more cheaply in London, Valletta itself must be seen _in situ_. The
entrance to either of the harbors enables one to obtain but a slight idea
of the place. It seems all forts and flat-roofed buildings piled one above
the other in unattractive terraces. There are guns everywhere, and, right
and left, those strongholds which are the final purposes of cannon. As the
steamer creeps shrieking into "Port Marsa-Musciet" (the "Port" is
superfluous, since the Arabic "Marsa" means the same thing) or Quarantine
Harbor, it passes Dragut Point, with Fort Tigne on the right and Fort St.
Elmo on the left, in addition to Fort Manoel and the Lazaretto on an
island straight ahead. Had our destination been the Grand Harbor on the
other side of Valletta, Fort Ricasoli and Fort St. Angelo would have been
equally in evidence, built on two of the various projections which
intersect the left side of that haven. But the forts are, as it were,
only the ganglia of the vast systems of fortifications which circle every
creek and bay and headland of Valletta and its offshoots. Ages of toil,
millions of money, and the best talent of three centuries of engineers
have been lavished on the bewildering mass of curtains and horn-works, and
ravelins and demilunes, and ditches and palisades, and drawbridges and
bastions, and earthworks, which meet the eye in profusion enough to have
delighted the soul of Uncle Toby. Sentinels and martial music are the most
familiar of sights and sounds, and after soldiers and barracks, sailors
and war-ships, the most frequent reminders that Malta, like Gibraltar, is
a great military and naval station. But it is also in possession of some
civil rights unknown to the latter. Among these is a legislature with
limited power and boundless chatter, and, what is of more importance to
the visitor, the citizens can go in and out of Valletta at all hours of
the day and night, no raised drawbridge or stolid portcullis barring their
movements in times of peace. The stranger lands without being questioned
as to his nationality, and in Malta the Briton is bereft of the
_Civis-Romanus-sum_ sort of feeling he imbibes in Gibraltar; for here the
alien can circulate as freely as the lords of the soil. But the man who
wishes to explore Valletta must be capable of climbing; for from the
landing place to the chief hotel in the main street the ascent is
continuous, and for the first part of the way is by a flight of stairs.
Indeed, these steps are so often called into requisition that one can
sympathize with the farewell anathema of Bryon as he limped up one of
these frequent obstacles to locomotion,
"Adieu! ye cursed streets of stairs!
(How surely he who mounts you swears)."
The reason of this peculiar construction is that Valletta is built on the
ridge of Mount Scebarras, so that the ascent from the harbor to the
principal streets running along the crest of the hill is necessarily
steep. The result is, however, a more picturesque town than would have
been the case had the architect who laid out the town when Jean de La
Valette, Grand Master of the Knights, resolved in 1566 to transfer the
capital here from the center of the island, been able to find funds to
form a plateau by leveling down the summit of the mound. Hence Valletta is
composed of streets running longitudinally and others crossing the former
at right angles. Most of these are eked out by steps; one, the Strada
Santa Lucia, is made up of flights of them, and none are level from end to
end. The backbone of the town and the finest of its highways is the Strada
Reale, or Royal Street, which in former days was known as the Strada San
Georgio, and during the brief French occupation as "the Street of the
Rights of Man." Seven main streets run parallel with it, while eleven at
right angles extend in straight lines across the promontory from harbor to
harbor. The Strada Reale, with the Strada Mercanti alongside of it are,
however, the most typical bits of the capital, and the visitor who
conscientiously tramps through either, with a peep here and there up or
down the less important transverse "strade," obtains a fair idea of the
city of La Valette, whose statue stands with that of L'Isle Adam over the
Porta Reale at the farther end of the street bearing that name. Here the
first barrier to an invasion from the landward side is met with in the
shape of a deep ditch hewn through the solid rock, right across the
peninsula from the one harbor to the other, cutting off if necessary the
suburb of Floriana from the town proper, though Floriana, with its rampart
gardens, parade ground, and barracks, is again protected on the inland
aspect by other of the great fortifications which circle the seashore
everywhere.
