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ROUND THE MEDITER
RANEAN.
No. X. -MALTA AND ALGIERS.
By F. C. Smitfi.
Arriving off the coast of Malta early on
the morning of April 0 we welcomed the
sight of the lovely little fiarbour, so well
knowa to so many Auscwlians. The
Gurcmne copied hero, so most of in kept
away from her the whole day. A largo
mail had accumulated here for us. By 9
o'clock vre were ashore. and scattered over
t\e narrow and steep streets of the quaiuc
little city. Tc was a pleasure to see
English shopeigns up everywhere here,
and to lind that nearly every one spoke
English, and that English coins were in
use. Of course the bcuutiful old Church
or tho Knights Templars, and the
Armoury, Museum, the Library, the
Opera House, and the rest had to be
visited, and the drive round the town to
the various battlements, a fine view of
the island and the harbours with their
numorouB shipping, the war vessels, the
old woodea training ship, tho little
steamer plying to and fro across to the
suburb of Sliema, and the imny boats
gliding over the waters. It was all
delightful. Tho main-street, the Sfcrada
Iiea'.e, was quite crowded with people,
very many Englishmen and women
being among tha passers by, aud a
good sprinkling of red-coat3 from
different regimeuts. The presence of
soldiery everywhere and tho sentinels,
drawbridges, and forta, made the military
character of the placs very plain. Malta
has three or four papers published in
English. Two of them are military organs,
almost exclusively, and tho other two are
very small. There is one short line of
railway belonging to the Government;,
six miles long, between Valetta and
Citta Vecchia. It is certainly one of the
strangest looking concerns 1 have ever
seen ; apparently the carriages must have
eeen service in the early days of steam
eornewhero, and been bought up cheaply
for this special Bervice. Id is crowded on
Sunday only, I was told, when the people
rido on it for tho excursion.
Tho drivo across to Citta Vecchia
is through walled fields— for here every
little field is wa'led-in— and there must be
many hundreds of miles of these stono
walls on the ninety square miles of the
island. Owing to this it is impossible to
Hce tho orange groves, for which Malta
is so famous. They aro all well out of
sight, and one would never know of their
existonce uhli-sa he were told. Half-way
to Citta Yecchia, the ancient capital of
the island, I stopped at San Antonio,
where is the palace of the Governor,
with the Government gardens, the latter
covering about eight acre^ and being the
largest in the is'and. Visitors are allowed
iu here, and Mr. Durward, tho English
gardener, kindly showed me through
the orchards, glasshouses, and flower
gardens. Most of the annuals that
are in bloom with us in October were
here in full flower, and the Australian
eucalyptus and sheaoak trees and the
Norfolk Island pines reminded me of
homo. Many of the wild flowers that
are common in England here also were in
full bloom along thu roadsides, especially
the daisies. In the fields of wheat and
barley I noticed many plants in bloom
of a pretty purple gladiolus growing
wild. Early potatoes fur the London
market are quite a considerable crop in
Malta. Somo of our passengers took
several basketsful of thorn with them
back to England. The fields of clover
(sulla), with their large pink flowers,
were a lovely sight. Only a few stunted
carob-trees were all that could be seen in
the way of tree culture from the roadside.
The old church at Citta Vecchia contains
some silver railings, which tho priests
bronzed over while tho French were in
possession of the island last century, to
prevent their stealing them. A number
of summer residences at Citta Vecchia
are used by the people of Valetta or by
visitors during the season.
In conversation with one of the lead
ing merchants of Valetta I found that
the people wore very proud of tne fact
that though the islands were classed as
British possessions, they were not con
quered by England, but ceded to her by
the people ac the end of last century.
Napoleon conquered Malta on his way to
Egypt in 17&5, and the Maltese, by
the help of the Neapolitans and some
British, drove the French out, losing,
though, 20,001) of their small population
in the struggle. Then they ceded the
island to England, and when the demand
for self-government was made by most of
the colonies in the iniddlt) of the century,
Malta was allowed to elecc part of her
Council. The elected members were in
the minority though, aud for years an
agitation to increases them way kept up,
and finally the British Government, a
few years ago, granted the messure, bo
that now fourteen members are elected,
and six only appointed by Hreat Britain.
