Paine Albert Bigelow
The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

XIII
MALTA, A LAND OF YESTERDAY

We came a long way around from Algiers to "Malta and its dependencies," the little group of islands which lies between Sicily and the African coast. We have spent two days at sea, meantime, but they were rather profitable days, for when one goes capering among marvels, as we do ashore, he needs these ship days to get his impressions sorted out and filed for reference.

We were in the harbor of Valetta, Malta, when we woke this morning – a rather dull morning – and a whole felucca of boats – flotilla, I mean – had appeared in the offing to take us ashore. At least, I suppose they were in the offing – I'm going to look that word up, by and by, in the ship dictionary, and see what it means. They have different boats in each of the places we have visited – every country preserving its native pattern. These at Malta are a sort of gondola with a piece sticking up at each end – for ornament, probably – I have been unable to figure out any use for the feature.

We leaned over the rail, watching them and admiring the boatmen while we tried to recognize the native language. The Diplomat came along and informed us that it was Arabic, mixed with Italian, the former heavily predominating. The Arabs had once occupied the island for two hundred and twenty years, he said, and left their language, their architecture, and their customs. He had been trying his Arabic on some natives who had come aboard and they could almost understand it.

The Patriarch, who had been early on deck, came up full of enthusiasm. There was a Phœnician temple in Malta which he was dying to visit. It was the first real footprint, thus far, of his favorite tribe, and though we have learned to restrain the Patriarch when he unlimbers on Phœnicians, we let him get off this time, softened, perhaps, by the thought of the ruined temple.

The Phœnicians had, of course, been the first settlers of Malta, he told us, thirty-five hundred years ago, when Rome had not been heard of and Greece was mere mythology; after which preliminary the Patriarch really got down to business.

"We are told by Sanchuniathon," he said, "in the Phoinikika, which was not only a cosmogony but a necrological diptych, translated into Greek by Philo of Byblus, with commentary by Porphyry and preserved by Eusebius in fragmentary form, that the Phœnicians laid the foundations of the world's arts, sciences, and religions, though the real character of their own faith has been but imperfectly expiscated. We are told – "

The Horse-Doctor laid his hand reverently but firmly on the Patriarch's arm.

"General," he said (the Patriarch's ship title is General) – "General, we all love you, and we all respect your years and your learning. We will stand almost anything from you, even the Phœnicians; but don't crowd us, General – don't take advantage of our good-nature. We'll try to put up with Sanchuniathon and Porphyry and those other old dubs, but when you turned loose that word 'expiscated' I nearly lost control of myself and threw you overboard."

The bugle blew the summons to go ashore. Amidst a clatter of Maltese we descended into the boats and started for the quay. Sitting thus low down upon the water, one could get an idea of the little shut-in harbor, one of the deepest and finest in the world. We could not see its outlet, or the open water, for the place is like a jug, and the sides are high and steep. They are all fortified, too, and looking up through the gloomy morning at the grim bastions and things, the place loomed sombre enough and did not invite enthusiasm. It was too much like Gibraltar in its atmosphere, which was not surprising, for it is an English stronghold – the second in importance in these waters. Gibraltar is the gateway, Malta is the citadel of the Mediterranean, and England to-day commands both.

But Malta has had a more picturesque history than Gibraltar. Its story has been not unlike that of Algiers, and many nations have fought for it and shed blood and romance along its shores, and on all the lands about. We touched mythology, too, here, for the first time; and Bible history. Long ago, even before the Phœnicians, the Cyclops – a race of one-eyed giants – owned Malta, and here Calypso, daughter of Atlas, lived and enchanted Ulysses when he happened along this way and was shipwrecked on the "wooded island of Ogygia, far apart from men."

I am glad they do not call it that any more. It is hard to say Ogygia, and it is no longer a wooded isle. It is little more than a rock, in fact, covered with a thin, fertile soil, and there are hardly any trees to be discovered anywhere. But there were bowers and groves in Ulysses' time, and Calypso wooed him among the greenery and in a cave which is pointed out to this day. She promised him immortality if he would forget his wife and native land, and marry her, but Ulysses postponed his decision, and after a seven-year sample of the matrimony concluded he didn't care for perpetual existence on those terms.

