FOOTNOTES:
[10] Some years ago, the writer of this volume, having been sent to make a trigonometrical survey of the uninhabited island of Lampedoza, embarked for Tripoli on board a small Greek vessel exactly similar to the one described by Bruce. The master, as is usual in the Mediterranean, had no instrument for determining his situation but a board, a piece of string, and three small pins, which were to be placed in particular situations, that no one on board understood but himself; however, his hand and head shook so violently from the effects of liquor, that for more than a day the vessel was beating about completely lost. In the middle of the second night, a horse, which was standing on deck, smelling the island of Malta, began to neigh most violently; and accordingly, the land, thus announced by this animal to his fellow-passengers, appeared in sight at daybreak.
[11] During the plague at Malta, the writer of this volume often heard the Maltese predict, many months before the festival of St. John, that the disorder would cease by that day, and so, in fact, it did. The Maltese priests, of course, declared that St. John had killed it: but the English doctors, with greater reason, attributed its departure to excessive heat, which, no less than excess of cold, has been observed generally to arrest the contagion.