It is seldom the traveler to or from the East can find leisure to examine the whole of the noble sights in or around Malta. There are abundance of excellent ‘guide-books,’ of which a supply can at all times be procured from the admirable library of Mr. Muir, for those who have leisure and inclination for such things. I shall confine myself to a short notice of those which, during my brief visit now and on a former occasion, I was able to examine.
One of the principal objects of attraction is the cathedral of St. John, the patron of the order of the famed Knights of Malta. It was built in 1580. Externally, it is a heavy-looking pile. It has a fine chime of bells, supposed to have been brought from Rhodes, and its internal decorations are rich and beautiful. The floor is mosaic marble pavement, chiefly composed of sepulchral monuments of the knights, whose figures are represented in white marble. The governor now resides in the palace of the Grand Master; it is a fine spacious building, well worthy of attention. The most striking object connected with it is the armory. It contains ten thousand stand of modern infantry arms, fit for immediate use. The most attractive portions of its contents are the arms and suits of armor of the middle ages: some of these are beautifully chased, and inlaid with gold. There is a singular piece of ordnance, an eight or ten pounder, made of a moderately strong tube of sheet-copper, covered over with coils of tarred rope. The gun was really neatly formed, and at first the singular nature of the material of which it was made was not apparent. It seems to have been burst in firing. No great wonder that it should. The library is said, at the time of the expulsion of the knights, to have contained seventy thousand volumes. There are in the palace tables, slabs, vases, and ornaments of various kinds, cut from the marble of Valetta.
The fortifications of Malta are most extensive and intricate; they are connected with the harbors; and on looking at their powers of defense, the mind sinks under the conviction that they are impregnable. Fort St. Elmo, the most massive of these works, contains accommodation for two thousand men. Few things are more dazzling or trying for the eyes than the rocks and buildings around Malta harbor; they are of an intense yellowish-white, without one particle of vegetation to relieve them. The waters of the harbor are singularly pure, so that the bottom is distinctly visible to the depth of thirty or forty feet. The Parlettario is the favorite resort for quarantine-bound passengers. It is a long narrow room, near the anchorage, divided by a barrier, where the gold and silver filagree-work, for which Malta is famous, is sold. Here also are shell cameos, bracelets, and brooches in mosaic, and a vast variety of bijouterie. The Maltese females are celebrated for the skill and delicacy with which they embroider in gold and colored silks, as well as for the beauty of the knit silk gloves, etc., which they manufacture; and on these a good deal of money is usually expended in the Parlettario for the benefit of friends at home.
There is a tradition that, from the time of the visit of St. Paul, Malta has been devoid of serpents or other poisonous reptiles. During our stay, we had evidence of the baselessness of the tradition—having seen a snake killed by a soldier on duty close by his sentry-box. It was about three feet long, of a dingy brown, and had very much the hue and aspect of the common cobra. We had no means of determining whether it was poisonous or not. Close by the anchorage were several sentry stations, and the neat economical penthouse with which the soldier was protected from the sun, struck me as particularly suitable for India. It is a light wooden stand, not unlike a music stand in shape, with a movable board, which can be fixed at any degree of angle, to shelter the sentinel from the sun. Without such a protection in summer, the poor soldier would soon be broiled to death.
So many days had been lost in the storm after leaving Gibraltar, that the time allowed us at Malta was limited to eight hours. We quitted the shore at four o’clock, and were on board as speedily as possible. The Oriental Steam Navigation Company had at this time but one vessel for the Bombay mail, as it is called, which plies constantly betwixt Malta and Alexandria—the Iberia. She is of five hundred tons burden, with engines of two hundred horse-power; a clever-going, clean, tidy little ship, with one of the most kind-hearted, attentive, and obliging captains that can be. And here I may be permitted a few passing remarks on the Tagus and Iberia, in which both my voyages were performed, belonging to the lighter class of the Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s ships. The Tagus is a fine powerful vessel, of nine hundred tons and three hundred horse-power, well kept, and a stout sea-boat. Nothing can surpass the politeness and attention of her officers; and the whole attendance has that air of thorough respectability which imparts so much confidence, and assures so much comfort, to the passengers—contrasting strikingly in the latter with the ragamuffianly crew which, on the Suez side, constitutes the servants in the government steamers. The Oriental Company give high pay to their servants, so as to make their service eminently desirable. They keep the establishment always fully employed; the heaviest punishment that can be inflicted on either seaman or servant is dismissal, with the assurance that he will never be employed by them again. The provisioning of the vessel is let out to a provider, who receives five shillings a-day for each passenger: the officers have nothing to do with it, but to see that everything is abundant and of the best.