Calypso bore him two sons, and when he sailed away died of grief. Ulysses returned to Penelope, but he was disqualified for the simple life of Ithaca, and after he had slain her insolent suitors and told everybody about his travels he longed to go sailing away again to other adventures and islands, and Calypsos, perhaps, "beyond the baths of all the western stars." Such was life even then.

The Biblical interest of Malta concerns a shipwreck, too. St. Paul on his way to Italy to preach the gospel was caught in a great tempest, the Euroclydon, which continued for fourteen days. Acts xxvii, xxviii contain the story, which is very interesting and beautiful.

Here is a brief summary.

"And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up in the wind, we let her drive…

"And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay upon us, all hope that we should be saved was taken away."

Paul comforted them and told how an angel had stood by him, assuring him that he, Paul, would appear before Cæsar and that all with him would be saved. "Howbeit, we must be cast upon a certain island."

The island was Melita (i. e., Malta), and "falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground."

There were two hundred and sixteen souls in the vessel, and all got to land somehow.

"And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold."

Paul remained three months in Malta and preached the gospel and performed miracles there, which is a better record than Ulysses made. He also banished the poison snakes, it is said. It was the Euroclydon that swept the trees from Malta, and nineteen hundred years have not repaired the ravage of that storm.

Gods, Phœnicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Germans, Spanish, Knights of Jerusalem, French, and English have all battled for Malta because of its position as a stronghold, a watch-tower between the eastern and western seas. All of them have fortified it more or less, until to-day it is a sort of museum of military works, occupied and abandoned.

After the Gods, the Phœnicians were the first occupants, and with all due deference to the Patriarch, they were skedaddling out of Canaan at the time, because Joshua was transacting a little business in warfare which convinced them that it was time to grow up with new countries farther west. The Knights of Jerusalem – also known as the Knights of St. John and the Knights of Rhodes – were the last romantic inheritors. The Knights were originally hospital nurses who looked after pilgrims that went to visit the Holy Sepulchre, nearly a thousand years ago. They became great soldiers in time: knightly crusaders with sacred vows of chastity and service to the Lord. Charles V. of Spain gave them the Island of Malta, and they became the Knights of Malta henceforth. They did not maintain their vows by and by, but became profligates and even pirates. Meantime they had rendered mighty service to the Mediterranean and the world at large.

They prevented the terrible Turk from overrunning and possessing all Europe. Under John de la Valette, the famous Grand Master, Malta stood a Turkish siege that lasted four months, with continuous assault and heavy bombardments. The Turks gave it up at last and sailed away, after a loss of over twenty thousand men.

Only seven thousand Maltese and two hundred and sixty knights were killed, and it is said that before he died each knight had anywhere from fifty to a hundred dead Turks to his credit. It must have been hard to kill a knight in those days. I suppose they wore consecrated armor and talismans, and were strengthened by special benedictions. And this all happened in 1565, after which La Valette decided to build a city, and on the 28th of March, 1566, laid the corner-stone of Valetta, our anchorage.

It is a curious place and interesting. When we landed at the quay our vehicles were waiting for us, and these were our first entertainment. They resembled the little affairs of Gibraltar, but were more absurd, I think. They had funny canopy tops – square parasol things with fancy edges – and there was no room inside for a tall man with knees. I was only partly in my conveyance, and I would have been willing to have been out of it altogether, only we were going up a steep hill and I couldn't get out without damage to something or somebody. Then we passed through some gates and entered the city.

I don't think any of us had any clear idea of what Malta was like. It is another of those places that every one has heard of and nobody knows about. We all knew about Maltese cats because we had cats more or less Maltese at home, and we had heard of the Knights of Malta and of Maltese lace. But some of us thought Malta was a city on the north shore of Africa and the rest of us believed it to be an island in the Persian Gulf.²

However, these slight inaccuracies do not disturb us any more. We have learned to accept places where and as we find them, without undue surprise. If we should awake some morning in a strange harbor and be told that it was Sheol, we would merely say:

"Oh yes, certainly; we knew it was down here somewhere. When can we go ashore?"

Then we would set out sight-seeing and shopping without further remark, some of us still serene in the conviction that it was an African seaport, the rest believing it to be an island in the Persian Gulf.