Sinco then the Maltese have f -rmed a
militia corps of some 2,000 men,
officered by their own people, and they
aro very proud of it. These people are
a very strange race, of very mixed
ori.'in, having, it is said, more of che
Ar.ib than of the Sicilian in them.
I spoke of them as Italians, but my
friend protested that they were not and
had no sympathy with them : though fcho
uppsr classes and the nobility speak
Italian, the lower claasei speak a mixture
which is half Arabic. Notwithstanding
this, they are strong Roman Catholics.
They are most loyal to tho Empire.
Many Btrango little communities of this
Hort exist under cur wide-spread rulo and
bear evidence to its justice and its world
wi.de character.
Most of the laud of Malta belongs to
the Government, which took it ovor from
the Knights, aud a large part of the
revenue, 1 was told, is derived from
rents, there being no taxf& except upon
spirits, tobacco, flour, and one or two
other things. My friend was, he told
me, renting his office and tobacco ware
house from the Government, and had
no taxos to pay other than the renc
of the place, which was very small.
Things are cheap iu Malta. At one time
small copper coins culled grains, twelve
of which made a penny, used to be in use
at the place, and th«5 was the smallest
coin bearing the Queen's head that I have
Keen. Two of our passengers were
arrested (one was a lady), and taken to
the guardhouso for snapshotting the
fortress, but immediately set free again
on explaining. After an exceedingly
pleasant visit, wo left Malta at 3 o'clock
in f.he morning for Algiors.
Two days more upon the water, during
which we passed the Island o'f Piintel
larin, a convict atatiou between Sicily
and Timm belonging to Italy, then f«r
one wholo day close along the African
coast, when all the Bpy-glasses were in
use most of tho time. Two days of
porfecc weather they were, which tho
snapshot fiends utilized to tako a great
xnnnj deck groups. We were all very
disappointed at not arriving sooner at
Algiers on April 12. Our timo was 8
o'clock a.m., but we did not get off the
vessel till nearly noon, and so hrtd only
half instead of a whole tlay. With Mr.
Kingeford, Mr. J. Cook's Private Secre
tary, who*poko both Arabic and French,
I took a carriage almost as soon as we
landed to visit the celebrated Gardens
'd'Easai,' a few miles out of tho
city. These gardons contain the finest
collection of sub- tropical plants and trees
that I have seon, and with their long,
shady, leafy avenues were well worthy a
visit. On fcho way back we p-apsed some
lovely orange iinil olive gruvas, r.'.id steep
hillsides coverod with vinus juat com
mencing fco break into li-af. .Many fine
eucalyptus-trees, some n: them fuliy 100
feet high, gr-'ir along tho roadside near
the gardens d'Essai .and in Algiers itself.
Some of the species were in bloom. We
drove through the fine suburb of Mus
tapha Superior on our return, which re
minded mo vory much of places in Aus
tralia and California. Many English and
Americans live hero in tha winter, and
somo fine houses belonging to some of
our wealthy countrymen wore pointed
out to us. There is a modern or French
quarter, woll laid out, and with Euro
pean shops and houses and people ;
and a native or ancient quarter.
Iu the latter our guide showed
us the chains still hanging from
the cross beam of a large door of the
Dey's old palace, which in old times men
fleeing from justice or from the oppressor
could seiz9 hold of, and were free from
molestation till their case was tried. Two
ways lead from tho lower to tho upper
towu, one a long series of stone steps,
tho other by winding roads. A sniill
company of French so'diors pacbed us
near the Dey's palace, and my friend and
the »uido laughed at a remark oneof them
made; I asked what it was. u Oh,' said
my friend, ' they nave only spotted us for
Englishmen/' The remark was 'there go
some more Goddamns,' a very impolite
and bksphotnous characterization of our
nationality.
After passing them we went beck to
the lower portion of tho city, traversing
long, narrow, winding streets, steep and
dirty. Here the cookshops were in
teresting, being, like all their other
shops, mere holes in tne wall. In all of
th m there waa a ledgo of stonework or
brickwork, having several basin-shaped
depressions with grates in the bottom.
