The Story of Malta

Maturin M. Ballou

The Story of Malta

PREFACE

Perhaps the strongest recommendation for faithful books of travel lies in the fact that intelligent people consult the best maps while perusing them, and thus familiarize themselves with important facts in geography. Such books are especially advantageous to the young, too many of whom are inclined to neglect this all-important branch of education. Although Malta appears upon the map as a mere speck, on account of its superficial area being comparatively so diminutive, yet the patient reader who is not already familiar with its absorbing story will find herein a new field of historic and romantic interest, exceeding that which pertains to any other of the numerous Mediterranean islands. In all his experience as a traveler, the author has failed to discover any locality of similar dimensions which embraces so thrilling a history, or whose present aspect is more attractive and picturesque. Since the opening of the Suez Canal, it has become the maritime halfway house between Europe and Asia, which imparts to it vast commercial importance, and causes it to be visited by many people who, but for the force of circumstances, would probably never have become conversant with its singularly beautiful surroundings, or its fascinating capital, the unique city of Valletta.

Specialists, students of antiquity, geologists, and lovers of the early development of art, together with many others, visit Malta to avail themselves of its rare old library; to view the mouldering monuments of a commercial people who lived here three thousand years ago; to examine the peculiar geological strata of the island; to study its quaint examples of statuary, tapestry, and paintings; to collect skeletons and bones of extinct races of animals, still to be found in its spacious caves and beneath the surface of the ground. The average tourist has not been attracted hither, and little realizes the pleasurable experiences which await the intelligent and observant visitor.

While preparing these pages for the press, the author has received a letter, written by an experienced traveler, from which he quotes as follows: "The reading of your book entitled 'Due North' promptly sent me to view the glories of the 'Midnight Sun,' at the North Cape. I thank you sincerely for the inspiration." Perhaps these pen-pictures of the Queen of the Mediterranean may influence others in a similar manner.

M. M. B.

CHAPTER I

Geographical Position of Malta. – A Pivotal Location. – Warden of the Great Inland Sea. – First Sight of the Group. – How to reach the Island. – Early Inhabitants. – Language of the People. – Phœnician Colonists. – Arabian Dynasty. – A Piratical Rendezvous. – Suez Canal. – Two Sorts of Travelers. – Gibraltar. – Harbor of Valletta. – A Place of Arms. – Various Bays of the Group. – Dimensions. – Extensive Commerce of the Port.

The island of Malta has been known by several significant appellations during the centuries in which it has claimed a place upon the pages of history. In our day it is often called the Queen of the Mediterranean, not only because of its commanding position, dominating, as it were, the coasts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but also as possessing a degree of historical and present picturesqueness unsurpassed by any land between the Columns of Hercules and the coast of Asia Minor. To the north lie Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica; to the east are Greece, Turkey, and Syria; and to the southwest is the coast of Barbary; thus forming an amphitheatre of nations. Malta is therefore a pivotal location about which vast interests revolve. The loving, patriotic Maltese proudly call this shadeless island in the middle of the sea, Fior del Mondo, – "the flower of the world." Yet it must be confessed that the downright ignorance of these natives concerning the rest of the globe is appalling. To the critical reader of history it is as much classic ground as Athens or Rome. Situated twenty-five hundred miles from England, the government fully realizes its importance as an effective base of naval and military operations, and as an essential outpost for keeping open the route to India. In fact, Malta is the strongest link in the chain which connects Great Britain with her possessions in the East.

During the Crimean war, it was made an English sanitarium for the sick and wounded who were invalided in that protracted struggle between the Western powers and Russia. We regarded it, after India, as one of the most important of the English dependencies. It is in no sense a colony, but is much more of a military focus than Gibraltar. Naval men consider Malta to be the warden of that great aqueous expanse, embracing nearly a million square miles, which separates the continent of Europe from the northern coast of Africa, the Magnum Mare of the Old World, – a sea whose memorable shores are thickly strewn with bays and cities, each one of which teems with historic and poetic interest. It is not the tranquil and lake-like expanse which it is popularly considered, but is capable of nearly as fierce commotion as the Atlantic. Another property usually but incorrectly attributed to the Mediterranean is that it is tideless, but it actually responds to the same lunar influence that affects the great waters of both hemispheres. The fact of its being so much warmer than the open ocean is probably owing in part to the absence of polar currents. The tide is most noticeable in the Gulf of Venice, where the rise and fall is from three to four feet.

The author, while on a journey round the world, was coming from the East when he first sighted Malta. It was before daylight, early in the spring of the year. A ship's officer pointed out what appeared like a bright star on the horizon, but which soon proved to be the clear, far-reaching fortress-light of St. Elmo, "with strange, unearthly splendor in the glare." It seemed like the eye of a Cyclops peering through the darkness, as though one of Vulcan's workmen, fresh from the fiery furnace beneath Sicilian Ætna, not far away, had come forth to gaze upon the progress of the night.