But there were no Maltese cats in Malta – not that I saw, and no knights, I think. What did strike us first was a herd of goats, goatesses I mean, being driven along from house to house and supplying milk. They were the mildest-eyed, most inoffensive little creatures in the world, and can carry more milk for their size than any other mammal, unless I am a poor judge. They did not seem to be under any restraint, but they never wandered far away from their master. They nibbled and loafed along, and were ready for business at call. They seemed much more reliable than any cows of my acquaintance.

But presently I forgot the goats, for a woman came along – several women – and they wore a black head-gear of alpaca or silk, a cross between a sunbonnet and a nun's veil – hooped out on one side and looped in on the other – a curious head-gear, but not a bad setting for a handsome face. And those ladies had handsome faces – rich, oval faces, with lustrous eyes – and the faldette (they call it that) made a background that melted into their wealth of atramentous hair.

We have not seen handsome native women before, but they are plentiful enough here. None of them are really bad-looking, and every other one is a beauty, by my standards.

We were well up into the city now, and could see what the place was like. The streets were not over-wide, and the houses had an Oriental look, with their stuccoed walls and their projecting Arab windows. They were full of people and donkeys – very small donkeys with great pack baskets of vegetables and other merchandise – but we could not well observe these things because of the beggars and bootblacks and would-be guides, besides all the sellers of postal cards and trinkets.

It was worse than Madeira, worse than Gibraltar, worse even than Algiers. England ought to be ashamed of herself to permit, in one of her possessions, such lavish and ostentatious poverty as exists in Malta. When we got out of the carriages we were overwhelmed. They stormed around us; they separated us; they fought over us; they were ready to devour us piecemeal. Some of us escaped into shops – some into the museum – some into St. John's Cathedral, which was across the way.

Laura and I were among the last named, and we drew a long breath as we slipped into that magnificent place. We rejoiced a little too soon, however, for a second later we were nabbed by a guide, and there was no escape. We couldn't make a row in a church, especially as services were going on; at least, we didn't think it safe to try.

It is a magnificent church – the most elaborately decorated, I believe, in all Europe. Grand Master John L'Eveque de la Cassar, at his own expense, put up the building, and all Europe contributed to its wealth and splendor. Its spacious floor is one vast mosaic of memorial tablets to dead heroes. There are four hundred richly inlaid slabs, each bearing a coat of arms and inscriptions in colors. They are wonderfully beautiful; no other church in the world has such a floor. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was a greater vandal than a soldier, allowed his troops to rifle St. John's when he took possession of Malta in 1798. But there are riches enough there now and apparently Napoleon did not deface the edifice itself.

The upper part of the Cathedral can only be comprehended in the single word "gorgeous." To attempt to put into sentences any impressions of its lavish ceiling and decorations and furnishings would be to cheapen a thing which, though ornate, is not cheap and does not look so. There are paintings by Correggio and other Italian masters, and rare sacred statuary, and there is a solid silver altar rail which Napoleon did not carry off because a thoughtful priest quickly gave it a coat of lampblack when he heard the soldiers coming.

The original keys of Jerusalem and several other holy places are said to be in one of the chapels, and in another is a thorn from the Saviour's crown, the stones with which St. Stephen was martyred, and some apostolic bones. These things are as likely to be here as anywhere, and one of the right hands of John the Baptist, encased in a gold glove, was here when Napoleon came. Napoleon took up the hand and slipped off a magnificent diamond ring from one of the fingers. Then he slipped the ring on his own finger and tossed the hand aside.

"Keep the carrion," he said.

They hate the memory of Napoleon in Malta to this day.

The ceiling of the church is a mass of gold and color, and there are chapels along the sides, each trying to outdo the next in splendor. I am going to stop description right here, for I could do nothing with the details.

I have mentioned that services were in progress, but it did not seem to interfere with our sight-seeing. It would in America, but it doesn't in Malta. There was chanting around the altar, and there were worshippers kneeling all about, but our guide led us among them and over them as if they had not existed. It seemed curious to us that he could do this, that we could follow him unmolested. We tried to get up some feeling of delicacy in the matter, and to make some show of reluctance, but he led us and drove us along relentlessly, and did not seem to fear the consequences.