Fires were made in these basins, and the
cooking pans or pots and long skewers
of pieces of meat were placed over them
to cook. Through these thickly crowded
lanes, even European women, nurses, and
others with their charges, moved as
safely as in Paris, yet little more than
half a century ago thousands of
Christian prisoners were held in
captivity by the fathers of these
Algen'nes. Many of the streets were
arched over in places, ' the houses
being continuous) over them. A visit to
the market, where wo purchased oranges,
fresh ripe dates on the stems, and some
bunches of flowers, chen to the photo
grapher to buy views, and our time
was up. By *t o'clock we were aboard,
and by 8 anchor was up and we wore off
for Gibraltar.
No. XL-GIBRALTAR.
Again we gob a view of the Sierra
Madre3 mountains along the Spanish
coast, aud finally, on April 14, late in the
afternoon, viz., at G o'clock instead
of at 1 o'clock, we cast anchor
off Gibraltar. It was a great dis
appointment to most of us not to
have more tima ab Gibraltar. We had
not expected to iand at all, it was so late ;
however, we got an hour aud a half on
laud. Some took carringes and drove out
to the Neutral Ground, and back through
the town. I preferred to go and see the
gardens of the Alanieda, between tha
commercial part of the town and the
residential quartura of tho officers and offi
cials. I hadaltrayn pictured Gibra' tar as a
great barren rock, and was surprised at
these lovely little gardons, with their
sub- tropical trees a'.d plants and wealth
of flowers — well-laid-out bed6 — and in
one place a small depression or gorgis in
the steep mountain-side, with climbing
plants around it, a rustic bridge across,
and on the flowor-bed3 plants worked
into two large designs of the British Royal
arms and a castle. These gardens, with
the roads through thorn and the
parade-ground, covered a space of
fivs or six acres. In a small
grass field below children and their
nurses were playing. Climbing up away
from the gardens and overlooking a hedge
I could see on the other side, in the resi
dential quarter away down below me,
perhaps 150 or 200 ft., people playing
tennis upon two well-kept courts. Still
farther up, I got among the scrub and
brush that cover many acres upon the
Bteep Blope above the town, where I
plucked a large bunch of honeysuckle
and other flowers and a very pretty grass
that I had not met with elsewhere. I
was afraid to go farther, as time was about
up. The G-tronne lay away down in the
harbour, Algeciras some miles off on the
opposite curve of the Spanish coast,
Ceuta and the Morocco coast opposite,
and tho towering mountain ciitl behind.
I noticed olives, bananas, oranges,
eucalyptus, pinatrec, and many others
growing in the gardens and along tho
road si Jos. One of tho passengers had a
young soldier friend among the Engineer
Corps on the Rock, and driving through
tho town to the Post-office and back, he
told us thar. in a garden attached to one
of the barracks a nice little corner of
bananas and oranges grew, and the
monkeys on the .Rock, like ofher
monkeys that Australian papsrs complain
about sometimes, won't let the frui
alone. They often see the animals, he
said, but there was a very heavy fine im
posed upon any ono.killing them. They
were vory mischievous and curious, and
one morning the soldiers discovered one
of them out in the garden with a porce
lain jug over his head that he
couldn't get off. One of the Engi
neers was ordered to go and release
him, which he did, having to break che
jug, and getting pretty severely scratched
and tt«rn for his pains. Speaking about
the nmmements of our troops on the Rock,
he told how a little whil« before a number
of his companions had gone to eee a bull
fight on the Spanish mainland, and how
they sarno back disgusted and sickened
with tho sight of hor*es with Aide gaping
wounds stuffed with dried grass to keep
the entrails from protruding and make
them last a little longer. On the very
highest peak of the cliff is a cannon
mounted ; it stands out plainly against
the skv. Just lately cable communica
tion botween the signal station on top
of the Hock and the forts has been
established, and along the siout steel
rope a basket largo enough to carry a
man cr provisions, &c, is haul-d rapidly
to the top. Before, it took two hours
of climbing to accomplish this. The
clouds frequently obscure tho crown
and Sinks of the great rock from
the sea, but the defences havo been
so carefully studied and skilfully
planned that from an office at head
quarters the exact range of all the guns is
known, and they can be raiRO i or lowered
accurately aimed and fired from behind
the clouds by manipulating the various
electric apparatus, and sudden death and
destruction carried at vory short notice
to attacking fleets. Provisions, estimated
sufficient to last tho garrison for seven
years, are always kept stored in case of
emergency. The hut mail from England
was delivered to us here. It was dark
before we got aw.%y from tho famous old
fortress, interesting iu so many ways,
and especially to all Anglo-Saxons.