However, the drawbridge is down at present, and a long stream of people,
civil and military, are crossing and recrossing it, to and from the Strada
Reale. For this street is the chief artery through which is ever
circulating the placid current of Valletteese life. Soldiers in the varied
uniforms of the regiments represented in the garrison are marching
backwards and forwards, to or from parade, or to keep watch on the
ramparts, or are taking their pleasure afoot, or in the neat little
covered "carrozzellas" or cabs of the country, in which, unlike those of
Gibraltar of a similar build, a drive can be taken at the cost of the coin
which, according to Sydney Smith, was struck to enable a certain thrifty
race to be generous. Sailors from the war-ships in the Grand Harbor, and
merchant seamen on a run ashore, are utilizing what time they can spare
from the grog shops in the lower town to see the sights of the place.
Cabmen and carmen driving cars without sides, and always rushing at the
topmost speed of their little horses, scatter unwary pedestrians. Native
women, with that curious "faldetta," or one-sided hood to their black
cloaks which is a characteristic of Malta as the mantilla is of Spain,
pass side by side with English ladies in the latest of London fashions, or
sturdy peasant women, returning from market, get sadly in the way of the
British nursemaid dividing her attention in unequal proportions between
her infantile charges and the guard marching for "sentry-go" to the
ramparts. Flocks of goats, their huge udders almost touching the ground,
are strolling about to be milked at the doors of customers. Maltese
laborers, brown little men, bare-footed, broad-shouldered, and muscular,
in the almost national dress of a Glengarry cap, cotton trousers, and
flannel shirt, with scarlet sash, coat over one arm, and little earrings,
jostle the smart officers making for the Union Club, or the noisy
"globe-trotter" just landed from the steamer which came to anchor an hour
ago. A few snaky-eyed Hindoos in gaily embroidered caps invite you to
inspect their stock of ornamental wares, but except for an Arab or two
from Tunis, or a few hulking Turks from Tripoli with pilot jackets over
their barracans, the Strada Reale of Valletta has little of that human
picturesqueness imparted to the Water-port Street of Gibraltar by the
motley swarms of Spaniards, and Sicilians, and negroes, and Moors, and
English who fill it at all periods between morning gun-fire to the hour
when the stranger is ousted from within the gates. Malta being a most
religiously Roman Catholic country, priests and robe-girded Carmelites are
everywhere plentiful, and all day long the worshipers entering and leaving
the numerous churches, with the eternal "jingle-jingle" of their bells,
remind one of Rabelais's description of England in his day. At every
turning the visitor is accosted by whining beggars whose pertinacity is
only equaled by that of the boot-blacks and cabmen, who seem to fancy that
the final purpose of man in Malta is to ride in carrozzellas with shining
shoes. In Gibraltar we find a relief to the eye in the great rock towering
overhead, the tree-embosomed cottages nestling on its slopes, or the
occasional clumps of palms in the hollows. These are wanting to the chief
strada of Valletta. In architectural beauty the two streets cannot,
however, be compared. The Water-port is lined with houses, few of which
are handsome and most of which are mean, while the scarcity of space tends
to crowd the narrow "ramps" as thickly as any lane in Valletta. It is
seldom that the shops are better than those of a petty English town, and
altogether the civil part of the rock fortresses has not lost the impress
of having been reared by a people with but little of the world's wealth to
spare, and kept alive by a population who have not a great deal to spend.
