The land of the Bey

by T. Wemyss Reid

It was a lovely moonlight night, and I went up to the Barecca to enjoy the view from that point. Far below me lay the glorious harbour of Valetta. There were all the forts, commanding the narrow entrance, and ready at any moment to encounter an enemy; within their embrace lay the shining harbours; the two naval harbours showing their rows of immense ironclads and other swift-steaming men-of-war, including the Inflexible and the Hecla. Directly below me, in the commercial harbour, were thirty large merchant steamers. It was a noble sight. The white lines of the fortifications, the outlines of the great Naval Hospital, the Government buildings and the barracks, glimmered pale in the moonlight; whilst the twinkling lamps of the little boats crossing the harbour burned red beneath me. The whole scene was bathed in that atmosphere of perfect peace which somehow or other men naturally associate with the rays of the moon; though some of us have seen this same moon looking down, serene and cold, upon sights so dreadful that merely to behold them is to add years to a man’s life. Far away, from the deck of one of the ships in the naval harbour, there rang the shrill blast of a British bugle; and now quite near to me I heard a military band playing our National Anthem; for not far from the Barecca—where once the old Knights of Malta walked and looked down upon the splendid scene below them—is the noble palace now used as the mess-room of the Royal Engineers. Everything around me spoke of England, and of England’s might; not of that might which we see developed at home in our workshops and our factories, and our great provincial cities; but of that might by means of which she won this marvellous islet, set in the midst of this blue Mediterranean, and by which alone she now holds it against a jealous Continent. Most Englishmen at home are so far from warlike sights that they are apt to forget that their country has after all shown herself great in war as well as in commerce. But no man can forget that fact as he stands here upon the Barecca of Valetta, and looks down upon the great forts and the ironclads which sleep securely beneath their walls. I have said that everything reminded me of home; but I ought to have made one exception. There was nothing of England in that wonderful depth of moonlit sky; nothing of our own atmosphere in the exquisite balminess of this November night. When I reached my hotel I removed the cartridges from my revolver, and lay down to sleep in security under the shelter of the English flag.

Malta, Saturday, Nov. 5th.—I awoke this morning from the midst of a nightmare dream, in which I found myself resisting an attack from a large party of Arabs, led on—save the mark!—by Afrigan, who had been suddenly converted into a fiend in a turban. As I started from my sleep I heard a sound that recalled me to a consciousness of my whereabouts. It was the loud jangle of Christian church bells, and it brought home to me a delightful sensation of rest and security. The day was bright and hot, and the lovely peeps of the sea that you get from various street corners in Valetta were as charming as ever. Surely in all Europe there is no gayer, pleasanter place of abode than this white little island! The Union Club, which I visited again this morning, claims the proud distinction of having the largest membership of any club in the world. Nearly all the officers of the Army and Navy who have at any time been stationed in the Mediterranean are members; no subscription being exacted from them when they are not on the station. At this club, too, you may meet many of the men of rank in the military and civil services who are on their way to or from India, and who have taken Malta en route. There are but few civilian members of the club, though one or two of the English residents in Malta have been admitted to it. The Maltese themselves are, I understand, rigorously excluded. The appointments of the place are excellent. Indeed, I almost imagined myself in Pall Mall, and in a favourite corner of the Reform Club, as I sat reading the newspapers this morning. During the winter season periodical balls are given by the members of the club, and these are, I believe, the leading social events in the island. Not to be invited to one of the club balls is to meet with a grievous slight indeed. Altogether, the club is an institution of which Englishmen have good reason to be proud, and the advantages of which they are particularly well able to appreciate when they come, as I have done, straight from the semi-civilization of Tunis into the midst of the comfort and even luxury that abound here.

I had promised to lunch with Lieutenant D——— on board the Hibernia depôt ship—a grand old wooden hulk, into which the crews of the different vessels that are paid off here are turned pending their voyage to England. Having got a boat, and finding there was some time to spare before the hour fixed for lunch, I went round the Inflexible, and duly admired her somewhat ponderous proportions and enormous strength. It was immediately afterwards that I was witness of one of the most stirring and touching scenes I ever beheld, though doubtless it is a scene common enough at Valetta. My boatman pointed to where the Tyne, one of the noble government transports, was beginning slowly to move from her moorings. She was “homeward bound,” carrying some hundreds of time-expired men, the crew of the Thunderer and others, who had been kept in the Mediterranean for several years. As the great, stately white ship passed down the harbour, her sides and rigging lined with the sunburnt faces of the sailors who were starting for Old England, the crews of all the men-of-war she passed, clustering like bees upon bulwarks, yard-arms, and ladders, raised cheer upon cheer in such thunderous volumes as only the throats of Englishmen seem capable of giving forth. Many a yearning glance was cast from the other vessels as the homeward-bound craft steamed gently past, her farewell signal to her old comrades fluttering in the breeze; and I could well understand that these tremendous salvoes of hurrahs were meant as much for the dear mother country itself as for the men who were departing. Then, above the roar of thousands of voices, there rose the strains of “Home, sweet Home,” from the band of the Hecla. And so the good ship Tyne, amid all this waving and shouting and music—and with more than one wet eye wistfully regarding her—slipped out between St. Elmo and St. Angelo, and turned her head towards home. It was a thrilling scene for an Englishman to behold in that noble harbour, under that cloudless southern sky.