We got outside at last and were nailed by a frowsy man who wanted to sell one grimy postal card of the Chapel of Bones. We didn't want the card, but we said he might take us to the chapel if he knew the way. Nothing so good as that ever came into his life before. From a mendicant seller of one wretched card, worth a penny at most, he had suddenly blossomed into the guide of two American tourists. The card disappeared. With head erect he led the way as one having received knighthood.

Our crowd was waiting admission outside the chapel and we did not need our guide any more. But that didn't matter – he needed us. He accepted his salary to date, but he did not accept his discharge. We went into the Chapel of Bones, which is a rather grewsome place, with a lot of decorations made out of bleached human remnants – not a pleasant spot in which to linger – and when we came out again there was our guide, ready to take us in hand. We resisted feebly, but surrendered. We didn't care for the regular programme and wanted to wander away, anyhow. He suggested that we go to the Governor's palace and armory, so we went there.

The armory was worth while. It was full of armor of the departed knights and of old arms of every sort. We think breech-loading guns are modern, but we saw them there from the sixteenth century – long, deadly-looking weapons – and there were rope guns; also little mortars not more than three or four inches deep – mere toys – a stout man with a pile of rocks would be more effective, I should think.

We saw the trumpet, too, that led La Valette to victory in 1565, and some precious documents – among them the Grant of Malta made by Charles V. to the knights, 1530. These were interesting things and we lingered there until within a minute of noon, when we went out into the grounds to see the great bronze clock on the Governor's palace strike twelve.

And all the rest of our party had collected in the grounds of the Governor's palace, and pretty soon the Governor came out and made us a little speech of welcome and invited us to luncheon on the lawn, with cold chicken and ices and nice fizzy drinks. No, that was not what happened – not exactly. Our crowd was not there, and we did not see the Governor and we were not invited to picnic on the lawn. Otherwise the statement is correct. We did go out into the grounds, and we did see the clock strike. The other things are what we thought should happen, and they would have happened if we had received our just deserts.

Well, then, those things did not materialize, but our guide did. He would always materialize, so long as we stayed in Malta. So we re-engaged him and signified that we wanted food. He led us away to what seemed to be a hotel, but the clerk, who did not speak English, regarded us doubtfully. Then the landlord came. He had a supply of English but no food. No one is fed at a hotel in Malta who has not ordered in advance. At least, that is what he said, and we went away, sorrowing.

We were not alone. A crowd had collected while we were inside – a crowd of the would-be guides and already beggars, with sellers and torments of various kinds. We were assailed as soon as we touched the street, and our guide, who was not very robust, was not entirely able to protect us from them. He did steer us to a restaurant, however, a decent enough little place, and on the steps outside they disputed for us and wrangled over us and divided us up while we ate. It was like the powers getting ready to dismember China.

We laid out our programme for the afternoon. We wanted to get some Maltese lace, and to make a little side trip by rail to Citta Vecchia (the old city) which two native gentlemen at our table told us would give us a good idea of the country. Then we paid our bill, had a battle with a bootblack who had surreptitiously been polishing my shoes, fought our way through the barbarians without, and finally escaped by sheer flight, our guide at our heels.

We told him that we wanted lace. Ah, a smile that was like morning overspread his face. He took us to a large shop, where we found some of our friends already negotiating, but we did not linger. We said we wanted to find a little shop – a place where it was made. He led us to another bazaar. Again we said, "No, a little shop – a very little shop, on a back street."

Clearly he was disappointed. He did find one for us, however, a tiny place in an alley, with two bent, wrinkled women weaving lace outside the door.

How their deft fingers made those little bobbins fly, and what beautiful stuff it was, creamy white silk in the most wonderful patterns and stitches. They showed us their stock eagerly, and they had masses of it. Then we bargained and cheapened and haggled, in the approved fashion we have picked up along the way, and went off at last with our purchases, everybody happy – they because they would have taken less, we because we would have given more. Only our guide was a bit solemn. I suppose his commission was modest enough in a place like that.

He took us to the railway-station – the only railway in Malta. Then I made a discovery: we had no current coin of the realm and the railway would take only English money. No matter. We had discharged our guide three times and paid him each separate time. He was a capitalist now, and he promptly advanced the needed funds. We were grateful, and invited him to go along. But he said "No," that he would remain at the station until our return.