The main street of Valletta on the other hand is lined by good, and in
most cases by handsome, houses, frequently with little covered stone
balconies which lend a peculiar character to the buildings. The yellow
limestone is also pleasant to look upon, while the many palaces which the
comfort-loving knights erected for their shelter, impart to Valletta the
appearance of a "a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen." Here on the
right is the pretty Opera House (open, in common with the private
theaters, on Sunday and Saturday alike), and on the other side of the road
the Auberge of the Language of Provence, now occupied by the Union Club. A
little farther on, in an open space shaded with trees, is the Church of
St. John, on which the knights lavished their riches, and still,
notwithstanding the pillage of the French troops in 1798, rich in vessels
of gold and silver, crosses, pixes, jewels, monuments chivalric
emblazonments, paintings, carven stone and other ecclesiastical
embellishments, though like the wealthy order of military monks, whose
pride it was, the Church of St. John is ostentatiously plain on the
outside. The Auberge d'Auvergne, now the Courts of Justice, is on the
other side of the street, and hard by, a building which was formerly the
Treasury of the Knights, the storehouse into which was gathered the
contributions of the Commanderies throughout Europe. The Public Library
fronted by some trees a little way back from the road is interesting from
its containing the books of the Bailiff Louis de Tencin, the Grand Master
de Rohan (who erected it), and of many of the more lettered knights,
besides a good collection of the island antiquities. Close to it is the
palace of the Grand Master, now the residence of the Governor, or in part
utilized as Government offices. The courtyards, planted with oranges,
euphorbias, hibiscus, and other greenery, and the walls covered with
Bougainvillia, have a delightfully cool appearance to the pedestrian who
enters from the hot street; while the broad marble staircase, the
corridors lined with portraits and men-at-arms, and pictures representing
the warlike exploits of the knightly galleys, the armory full of ancient
weapons, and majolica vases from the Pharmacy, and the numerous relics of
the former rulers of the island, are worthy of a long study by those
interested in art or antiquity. The Council Chamber also merits a visit,
for there may be seen the priceless hangings of Brussels tapestry. And
last of all, the idlest of tourists is not likely to neglect the Hall of
St. Michael and St. George, the frescoes celebrating the famous deeds of
the Order of St. John, and the quaint clock in the interior court, which,
according to Maltese legend, was brought from Rhodes when that island was
abandoned after a resistance only less glorious than a victory. For, as
Charles V. exclaimed when he heard of the surrender which led to Malta
becoming the home of the knights, "there has been nothing in the world so
well lost as Rhodes." The main guard, with its pompous Latin inscription
recording how "Magnæ et invictæ Britanniæ Melitensium Amor et Europæ vox
Has insulas confirmant AN MDCCCXIV," is exactly opposite the palace. But
when the visitor sees the wealth of art which the knights were forced to
leave behind them, he is apt to be puzzled how the Maltese, who
contributed not one baiocco to buy it, or to build these palaces or
fortifications, could either through "Amor," or that necessity which knows
no law, make them over us to us, or how "Magna et invicta Britannia" could
accept without compensation the property of the military monks, whose
Order, bereft of wealth and influence, still exists and claims with the
acquiescence of at least one court to rank among the sovereign Powers of
Christendom. The knights are, however, still the greatest personalities in
Malta. We come upon them, their eight-pointed cross and their works at
every step. Their ghosts still walk the highways. The names of the Grand
Masters are immortalized in the cities they founded and in the forts they
reared. Their portraits in the rude art of the Berlin lithographer hang on
even the walls of the hotels. Their ecclesiastical side is in evidence by
the churches which they reared, by the hagiological names which they gave
to many of the streets, by the saintly figures with which, in spite of
three-fourths of a century of Protestant rulers, still stand at the
corners, and by the necessity which we have only recently found to come to
an understanding with the Pope as to the limits of the canon law in this
most faithful portion of his spiritual dominions.
On the other hand, the secular side of the Order is quite as prominent.
Here, for instance, after descending some steps which serve as a
footpath, we come to the Fort of St. Elmo, which terminates the Strada
Reale. But long before there was any regular town on Monte Sceberras, when
the capital was in the center of the island, this fortress on the point
midway between the two harbors was a place round which the tide of battle
often swirled, when Paynim and Christian fought for the mastery of the
island. Of all these sieges the greatest is that of 1565, a year before
the town of Valletta was laid out. Twice previously, in 1546 and 1551, the
Turks had endeavored to expel the knights, but failed to effect a landing.