Alas! when I myself reached Plymouth, some ten days later, I found the Tyne lying there close to the spot where my own ship cast anchor for the night; and I read in the morning paper how she had brought home so many men from this vessel and so many from the other, and how “one death had occurred on board during the voyage.” So one at least of those who had set out so joyfully on that lovely morning, amid the strains of “Home, sweet Home,” and the hurrahs of thousands of English sailors, had reached the end of his voyage and the haven of rest even sooner than he had expected to do.

After lunch—one of those cheery, pleasant meals, flavoured with bright professional gossip, which only the ward-room of a man-of-war knows—my host and I set off for the Naval Hospital to see the grave of my poor friend P———, whom I left at Malta last year. It was a hot and exhausting climb from the level of the harbour to the height upon which the beautiful hospital is situated. What a treat it was, however, after seeing something of French sanitary arrangements at Tunis, to observe the delightful cleanliness and order prevailing here! After all, it is not merely by the weight of its guns and the magnitude of its forts that Malta impresses you with a sense of the greatness of your country. You see here what the English faculty of organization can accomplish even in the face of serious difficulties. Malta lies far south of any town on the continent of Europe; and yet its streets are as clean and as free from the horrible smells of Germany and Italy as any English town is. I think, upon the whole I felt more proud of this cleanliness of Valetta than I did even of the great forts, and that wonderful storehouse of grain in which, according to tradition, food for the whole population sufficient to last for seven years is always stored.

I started at four o’clock from Malta for Naples by the Elettrico, a beautiful paddle steamer, said to be the crack boat of the Florio line. Certainly it presented a marked contrast to the Sicilia, in which I had made the passage from Tunis to Malta. A beautiful saloon, large and airy state-rooms, and a handsome quarter-deck well provided with comfortable seats, gave the Elettrico the appearance of a very fine yacht rather than of an ordinary passenger steamer. That I had now got into one of the main routes of English traffic was proved by two facts: first, that all my fellow-passengers in the saloon—five in number—were English; and next, that the captain, a handsome, middle-aged Italian, spoke our language with remarkable freedom and an excellent accent. The Elettrico danced along over the waves at a wonderful rate. I sat on deck enjoying the moonlight on the water for several hours, but already I was beginning to feel the difference between the “sunny south” I had left behind me and the latitudes I was now approaching, so that I was by no means sorry to turn into my warm and comfortable cabin.

Sunday, November 6th.—I rose at six o’clock, to find the splendid snow-clad peak of Etna directly opposite to me. We were running through the lovely Straits of Messina, and the prospect on both sides was delightful. Both to right and left there were ranges of olive-clad hills, with white villages at their base, and here and there a farmhouse glittering in the sunshine far up the mountain slope. It was a civilized and fertile land on which I was thus looking, and it contrasted strangely with the yellow and lifeless hills of Africa. My view of the grand summit of Etna did not last very long; for as the sun rose higher in the heavens clouds began to gather round the mountain top, and very soon blotted it from my view. About seven we came in sight of Messina—one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It lies stretched in a noble semicircle round the edge of the bay; whilst behind it is a great amphitheatre of hills, which are wooded to the very summit, and bear on their flanks castles and farm-houses, churches and monasteries; so that you get here an admirable intermixture of nature and civilization. The city itself, with its forts, its cathedral, and its imposing line of buildings on the quay, looks wonderfully picturesque. The straits are at this point so narrow that they look like a river; and the mainland of Italy, with hills covered with thick chestnut forests, seems but a stone’s throw from the town. There were a great many English vessels in the harbour, all engaged in taking in lemons, which are at this season the staple export of Messina. But even more welcome than the sight of these English ships, was the appearance of my old friend the Charles Quint. I had learned during the passage from Malta that the Elettrico would remain two days at Messina, whereas the Charles Quint was to sail for Naples this evening, so that I might save a day by transferring myself to her. My mind was soon made up, and directly after breakfast I went aboard the French boat. I found the jovial captain and my friends the purser and the doctor sitting at their morning meal. They uttered a cry of surprise and pleasure at seeing me, and forthwith began to recount their varied experiences since we had parted at Susa. Both of “the Corsican brothers” had been deplorably ill during the gale which I had encountered in the Ville de Naples. They were in their element now, however, in these smooth straits, and with all the evidences of civilization around them.

