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PANTELLARIA.

Pantellaria rises in the very centre of the strait which unites the Western Me­di­ter­ra­nean with the Eastern. The island is of volcanic origin, abounds in thermal springs, and, above all, in steam jets. Placed on a great line of navigation, Pantellaria might have become of importance if it had possessed a good harbour like Malta. To judge from certain ruins, the population was more considerable {335} formerly than it is now. There exist about a thousand odd edifices, called sesi by the inhabitants, which are supposed to be ancient dwellings. Like the nuraghi of Sardinia, they have the shape of hives, and are built of huge blocks of rock without mortar. Some of them are twenty-five feet high and forty-five feet wide; and Rossi, the archæologist, thinks that they date back to the stone age, for pieces of worked obsidian have been found in them.

From the top of Pantellaria we are able to distinguish the promontories on the Tunisian coast, but, though it is nearer to Africa than to Europe, the island nevertheless belongs to the latter continent, as is proved by the configuration of the sea-bottom. This cannot be said of Linosa, an island with four volcanic peaks to the west of Malta, and still less of the Pelagian Islands. The latter, consisting of Lampedusa and a satellite rock called Lampion, owe their name (Lamp-bearer and Lamp) to the light which, legend tells us, was kept burning by a hermit or angel for the benefit of mariners. In our own days this legendary lamp has been superseded by a small lighthouse marking the entrance to the port of Lampedusa, where vessels of three or four hundred tons find a safe shelter.

About the close of the eighteenth century the Russians proposed to establish a military station on Lampedusa to rival that of Malta, but this project was never carried out, and has not been taken up by the Italian Government. The population consists of soldiers, political exiles, criminals, and a few settlers, who speak Maltese.[114]

MALTA AND GOZZO.

Malta, though a political dependency of Great Britain, belongs geographically to Italy, for it rises from the same submarine plateau as Sicily. About fifty miles to the east of the island the depth of the sea exceeds 1,500 fathoms, but in the north, in the direction of Sicily, it hardly amounts to eighty, and there can be no doubt that an isthmus formerly united Malta to continental Europe. Geologists are agreed that the land of which Malta and Gozzo are now the only remains must formerly have been of great extent, for amongst the fossils of its most recent limestone rocks have been found the bones of elephants and other animals which only inhabit continents. Even now the island is slowly wasting away, and its steep cliffs, pierced by numerous grottoes, locally known as ghar, are gradually crumbling into dust.

Placed in the very centre of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, and possessed of an excellent port, Malta has at all times been a commercial station of much importance. It has been occupied by all the nations who succeeded each other in the possession of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean—Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Romans, and Greeks. But long before that time the island must have been inhabited, for we meet with grottoes excavated in the rocks, and with curious edifices resembling the nuraghi of Sardinia, and it is just possible that the descendants of these aborigines still {336} constitute the principal element of the existing population, which, at all events, is very mixed, and during the domination of the Saracens almost became Arab. The language spoken is a very corrupt Italian, containing many Arabic words.

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