But in the year mentioned Sultan Solyman, The Magnificent, the same
Solyman who thirty-four years before had driven them from Rhodes,
determined to make one supreme effort to dislodge the Order from their new
home. The invading fleet consisted of a hundred and thirty-eight vessels
under the Renegade Piali, and an army of thirty-three thousand men under
the orders of Mustafa Pasha. These sea and land forces were soon
afterwards increased by the arrival of two thousand five hundred resolute
old Corsairs brought from Algiers by Hassan Pasha, and eighteen ships
containing sixteen hundred men under the still more famous Dragut, the
Pirate Chief of Tripoli, who, by the fortunes of war, was in a few years
later fated to toil as a galley-slave in this very harbor. The siege
lasted for nearly four months. Every foot of ground was contested with
heroic determination until it was evident that Fort St. Elmo could no
longer hold out. Then the knights, worn and wounded, and reduced to a mere
remnant of their number, received the viaticum in the little castle
chapel, and embracing each other went forth on the ramparts to meet
whatever lot was in store for them. But St. Angelo and Senglea, at the
end of the peninsula on which Isola is now built, held out until, on the
arrival of succor from Sicily, the Turks withdrew. Of the forty thousand
men who on the 18th of May had sat down before the Castle, not ten
thousand re-embarked; whilst of the eight or nine thousand defenders,
barely six hundred were able to join in the Te Deum of thanks for the
successful termination of what was one of the greatest struggles in
ancient or modern times. Then it was that "the most illustrous and most
Reverend Lord, Brother John de la Valette," to quote his titles inscribed
over the Porta Reale, determined to lay out the new city, so that, before
twelve months passed, the primeval prophecy that there would be a time
when every foot of land in Monte Sceberras would be worth an ounce of
silver bade fair to come true. St. Elmo is still the chief of the island
fortresses, and the little chapel which the knights left to fall under the
Turkish scimitars is again in good preservation, after having been long
forgotten under a pile of rubbish. But though churchmen and soldiers, the
masters of Malta were, if all tales are true, a good deal more
_militaires_ than monks. Eye-witnesses describe the knights as they sailed
on a warlike expedition waving their hands to fair ladies on the shore. In
their albergos or barracks the "Languages" lived luxuriously, and though
dueling was strictly prohibited, there is a narrow street, the Strada
Stretta, running parallel with the Reale, in which this extremely
unecclesiastical mode of settling disputes was winked at. For by a
pleasant fiction, any encounter within its limits was regarded as simply a
casual difficulty occasioned by two fiery gentlemen accidentally jostling
each other!
Turning into the Strada Mercanti, the San Giacomio of a former
nomenclature, we come upon more reminders of this picturesque brotherhood.
For close by the Hospital for Incurables is the site of their cemetery,
and farther up the steep street is the Military Hospital, which was
founded by the Grand Master, Fra Luis de Vasconçelos. This infirmary, as
an old writer tells us, was in former days "the very glory of Malta."
Every patient had two beds for change, and a closet with lock and key to
himself. No more than two people were put in one ward, and these were
waited upon by the "Serving Brothers," their food being brought to them on
silver dishes, and everything else ordered with corresponding
magnificence. Nowadays, though scarcely so sumptuous, the hospital is
still a noble institution, one of the rooms, four hundred and eighty feet
in length, being accounted the longest in Europe. But there are no silver
dishes, and the nurses have ceased to be of knightly rank. The University,
an institution which turns out doctors with a celerity which accounts for
the number of them in the island, is an even less imposing building than
the public pawnbroking establishment hard by, and neither is so noteworthy
as the market, which is remarkable from a literary point of view as being
perhaps the only edifice in Valletta the founder of which has been content
to inscribe his merits in the vulgar tongue. On the top of the hill, for
we have been climbing all the time, is a house with a fine marble doorway,
which also is the relic of the knights. For this building was the
Castellania, or prison, and the pillory in which prisoners did penance,
and the little window from above which prisoners were suspended by the
hands, are still, with the huge hook to which the rope was attached, to be
seen by those who are curious in such disciplinary matters. But like the
rock-hewn dungeons in which the knights kept their two thousand
galley-slaves, in most cases Turks and Moors who had fallen in the way of
their war-ships, which still exist in the rear of the Dockyard Terrace,
such reminders of a cruel age and a stern Order are depressing to the
wanderer in search of the picturesque. He prefers to look at the Auberge
of the Language of Italy, where the Royal Engineers have their quarters,
or at the Palazzo Parisi, opposite (it is a livery stable at present),
where General Bonaparte resided during that brief stay in Malta which has
served ever since to make the French name abhorred in the island, or at
the Auberge de Castille, the noblest of all the knights' palaces, where
the two scientific corps hold their hospitable mess.
