Gough of the 87th (the "Eagle-Catchers") beat off Marshal Victor's besieging army of 1,800 strong, and relieved General Campbell and his gallant little garrison; but Tarifa has seen them both, and it is worth a visit not only for the sake of the ride from it over the mountains to Algeciras and Gibraltar, but for its historical associations also, and for its old-world charm. We have taken it, as we propose also to take Tangier, a little out of its turn; for the voyaging visitor to Gibraltar is not very likely to take either of these two places on his way. It is more probable that he will visit them, the one by land and the other by sea, from the Rock itself. But Tangier in particular it is impossible to pass without a strong desire to make its acquaintance straightway; so many are the attractions which draw the traveller to this some-time appanage of the British Crown, this African _pied à terre_, which but for the insensate feuds and factions of the Restoration period might be England's to-day. There are few more enchanting sights than that of the Bay of Tangier as it appears at sunrise to the traveller whose steamer has dropped down the Straits in the afternoon and evening hours of the previous day and cast anchor after nightfall at the nearest point off shore to which a vessel of any draught can approach. Nowhere in the world does a nook of such sweet tranquillity receive, and for a season, quiet, the hurrying waters of so restless a...