The Alameda is quite at the thither end of Algeciras. At the end next
our hotel, but with the intervention of a space of cliff, topped and
faced by summer cottages and gardens, is the station with a train
usually ready to start from it for Ronda or Seville or Malaga, I do not
know which, and with the usual company of freight-cars idling about,
empty or laden with sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if they
were so much mere pine or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently
attractive hotel here for transients, and as an allurement to the marine
and military leisure of Gibraltar, "The Picnic Restaurant," and "The
Cabin Tea Room," where no doubt there is something to be had beside
sandwiches and tea. Here also is the pier for the Gibraltar boats, with
the Spanish custom-house which their passengers must pass through and
have their packages and persons searched for contraband. One heard of
wild caprices on the part of the inspectors in levying duties which were
sometimes made to pass the prime cost of the goods in Gibraltar. I
myself only carried in books which after the first few declarations were
recognized as of no imaginable value and passed with a genial tolerance,
as a sort of joke, by officers whom I saw feeling the persons of their
fellow-Spaniards unsparingly over.
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