Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/188



OVERNMENT HOUSE, one of the Baedeker points of Gibraltar, stands amid its gardens on a shelf of the Rock about midway between the Alameda and the signal tower, perched on the very spine of the lion's back above it. Its windows look out on the blue bay and over to the red roofs of Algeciras across the water on Spanish territory. Tourists gather to peek from a respectful distance at the mossy front and quaint ecclesiastic gables of Government House, which has a distinction quite apart from its use as the home of the governor-general. Once, back in the dim ages of Spain's glory, it was a monastery, one of the oldest in the southern tip of the peninsula. When the English came their practical sense took no heed of the protesting ghosts of the monks, but converted the monastery into a 168