In seeking to reach Malta from Boston or New York, the island would be approached from the opposite direction. After crossing the Atlantic to England, the most direct route is by the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Line, by way of Marseilles. These vessels depart every alternate Thursday, and make the passage in eight days, touching at Gibraltar, forming, perhaps, the most economical route. If a land journey is preferred, the steamer can be taken at Naples, where the vessels of this line touch to receive and deliver the regular mails. This charming Italian city can be reached from London by way of Calais, Mont Cenis, and Turin. The island, however, is accessible from England and the continent by many different routes, as the fancy of the traveler may dictate.

So much in the way of introduction it seems proper to state for the information of the general reader.

Malta holds an important place in the records of history as far back as three thousand years ago, during which period the island has been constantly associated with heroic names and startling events, playing a prominent and tragic part in the mighty drama of the past. The transient visitor to the group, however well read, fails to remember its vivid story in detail, and to apply it intelligibly. He is too ardently stimulated by the unique surroundings, the strange mingling of races, the Oriental style of the architecture, the curious site of the capital, and the general glamour of local color impregnating everything, to pause for comparison or analysis. Like one sitting down to a table teeming with choice viands, he is at a loss where to begin to appease his voracious appetite. It is while engaged in quiet afterthought, when reviewing the experiences gained upon the spot, that the fullness of interest is aroused, as he turns to the quaint pages of many an ancient tome, to seek for the story of its earliest inhabitants. We can recall no other country which has experienced so many and such notable changes among its rulers, though it requires but little research to discover the paucity of detailed information concerning its early history, which is absolutely lost in the mist of ages.

Three thousand years – this is not looking backward very far, comparatively speaking. The author has seen objects of Egyptian production, in the Boolak Museum, on the banks of the Nile, which were six thousand years old. The Sphinx, standing in its grim loneliness ten miles from Cairo, is still older, while in the South Sea Islands there are prehistoric ruins which are believed to antedate the Sphinx. The probability is that a degree of antiquity applies to this globe so inconceivably remote that, like stellar distances, the mind can hardly realize the truth. Professor Agassiz talked confidently in his day of a million years having been required to bring about the present conditions of the earth. Since Agassiz's time geologists and scientists generally do not hesitate to add the plural to million, guided by the light of modern progress and discovery.

Such ancient mention of Malta as does exist is crowded with fable, like the early history of Greece and Rome. An example of this is found in the popular legend of its having once been inhabited by a cyclopean tribe, a race of giants, "half human, half divine." These extravagant legends of poetic history impress us as having, perhaps, some foundation in truth. It is not falsehood which tradition seeks to perpetuate. Possibility, if not probability, is required of the wildest romancers. Truth and fable run in nearly parallel lines. Jules Verne, when he wrote some of his seemingly extravagant stories, scarcely thought that he was simply anticipating possible circumstances which would so soon become realities. The reading world hardly believed that his "Round the World in Eighty Days" was strictly within the lines of truth; yet that record has been reduced.

Malta is known to have been the vassal of ten different nationalities. What the character of these various dynasties may have been can only be conjectured. There are no records extant by which we can learn aught in detail concerning them. A few half-ruined monuments, a series of rock tombs, the débris of mouldering temples, or a nearly obliterated underground city, "rich with the spoils of time," – these are significant suggestions which the student of the past in vain essays to translate into coherency. The most casual visitor is moved to thoughtfulness as he contemplates these half-effaced tokens of a long dead and buried race, who had no Froissart to hand down their story through the lengthening vista of ages. First came the Phœnicians, who were here many centuries before the birth of Christ, and who were the earliest known colonists of Malta. Their sovereignty is believed to have extended through a period of seven hundred years. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, and Arabs succeeded each other in the order in which they are named, followed by German, Spanish, French, and English possessors, the latter having maintained an uninterrupted mastership since the beginning of the present century. To a nation whose naval supremacy is its greatest pride, and which already holds Gibraltar, the key to the Mediterranean, the holding of Malta is of inestimable importance. With these facts in view, it is not surprising that its security is so jealously guarded by England. Perhaps the boastful threat of the first Napoleon, that he would make of the Mediterranean a French lake, has not yet been forgotten. At present it is strictly an English dependency, though surrounded by a score of other nationalities. With the entrance and exit in her hands, besides holding this unequaled central dépôt of arms, no nation could hope successfully to dispute the control of the Mediterranean with Great Britain. That nationality not only dominates the great marine highway of the south of Europe, but also the coast of Asia.