We have now tramped the entire length of the two chief longitudinal
streets of Malta, and have seen most of the buildings of much general
interest. But in the Strade Mezzodi and Britannica there are many private
dwellings of the best description, and even some public ones, like the
Auberge de France (devoted to the head of the Commissariat Department),
warrant examination from a historical if not from an architectural, point
of view. All of these knightly hotels are worthy of notice. Most of them
are now appropriated to the needs of Government offices or, like the
Auberge d'Arragon (an Episcopal residence), to the housing of local
dignitaries. But where the Auberge d'Allemagne once stood the collegiate
church of St. Paul has been built, and if there ever was an Auberge
d'Angleterre (for the language of England was suppressed when Henry VIII.
confiscated the English Commanderies and was early succeeded by that of
Bavaria), the building which bore her name was leveled when the new
theater was built. It is nevertheless certain that the Turcopolier or
General of the Horse was, until the Reformation, selected from the
Language of England, just as that of Provence always furnished the Grand
Commander, France the Grand Hospitaller, Italy the Admiral, Arragon the
Drapier, Auvergne the Commander, Germany the Grand Bailiff, and Castile
the Grand Chancellor of the Sovereign Order, whose Grand Master held among
other titles those of Prince of Malta and Gozo.
We are now at the Upper Barracca, one of those arcades erected as
promenades by the knights, and still the favorite walk of the citizens in
the cool of morning and evening. From this point also is obtained a good
bird's-eye view of Valletta and much of the neighboring country, and if
the visitor continues his walk to St. Andrew's Bastion he may witness a
panorama of both harbors; one, which the Maltese affirm (and we are not
called upon to contradict them), is surpassed by the Bosphorus alone. It
is at all events the most picturesque of the island views. There at a
glance may be seen the two chief harbors alive with boats, sailing
vessels, and steamers, from the huge ironclad to the noisy little launch.
We then see that beside the main peninsula upon which Valletta is built,
and which divides the Quarantine from the Grand Harbor, there are several
other headlands projecting into these ports in addition to the island
occupied by Fort Manoel and the Lazaretto. These narrow peninsulas cut the
havens into a host of subsidiary basins, bays, and creeks, while Valletta
itself has overflowed into the suburbs of Floriana, Sliema, and St.
Julian, and may by-and-by occupy Tasbiesch and Pieta; Bighi, where the
Naval Hospital is situated, and Corradino, associated with gay memories of
the racecourse, and the more sombre ones which pertain to the cemeteries
and the prisons, all of which are centered in this quarter, where in
former days the knights had their horse-breeding establishments and their
game preserves.
But there are certain suburbs of Valletta which no good Maltese will
describe by so humble a name. These are the "Three Cities" of Vittoriosa
and Senglea, built on the two peninsulas projecting into the Grand Harbor,
and separated by the Dockyard Creek, and Burmola or Cosspicua, stretching
back from the shore. These three "cities" are protected by the huge
Firenzuola and Cottonera lines of fortifications, and as Fort Angelo, the
most ancient of the Maltese strongholds, and Fort Ricasoli, recalling the
name of its builder, are among their castles, they hold their heads very
high in Malta. Indeed, long before Valletta was thought of, and when
Notabile was seen to be unfitted for their purpose, the knights took up
their residence in Borgo or the Burgh, which, as the Statue of Victory
still standing announces, was dignified by the name of Citta Vittoriosa
after their victory over the Turks. Strada Antico Palazzo del Governatore
recalls the old Palace which once stood in this street, and indeed until
1571 this now poor town was the seat of Government. Antique buildings,
like the Nunnery of Santa Scolastica, once a hospital, and the
Inquisitor's Palace, now the quarters of the English garrison, are
witnesses to its fatten dignity. Burmola is also a city of old churches,
and Senglea named after the Grand Master De la Sengle, though at present a
place of little consequence, contains plenty of architectural proofs that
when its old name of "Chersoneso," or the Peninsula, was changed to Isola,
or "The Unconquered," this "city," with Fort Michael to do its fighting,
played in Malta militant a part almost as important as it does nowadays
when its dockyard and arsenal are its chief titles to fame.