And yet, are things quite what they seem in this beautiful Sicily? To my great surprise, the captain of the Charles Quint told me that yesterday, when his vessel was lying in the harbour of Catania, he was twice shot at from the shore whilst he was walking on the bridge! I expressed my astonishment at this statement, and asked him if he might not have been mistaken. He declared, however, that he could hear the bullets whiz past his head; and his story was confirmed by the purser and doctor. When I asked him what could be the reason for such an outrage, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “It is the affair of Tunis, I suppose.” Perhaps, however, there may be a little jealousy of a more vulgar description at the bottom of the outrage. This is, it appears, the first voyage of the Charles Quint by this route, and as it is known that she is a French vessel running in opposition to the Italian line, it is just possible that trade rivalry led to this resort to the Sicilian method of settling a dispute. The bitterness of the people here against the French is, however, intense. Whilst I was in the saloon of the Charles Quint this morning, the agent, a very handsome young Italian, came on board. He and the captain forthwith plunged into a political discussion, which it was mighty pretty to witness. The agent of course dwelt upon the perfidy of the French in Tunis, and charged them with having gone there simply to rob the Italians of a property which would very soon have been in their possession but for this interference. The captain dilated with warmth upon the ingratitude of the Italians, who thought nothing of the sacrifices France had made for them. They became so angry at last that I had to throw myself into the midst of the dispute as a champion of the Arabs, who wanted neither a French nor an Italian master. Then the sudden storm subsided. The disputants nodded their heads in acquiescence, and jointly admitted that the best solution of the difficulty would have been for both countries to agree to leave Tunis alone.

I went ashore for a walk through the town. The church bells were ringing with a deafening noise, and people were streaming along the streets in the direction of the cathedral and the other churches, in crowds which reminded me of an English town on a Sunday morning. Falling in with the stream, I presently found myself in one of the churches; it was that which had the loudest bells. It was crowded in all parts, and to my surprise I found that there were almost as many men as women in the congregation. The women were very handsome, but the men contrasted very unfavourably with the personal appearance of the Arabs among whom I have been mingling lately. A civil verger brought me a chair, and I sat down and joined in the service—as well as I was able. But I could hear little and see nothing of the officiating priest, and I fear my attention was turned rather to the magnificent silver shrines which the church contained and to the congregation around me, than to the high altar and the officiating clergyman there. The people preserved a very reverent demeanour during the service, though it was a little startling to see blind beggars being led round among the crowd soliciting alms. One could not fail, in observing the gorgeous magnificence of this interior, the wealth and beauty of the shrines before which the humble peasants bowed, to acknowledge that the Church of Rome knows how to provide for the wants of its members—knows how to attract and awe them. What an impression must be produced upon the wild mountaineer, who comes down to Messina to confess, by this splendid interior, by the roll of the noble music through the great aisle of the church, by the beauty of the painted ceiling and the silver images! What a contrast all this magnificence must present to the dull squalor of his daily life! Though it would be absurd to generalize from my limited experience, I must say that what I saw in Messina on this Sunday morning fully confirmed the statements made to me as to the intense devoutness of the Sicilians—a devoutness which is, unfortunately, not incompatible with a belief in the virtues of brigandage and of other pursuits and practices which, in more temperate climes, are looked upon with a certain degree of disfavour.

After listening to a sermon in another church, which, like that which I first entered, was crowded, I went into the Cathedral. It was empty, but I was allowed to inspect the magnificent high altar, one of the noblest specimens of Florentine mosaic in existence. Agates, jaspers, chalcedonies, and other precious stones, are here cunningly wrought into many quaint devices of birds and flowers, inlaid upon a groundwork of lapis lazuli; and as, in spite of the centuries which have elapsed since this chef-d’œuvre left the hands of the master, all these stones retain their pristine colours, the general effect is marvellously rich. I saw, too, the coffin of “Alfonso the Magnanimous,” King of Sicily, and the wonderful picture of the Virgin which the pious Messinese believe to have been painted by St. Luke—St. Luke, whose crumbling tomb was gravely pointed out to me a year ago at the foot of Mount Pion, in the midst of the ruins at Ephesus!—and I had a narrow escape from seeing sundry other relics more precious still, to wit, the arm of St. Paul, the blood of St. Mark, the skull of Mary Magdalene, and the hair of the Virgin. Was ever city favoured as this beautiful Messina seems to be! After a walk through the streets, with their quaint carved fronts and grotesque fountains, I returned to the Charles Quint, and in the evening we started for Naples. About nine o’clock we ran between Scylla and Charibdis, the one being represented by a lighthouse, and the other by a black rocky promontory; but I saw nothing of the terrors which the ancients beheld here. Just as I turned in for the night we were abreast of Stromboli, on the top of which a light cloud of smoke was resting.