Malta is situated in the middle of the great highway of commerce between the East and the West, and is the most southerly land in Europe, on about the 36th parallel of north latitude, its longitude being 15° east. The neighboring nations have often and fiercely contested for the sovereignty of Malta, until its soil has been irrigated by the life-tide of human beings. How strange the history it presents to us, what ages of melodramatic vicissitudes, emphasized by the discord of warring cannon and of dying men! How many and how varied the changes it has known in a period of thrice ten hundred years! Mutability is written on all things human, while Time, the remorseless iconoclast, performs the bidding of Destiny.

It would naturally be expected that the language of a people who have had such a peculiar experience as the Maltese should be a conglomerate, formed from various Asiatic and European tongues. It seems to be a mixture of Italian and Arabic, mingled with the patois which is common in the Grecian Archipelago; but English being the current official language, it prevails among the educated classes, and is also in general use for business purposes, especially in the retail shops of Valletta, the capital. The language of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto is still unknown to the common people, though generally understood and spoken in society. The masses adhere tenaciously to their native dialect, even after they have emigrated to other countries. In Gibraltar they pick up just enough of Spanish to make their wants known, as they do in other Mediterranean ports to which chance has brought them.

As is often the case in Eastern countries and oceanic islands, Malta is used both for the name of the island and that of the capital. The one collective term answers for the entire group; so with the beautiful island of Ceylon; people do not usually speak of Colombo, its capital, but of Ceylon, as designating the whole island. Martinique is sufficiently distinctive as regards that picturesque West Indian island; St. Pierre and Fort de France, the commercial and political capitals, are rarely mentioned. Thus Valletta has little significance to the world at large, while Malta is familiar enough.

The Phœnicians, the Greeks, and the Romans, each left tangible evidences of their sovereignty here. The ubiquitous Phœnicians, who are considered to have been the earliest of the commercial tribes, were by no means entirely free from the charge of piracy, which seems to have been almost universal upon this central sea in the earlier and middle ages. Strange, that sea-robbery should have been one of the active agencies in the world's advancement! It is said that all progress since the beginning has been from scaffold to scaffold. In our day no lapse from honorable commercial methods is so abhorrent to civilized nations, and no crimes are more severely punished. Next to the Turks and Algerines, the Greeks were the most reprehensible in this respect, – a people whose love of "freedom" has become a proverb; a country which has enjoyed more of American sympathy and material aid than any other, but whose sons in former times never failed to adopt a corsair life when opportunity offered.

There are very few monuments relating to the occupancy of these islands by the Arabs, who were settled here for more than two centuries. The most durable memorial of that people is their language, a tongue unsurpassed in poetic beauty of expression. After the lapse of ten centuries it is still spoken among the natives, and is held to be remarkably pure, especially in Gozo, the sister isle of Malta. Though it is customary to say that the natives speak Arabic, still it can hardly be a pure tongue; and yet the newly arrived Arabs can understand the Maltese, proving that the basis of the two languages must be identical. An educated resident took occasion to prove to the author that here and there one could select words from the current speech of the common people, the derivation of which was clearly Phœnician. Residents of the capital who are engaged in commerce, and many others of intelligence, speak English, French, and Italian fluently, and most of them speak the native tongue as well. The facility for acquiring foreign languages is a national trait. Cultured Maltese are surpassed only in this respect by educated Russians.

Italian is the official tongue of the law courts, though English is gradually superseding it. Why the former language should be persisted in, it would be difficult to say, though it is the key to all those common in the Levant. The Maltese are not Italians, and never were. Not to put too fine a point upon the matter, they are Arabs in their manners, customs, and language. When the Knights of St. John were sovereign here, nearly four hundred years ago, there was a certain degree of consistency in the adoption of Italian as the current or court language. The intimate relations of the order with the Pope and with Rome were a predisposing influence which could not but have its effect, besides which there was the close proximity of the mainland of Italy; but to continue it as the recognized language of the courts to-day is to sustain an anomaly.

More is known of the Arab dynasty than of any of its predecessors. As soon as this people had gained possession of Malta, they promptly exterminated the Greeks, putting all the male inhabitants to the sword, while making slaves of their wives and children. They were careful to conciliate the native population, even permitting them to worship after the dictates of their own religious convictions, which is a very rare concession among Mohammedans, where they have the power to do otherwise. The Arabs chiefly prized this group of islands for the safe harbors which it afforded in the pursuit of their one occupation, namely, that of undisguised piracy. Their constant raids upon the coast of Italy caused many expeditions to be fitted out from that country for the purpose of driving them away from their stronghold; but as we have said, the Arabs maintained their sovereignty here for over two hundred years. Strong defensive works were erected by them on the present site of Fort St. Angelo, at the entrance of the harbor of Valletta, on the island of Gozo, and at the old capital of the group, Città Vecchia, also known as Cività Notabile, – "Illustrious City," which appellation, in the days of its glory, was probably not inappropriate. This old city, near the middle of the island, was a fortified metropolis centuries before the Arabs came, its defensive walls being contracted by them so that they might be the more easily manned and defended. To visit Città Vecchia to-day is like the realization of a mediæval dream.

