July 19.—One day was all the trial our patience underwent, as on the 19th we were permitted to land and regale ourselves, like children, with touching and turning over the forms we had been viewing at a distance. From the point at which we landed, to which the fine streets of the city themselves descend, the ascent to the heart of the city is gained by stairs of vast width and breadth, but each giving a small and imperceptible rise. The whole street, indeed, is a grand escalier, of which the continuous houses of rich merchandise on either hand form the banisters. These stairs appear to be carved out of the native rock, and look as if a carriage and horses might safely descend, though I do not remember that they do.
We were now on shore, mixed up in the quarters of our brother officers, previously established here, and began a very pleasant kind of life, in despite of nightly mosquitoes and daily heat intense, reflected and reproduced from the glaring rock on which it everywhere smote; and this memorandum of the heat remains fixed in my memory—the noble streets of Valetta are extremely regular, and run in broad parallels at right angles with each other—when the sun, therefore, begins to decline, the streets which lie north and south are divided by broad lines of shade and sunshine—down the broad shade then the different parties walk and talk and lounge, with sauntering pace and head uncovered; but when one of the broad crossings must be passed, exposed to the sun’s fierce ray, you see every man put on his hat and dart swiftly across the bright space, as if escaping through a fire. Various commanders and married officers helped to furnish our society. Our new-found brethren put all their resources at our command, and mounting us on the beautiful barb or Arabian horses, or the scarce less beautiful ass of Malta, “showed us all the qualities o’ the isle.”
Stationed at Gozo was Edward Ker, one of my boyish friends, and one of our excursions was to visit him. We were delighted to meet, and though baked and broiled by sea and land in exploring curiosities, whatever we saw seemed to compensate our labour.
What pleased me most was a large steep rock, called the Fungus Rock, because it produces a fungus famous for its styptic power, and which the Grand Master (of the Knights of St. John) formerly distributed to the potentates of Europe. Though not for the fungus did I admire the rock, but for its stupendous eminence over a blue deep bay that lies still and unfathomable below. You pass from one rock to another at a terrific height in a basket sliding on a rope; and as I hung in the air and eyed the sapphire mirror below, I conceived an eager thirst to plunge into the cooling water; my companions consented to wait until I had descended and gratified my desire. When sporting about in this delicious bath, a good swimmer cannot conceive how people can sink in that salt sea, for the water seems so solid and buoyant it requires a great effort to keep below.
These rocks form almost such a cave as Virgil describes with such a thrilling stillness of words:—
Est in secessu longo locus: insula portum
Efficit objectu laterum; quibus omnis ab alto
Frangitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos;
Hinc atque hinc vastae rupes, geminique minantur
In caelum scopuli: quorum sub vertice late