He was faithful, you see, and he trusted us. Besides, we couldn't escape. There was only that one road and train. We took our seats in an open car, on account of the scenery. We didn't know it was third-class till later, but we didn't mind that. What we did mind was plunging into a thick, black, choking tunnel as soon as we started; then another and another. This was scenery with a vengeance.

We were out at last, and in a different world. Whatever was modern in Malta had been left behind. This was wholly Eastern – Syrian – a piece out of the Holy Land, if the pictures tell us the truth. Everywhere were the one-story, flat-topped architecture and the olive-trees of the Holy Land pictures; everywhere stony fields and myriads of stone walls.

At a bound we had come from what was only a few hundred years ago, mingled with to-day, to what was a few thousand years ago, mingled with nothing modern whatever. There is no touch of English dominion here, or French, or Italian. This might be Syrian or Moorish; it might be, and is Maltese.

We saw men ploughing with a single cow and a crooked stick in a manner that has prevailed here always. We mentioned the matter to our railway-conductor, who was a sociable person and had not much to do.

"You are from America," he said.

"Yes, we are from America."

"And do they use different ploughs there?"

He spoke the English of the colonies, and it seemed incredible that he should not know about these things. We broke it to him as gently as possible that we did not plough with a crooked stick in America, but with such ploughs as were used in England. However, that meant nothing to him, as he had never been off the island of Malta in his life. His name was Carina, he told us, and his parents and grandparents before him had been born on the island. Still, I think he must have had English or Irish pigment in that red hair of his. His English was perfect, though he spoke the Maltese, too, of course.

He became our guide as we went along, willing and generous with his information, though more interested, I thought, in the questions he modestly asked us, now and then. His whole environment – all his traditions – had been confined to that little sea-encircled space of old, old town, and older, much older country.

He would like to come to America, he confessed, and I wondered, if some day he should steam up New York harbor and look upon that piled architecture, and then should step ashore and find himself amidst its whirl of traffic, he would not be even more impressed by it than we were with his tiny forgotten island here to the south of Sicily.

We passed little stations, now and then, with pretty stone and marble station-houses, but with no villages of any consequence, and came to Citta Vecchia, which the Arabs called Medina, formerly the capital of the island. It is a very ancient place, set upon a hill and bastioned round with walls that are too high to scale, and were once impregnable. It has stood many an assault – many a long-protracted siege. To-day it is a place of crumbling ruins and deserted streets – a mediæval dream.

It was raining when we got back to Valetta, and our faithful guide hurried us toward the boat-landing by a short way, for we were anxious to get home now. Every few yards we were assailed by hackmen and beggars, and by boatmen as soon as we reached the pier. He kept us intact, however, and got us into our own boat, received the rest of his fortune – enough to set him up for life, by Maltese standards – waved us good-bye, and we were being navigated across the wide, rainy waste toward our steamer, which seemed to fill one side of that little harbor.

What a joy to be on deck again and in the cosey cabin, drinking hot tea and talking over our adventures and purchases with our fellow-wanderers. The ship is home, rest, comfort – a world apart. We are weighing anchor now, and working our course out of the bottle-neck, to sea. It is a narrow opening – a native pilot directs us through it and leaves the ship only at the gateway. Then we sail through and out into the darkening sky where a storm is gathering – the green billows catching the dusk purple on their tips, the gulls white as they breast the rising wind.

We gather on the after deck to say good-bye to Malta. Wall upon wall, terrace upon terrace it rises from the sea – heaped and piled back against the hills – as old, as quaint, as unchanged as it was a thousand years ago. Viewed in this spectral half-light it might be any one of the ancient cities. Ephesus, Antioch, Tyre – it suggests all those names, and we speak of these things in low voices, awed by the spectacle of gathering night and storm.

Then, as the picture fades, we return to the lighted cabins, where it is gay and cheerful and modern, while there in the dark behind, that old curious island life still goes on; those curious shut-in people are gathering in their houses; the day, with its cares, its worries, and its hopes is closing in on that tiny speck, set in that dark and lonely sea.