We had a beautiful run of six days from Malta to Alexandria; our voyage bringing us within the farther limits of the Mediterranean, known as the Levant. The time occupied from Southampton to Alexandria was about twenty days, including stoppages.
Egypt. The land around Alexandria is so low, that it does not come into sight till we are quite close to the harbor of Alexandria; but some time previously, we observe rising, as it were, out of the sea, the windmills, Pompey’s Pillar, the Lighthouse, and Cleopatra’s Needle, with several towers and minarets. From the town westward to the Lake Mareotis, for the space of nearly a mile, the sand hillocks by the shore are literally covered with windmills. I counted about two hundred. The turrets are about thirty feet high in all, the length of the arms about twenty feet, breadth of sail three to three and a half feet. They have eight vanes each; and as they are set different ways, and so move in opposite directions in different mills, when tossing their arms in the wind, they look like a set of sea-monsters sprawling about on the shore, and striving to regain their native element. They are all employed in grinding wheat; and though rugged and rude enough in appearance, are in reality simple and efficient implements. They employ a single pair of stones, made either of French bhurr or vesicular lava from Sicily. They have no sifting or bolting apparatus: the ground wheat is received from the stones in a sack, and the flower afterwards dressed through a fine gauze sieve by the hand. I visited several of them, with a view to the introduction of a similar species of machine into India.
On landing at Alexandria, the traveler now feels that he is fairly out of Europe. He may have seen a stray and stunted palm-tree or two at Gibraltar or Malta, with here and there a Turk or Arab in his native dress: these last, indeed, may be met with in the streets of London. At Alexandria all the costumes are Oriental, European residents mostly dressing like Turks. Vast groves of magnificent date-trees, far surpassing in beauty those to be met with in Western India, stretch away in all directions. Long strings of camels are employed in carrying merchandise. The women are all veiled—covered over with that unsightly blue vestment which conceals the person and the face, leaving a pair of little holes for the eyes to peep through. Formerly it was the custom for passengers from the steam-packets to place themselves on the backs of donkeys, in order to get through the streets. This is all changed now, and the traveler finds a large and roomy van ready for his convenience.
The great square of Alexandria, where most of the European inhabitants reside, has a singularly fine and pleasing appearance, though without anything of which the architect can boast. The houses are built of whitish limestone, like Bathstone, only here the walls remain pure as when erected—taking no tarnish from the weather. In the centre is an obelisk of the yellowish-white Cairo marble, which surmounts a fountain. The residences of the consuls around the square are each surmounted by a flag-staff, on which on gala-days the ensigns of their respective nations are displayed. The French consul has a strange-looking corkscrew staircase surrounding his, and leading to a watch-tower which overlooks the town. Many of the sign boards of the shopkeepers, especially of the apothecaries, are painted with Greek characters. Here are situated the principal hotels, and hence diverge streets to all parts of the town.
Alexandria was originally built in the form of a Madonian mantle, with its longer side to the sea. At one time it contained a population of above half a million, of which half were slaves. It boasted of four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of amusement, twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetables, and forty thousand tributary Jews. Its public libraries are said to have contained seven hundred thousand volumes of books. It was accidentally destroyed by fire during the war with the Romans in Cæsar’s time. Ages of misrule under Saracens, and latterly under Turks, fell like a blight on everything in Alexandria, as on everything else in Egypt: and not until the era of Mehemet Ali, the present vigorous ruler, did the country show any symptom of revival. Since the beginning of the present century, the population of Alexandria has increased from seven thousand to seventy thousand. With its harbor and docks, it now possesses the appearance of a thriving port.