They stand
gravely opposed to any further incursion. Officially in all the Spanish
documents the place is styled "Gibraltar, temporarily occupied by Great
Britain," and there is a little town which you see sparkling in the sun
no great way off in Spain called San Roque, of which the mayor is also
mayor of Gibraltar; he visits his province once a vear, and many people
living for generations over the Spanish line keep the keys of the houses
that they personally or ancestrally own in Gibraltar. The case has its
pathos, but as a selfish witness I wish they had let the English make
that road through the neutral territory. The present road is so bad that
our state coach, in bounding over its inequalities, sometimes almost
flung us into the arms of the Spanish beggars always extended toward us.
They were probably most of them serious, but some of the younger ones
recognized the _bouffe_ qtiality of their calling. One pleasant
starveling of ten or twelve entreated us for bread with a cigarette in
his mouth, and, being rewarded for his impudence, entered into the
spirit of the affair and asked for more, just as if we had given
nothing.
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