The most interesting thing of all is Fort St. Elmo, with its chapel, its views, and its guns. It was in this chapel that the last little remnant of the starving, emaciated Templars, who knew they could hold out no longer against the besiegers, assembled to hear Mass and receive Communion before their last fight. The ossuario is at the Capucini; there are forty embalmed monks, and one chapel all of bones and skulls, which was very interesting. The Governor's palace is also worth seeing. At Citta Vecchia is a very interesting visit to St. Paul's, and the grotto of St. Paul's, where you see a statue life-size in the middle of the cave, carved of marble, and for a moment looking almost real: also a new Roman villa, quite Pompeian, but with coarser mosaics: the view, and the gateway, where is an old statue of Juno; last, and not least, a Maltese woman named Farujea, who makes gaudy mule-cloths, and, if you give her a large enough order, will make them at seven shillings a pair, three yards long, for which you give a much larger price in Malta. At a church called Santa Maria di Gesù, in Valetta, there is a crucifix, which has a legend that the poor man who made it did not know how to carve the face, and that an angel carved it for him; but I think the work was too bad to have been the angel's. There are any amount of churches. There is Vittoria, a very old Templar church, and the Canonesses of St. Ursula, which is evidently a sister house of our Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, New Hall, Chelmsford, Essex. There is the Jesuit College with about six hundred boys. Father Hornyold shows you what good little Englishmen they are training. There is the big 110-gun at Sliema.
On one drive Richard descended to Marsa; found women fishing and rowing, and men mending nets. There he found one Phœnician tank, and one Phœnician temple.
Though everything here, between the walls, looks like rock and ivory, on a slight coating of fertile soil grow fruit and flowers, and world-wide-famed potatoes. The streets are lively; the vehicles are very small, very high up, very uncomfortable, on four wheels, and are called carrozzellas. They are covered with an ornamented tarpaulin, and curtains for need. Their drivers look ruffians. The horses are small and strong, and though their lives appear to be of the hardest, they look mostly fat and well-kept. Many come seven miles into town with a lot of peasants, work all day, and go back with their load at night. The streets are all the steepest possible, up and down hill; they have no break, and if you stop at a house, the horse has to keep the full carriage back with his body. They ought to wear out very soon. The horse gets dry clover in the morning, a midday meal of bread, which the driver pulls out from under the seat and cuts up for him, and at night beans. The only real cruelty I saw was, that as they dare not flog or maltreat, they have sharp-pointed things concealed in their hands, and when no one is looking they drive them into tender places, chiefly to the beasts of burden and under the harness, and the loads look large.
Our hotel, Michael Cini, Royal Hotel, had good clean rooms, baths, good food and wine, reasonable prices, very attentive, and the best situation. I thought all the other hotels horrid. The women of the higher class wear a black silk dress, and a black silk mantle called faldetta, stiffened round the head, caught up at one side in pleats like a fan or shell; they look very pretty in it, and like coquettish nuns. The lower orders go barefoot, with their shabby dress short in front, and a train sweeping the street behind, and a shabby faldetta. Valetta is the centre, but Malta is divided into several suburbs with other towns, or dependencies—Floriana, Vittoriosa, and Senglea across the harbour, Sliema and Citta Vecchia; four smaller ones are Crendi, Macluba, Hagiar-Khem, Mniadra; and Gozo, a separate but smaller island. The most impressive thing that I saw to my mind in Malta was a military funeral—the reversed arms; the "Dead March" by the band; the slow swaying march of the soldiers; the respectful salute of every soldier as it passed the ramparts crowded with red-coats; the body on a gun-carriage, covered with the Union Jack, so solemn, so respectful as it should be, so different to Continental funerals.
We had been intending to go on Thursday, the 12th of December, and I here got a slight return of the sickness that I had in Lucerne last year, but nothing like so heavy, and Richard also had a little gout. There was only a ship once a week to take us to Tunis, so Richard was anxious to go all weathers, the sailing-time eleven o'clock. That morning the gales were dreadful, the sea mountains high; he called out to me, "It is fine enough to go." "Very well," I said, with an eternal quake, feeling so ill. Presently a message was sent up from the office to say that the weather was as bad as could be. There was a little hesitation on his part; still preparations went on. About an hour later came a second message from the agents, "The steamer had broken her moorings and had gone aground; no passengers were going, the hurricane was bad; should we mind transferring our tickets?" Richard looked out, and saw the sea was mountains high, wind howling, the rain like buckets. I shall never forget the joy with which I bolted into bed to nurse my sickness.
On Friday, the 13th of December, he deplores the death of Robert Browning.
Having taken leave of all our kind friends, we embarked on the 19th of December on the good ship St. Augustine, a French trans-atlantique. The going out was exceedingly interesting, and very rough. Malta seems to collect round it a regular swirl of bad weather, wind, rain, mist, steam, fog-clouds, and heavy swell round her like a mantle, but you have to stand out to sea to perceive it. Richard and I planted ourselves against a mast, to get the last view of Malta, but our feet were so frequently up in the air, and the stern of the boat hiding all view, that after a while we had to give it up. It gives you the impression of a huge sand-coloured rock rising out of the sea, and being covered with houses of the same colour. It might be a huge ivory toy carved for a museum. You are impressed by the immense ramparts, bastions, and guns everywhere; by the deep moats—one 950 yards long, 55 deep, and 30 wide—and its drawbridges. You feel its immense strength, its English solidity, the difficulty an enemy would have to take it. If you are an exile, your heart is cheered by the sight of the dozen men-of-war in harbour, and the five or six regiments, and the heights covered with the red-coats of our own nation. The natives have a superstition that Malta is like a large mushroom in the sea, and the waves perpetually beating against the stem will one day break it, and Malta will sink. We had a nineteen hours' run to Tunis, and the sea slowed down after five or six hours.
We had a merry dinner with the French officers, and a quiet night. The cabins were unendurable as to size—beds four feet nothing and very hard, no sitting or lounging places. If we had had very bad weather, I am afraid we should have suffered very much. The next day we were also fortunate, for, arriving at Tunis—landing at Tunis is not a delight—ships lie out half a mile distant, and in heavy weather I should think it would be very difficult; a steam-launch comes off and takes you and your little traps and puts you down in a shed, then goes off once or twice more for big baggage and goods; then you go to the custom-house to be examined. Here we hire two carriages and put all our baggage, great and small, in it, and tell them to drive it into Tunis. Then proceed ourselves to the little station, and wait one hour for a train, and a half-hour does the eight miles into Tunis station; then you go in a 'bus to the Grand Hôtel. Never go to the Grand Hôtel, only fit for commercial travellers, but go to the Grand Hôtel de Paris—nice rooms, quiet, civil people, reasonable prices. Thus it took five hours from the time of casting anchor to getting housed. I think we enjoyed Tunis the most of all, as it was decidedly the most Oriental.
On December 27th Richard deplores the death of our friend Baron Von Kremer, one of Austria's best Oriental scholars, which reached him on the 1st of January.