We steamed away over smooth waters
into the darkness, our band playing, and
as tho twinkling lights of Ceuta, Gibral
tar, and Algeciraa failed slowly out, a
spirit of sadness filled many hearts to
think that wo were so soon to part ;
that the pleasant companionship of two
months, which had noc been disturbed by
ii single disagreement or untoward inci
dent, was so soon to bo a thing of the
past. Many friendships had ripened,
a broader viow ot our fellows and
of foreign peoples, a greater
toleration of many things that in
our ignorance we had become bigoted
about, had beon gained. A shattering of
sonic pleasant illusions, a maturer ex
perience, ii greater regard than over for
tho power and the destiny of our race, a
study of strangely divers* characters, an
accession of hoalth and vgour to aome, a
lightening of tho pooket and a filling of
the mind — ull these things, every one
was agreed upon, had made our journey
of nearly 8,1)00 milo« n delightful ex
perience to ho looked back upon with
pleasure when many other things were
forgotten, and to bo repeated as
soon p.s possible. We wure going
to lose them all. There was the
ship's practical joker and inveterate
smoker, the credulous individual who be
lieved tho story that was foisted upon
him that the tish that we had for dinner
were always caught overnight : the staid
and solemn Scotchmen ; the spinsters of
proper demeanour ; the lively y ung
married women ; the merry middle-aged
bachelors with their whist »nd their
whisky ; the wealthy old widowers ; the
smoking-room coterie ; tho athletes who
always kept up the cricket ; the
'shadowd' from tho coast who left ua at
Moufc Carlo, and joined again at Algiers;
tho Lords of high degree, the young men
who behaved with discreet aloofness on
deck, and spent all the evenings possible
ashore ; the artists ; the lady who had a
different dress on every day ; the dear,
wonderful old lady who had travelled
everywhere, and '*Do-ir me, yes ; had
seen larger hewn stones than those at
Banlbec, and bigger monuments than the
Pyramids ;' the clever young girl of
eighteen, who had read uuny
books in French, German, and
Italian ; the genial and popular Sports'
Secretary ; the young lady, who was
always in anything that helped our fun,
whose good nature arid humour made her
a prime favourite ; tho lawyers and minis
ters ; tho merchants and schoolmasters ;
tho brewera and finauci-rs ; the two
Swedes inseparable as twins ; the lidy
chessplayers. There was tho ctiimer
Ublo that was always noisiest and most
mirthful : there were thu interesting
invalids ; tho gentleman of the long spy
glass ; aisd the man, too, who would in
forgetfulness stop you three times in a
day to tell you the same story ; the
stamp collectors and the snapshotters ;
the man with the animals who brought
lizards and chameleons aboard and
scared tho ladies sometimes ; stout
Liberals and strong Conservatives ;
the regular attendants of Sunday
service and the wicked people who stayed
on deck all tt.e time ; but I mi^ht inde
finitely prolomr tho inventory and tho
agony, s-- I will jut-t say that passing the
Peninsular coast we struck thu Bay of
Biscay — where Some of us wished w« had
stayed at homo— and on April 19 the
shoreB of old England wvro once more
reached, half of our company loaving
there while tho others spent a desolate
and mournful day more on the water,
parting next day finally at Fenchurch
Station.
Ab to the service' of the vessel, the
cuisine, che attendance, the personal
friaudlinoKs of the officers and their
willingness to help in providing for our
amusements, I can only say that we could
not have, wished for anything batter. Thr-
Orient Company ce'taitily did their best
to make us comfortable in every wav.
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