A glance at the map will show the reader that the strategic importance of these Maltese islands is almost unequaled. Lying in the middle of the vast and famous inland sea, – happily designated as the cradle of civilization, – within a brief sail of three continents, sixty miles from the shore of Sicily, one hundred and ninety from the mainland of Italy, two hundred from the nearest point of Africa, and equidistant from Constantinople and Marseilles, Valletta has naturally become a popular port of call, as well as an important coaling station for many lines of steamships. This is particularly the case with those bound to or from England and India by way of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. The opening of that famous and all-important waterway insured the lasting commercial prosperity of the Maltese group. From that day to the present its material growth has been steadily progressing and its population increasing. It is well known how much the Suez Canal promotes the commerce of Europe and Asia, but comparatively few people realize that we have in America a similar means of transportation which is the avenue of a much larger marine traffic. We refer to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, which connects the State of Michigan with the Canadian Province of Ontario. The aggregate of the tonnage which annually passes through the American artificial river is shown by government statistics to far exceed that of the great canal which connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

Malta is the halfway station, as it were, of the P. & O. line between London and Bombay; but there is other regular communication between the group and England, as well as mail steamships running to Marseilles, Alexandria, Belgium, Tripoli, and Tunis. Occasionally a single passenger or a small party of tourists stop at Valletta until the next packet touches here, enabling them to resume their journey east or west; but it is rather surprising how few visitors to Malta remain long enough to see one half of its many objects of interest, while others, who might easily do so, will not even take the trouble to land. One can sail half round the globe without finding a locality from which such a store of historic information and pleasurable memories can be brought away, or whose present aspect is more inviting. People who have no poetic sense or delicate appreciation will not find these qualities ready furnished for them, either at home or abroad. The dull, prosaic individual whose ideas run only in a practical groove, who lives purely in the commonplace, will be impressed by travel much after the fashion of the backwoodsman from Maine, when he saw Niagara Falls for the first time.

"Great Scott!" said he, gazing approvingly upon the moving aqueous body, "what a waste of water-power!"

A somewhat similar scene, of which the author was a witness, is well remembered.

"Are you going on shore, madam, while we take in coal?" asked the captain of a P. & O. steamship, addressing one of his lady passengers, who was en route from India to England.

"Can I get me a dear little Maltese dog there for a pet?" asked the lady in response.

"It is doubtful," was the answer. "The animals you refer to are now very scarce in these islands."

"Then I think I'll remain on board," rejoined madam. "There's nothing on the island worth seeing, I believe."

"Some persons come thousands of miles solely to visit the place," was the captain's quiet reply. "Its history is very curious."

"Are there any palaces?"

"There are over half a hundred edifices so called, though they have nearly all been diverted from their original purpose by the present government."

"They have nice old lace here, I am told. But one can get the same thing in London, you know."

"Oh, yes, and perhaps you will be able to find a 'puppy' to your liking, in London," said the sarcastic captain.

"I think I'll be content with reading about the place," was the final response of the obtuse passenger.

As to Gibraltar, that gray old solitary rock lying about a thousand miles to the westward of the Maltese group, and looming to a height of fourteen hundred feet, it is a far less attractive place, though among passengers generally there seems to be a different opinion. Here travelers usually manage to make a break in their sea voyage, and to remain a couple of days or more to examine the dreary old fortress and garrison town. We say it is far less attractive than Malta: as regards its past or present, it bears no comparison to this group. With the exception of the old Moorish castle which overlooks the town, there is not a single edifice in Gibraltar with any pretension to architectural merit or antiquarian interest.

The Maltese dog, about which the lady passenger inquired, is a sort of spaniel with long, silky, slate-colored hair, which hangs down from its head and body, touching the ground. It has in the past been much esteemed by royal families as a lapdog, and is of a very ancient breed, being conspicuous upon old Roman monuments. It is spoken of by the historian Strabo, but it seems to have almost entirely disappeared in our time, as the captain remarked. We saw an indifferent specimen offered for sale in Valletta, for which ten pounds sterling was demanded.

The port of Valletta contains two marine docks, capable of receiving ships of the largest tonnage, and is resorted to by both naval and commercial shipping for needed repairs, while it is also the headquarters of the British Mediterranean war fleet. The aggregate tonnage of vessels entering and clearing is double that of Gibraltar. As regards social life, and the usual associations of a commercial capital, Valletta is far and away in advance of the City of the Rock. One comes quickly to this conclusion upon comparing the commonplace Water-port Street of Gibraltar with the unique Strada Reale – "King Street" – of Valletta. The former is like a dull, narrow lane in an English seaport town, while the latter, full of life and color, resembles a picturesque boulevard in an Italian or French capital. Each is, however, above all else a place of arms; everything is and has ever been made subservient to this idea.