In good time some very old and early friends come off to invite us to
the shore, and, to our inexpressible joy, leave is given us to land.
We are not, however, to sleep on shore, and receive the most exact
caution to be ready at a moment’s notice, as the greatest expedition
will be made to proceed. My excellent little friend Archer, with whom
I had been educated, was one of those who came alongside our ship
to welcome his old friend and playfellow and to do the honours of
Gibraltar.
It was now we were made acquainted with every point and chronicle of
the Rock--where formerly endangered, where subsequently strengthened,
whence terribly remembered by the enemy. These were subjects involved
in a labyrinth which the practised eye of our Commandant could unravel
at a glance, and in two days he knew more thoroughly the strength and
power of this fortress than many a brave officer resident upon it for
half his life.
Some fear subsists that we shall be detained some time at Gibraltar. We
are still obliged to sleep on board, and to use precautions in case of
attack from the gunboats. If the expedition is broken up, some of us
may be ordered to remain. Should I like it or no?
It is a great local confinement, and often entails spare sea diet,
but there are garrison amusements, balls, private theatricals, and
the most delectable library I ever saw for a not learned man; the
apartment splendid, the prospect beautiful, the arrangement admirable,
the decorous stillness of those who enter most auspicious, and the
terms very easy and encouraging--a trifling half-yearly contribution
and entrance of three days’ pay conferring a perpetual share. Bathing
in extreme luxury. Also the corps to which I belong have a most
gentlemanlike and well-regulated mess, and handsome quarters most
enviably situated. So that however disappointed I should be in ulterior
views, I determined to think I might be worse pleased than by being
ordered to remain here. Yet I learn from friends at headquarters that
Sir James Craig by no means expects that his army will be dispersed or
its ulterior object changed.
_June 15._--_In statu quo_, thoroughly tired of the place by this time,
and most anxious for despatches to send us on our way.
From this day till June 17th an alarm of preparations amongst the
gunboats of Algeciras obliges us to remain on board, and this day it
seems we are about to sail. Exceedingly rejoiced at those symptoms
of departure, and hoping that the fine western breeze is to take us
swiftly up the Mediterranean. No such thing. We beat about, now the
African and now the European coast, in delicious weather, and the
going quite close in to these bold shores, so as to contemplate their
picturesque beauty, takes off much of the tedium of shipboard. The
African side in point of beauty is not comparable to the Spanish--few
tracts of coast, indeed, could rival, none exceed it, or the happy,
brilliant accidents of night or day, of dawn or sunset, in which we
were perpetually viewing it. The object of this cruise was to elude a
meditated attack from Algeciras, as so large and spread-out a fleet of
ships (not of war) were particularly liable to surprise, damage, and
disablement where the enemy is always so near, the night so dark and
starlight clear, and weather so serene for sudden operations.
_June 25._--The fleet now commences its voyage, and we observe the
_Lively Frigate_, having Sir James Craig on board, make all sail, and
soon she vanishes from our view.
The voyage is only memorable to me from the unspeakable splendour of
the sun’s setting and rising, which I chanced often to contemplate
transfixed with wonder.
Towards the end of three weeks a good breeze, which had brought us off
the island of Gozo, fell from us, and left us nearly becalmed about
twenty miles from the harbour of Valetta, giving us full leisure to
view the nature of the coast and the face of the country.
Great was our curiosity to see the mode of living on that brown
island,[1] of which fame had spoken so much.
When in England we get into a chaise to be driven to some place of
note not seen before, we all know there is a sort of interest and
stretching of necks as we come near to form some notion of what it will
be like. But how much greater the interest when we get into a ship,
spread our sails to the wind and our keel to the dark blue water, and
set forth to visit some far-famed island long heard and read of as a
far-distant thing, and now find ourselves skirting along swiftly by the
very shore that girdles in its cities and its wonders; and the more
barren, rocky, unadorned, and forbidding the first range of the shore
we approached, the more we thirsted to see the high bastion of the
capital frowning over the bright blue deep.
_July 18._--A light air rose with the morning and wafted us into the
harbour of Valetta. Here, as at Gibraltar, some of our comrades come
off to welcome us, and though unknown at present, the strong bond of
belonging to the same service, wearing the same coat, and hatched, as
one might say, in the same military shell, induces them to hold out to
us the ready hand of brotherhood and friendship.
Impatient as we were to get on shore and satisfy our curiosity, we
had for the present enough to do in remarking the grandeur of the
buildings, the spaciousness, security, and many branches of the
harbour, and, above all, the stupendous character of the fortifications.
Valetta altogether appeared to me the most magnificent city I had ever
beheld. Everything contributed to imbue the scene with traits fit for
some splendid picture of growing Carthage; nothing mean or sullied,
nothing to stain the clear clean hue of every colour; the sea, the sky,
the transparent air, the chiselled stone, the native rock--all seemed
as stainless, bright, and _soignée_ as a Venetian painting, while
the masses of shipping of every description, whose decks displayed a
masquerade of divers costumes, brought the image of all nations before
us, the gondolas and open boats, with gentlemen dressed as if for
Court, with powdered heads uncovered, under umbrellas of every colour,
and wearing silk coats, looking so enviably cool as they touched from
ship to ship. All was so curious, so undeniably _abroad_, that we loved
to realise all the anticipations of imagination, and might, I doubt
not, have been amused during a much longer confinement than it was our
lot to encounter.
_July 19._--One day was all the trial our patience underwent, as on the
19th we were permitted to land and regale ourselves, like children,
with touching and turning over the forms we had been viewing at a
distance. From the point at which we landed, to which the fine streets
of the city themselves descend, the ascent to the heart of the city is
gained by stairs of vast width and breadth, but each giving a small and
imperceptible rise. The whole street, indeed, is a grand _escalier_,
of which the continuous houses of rich merchandise on either hand form
the banisters. These stairs appear to be carved out of the native rock,
and look as if a carriage and horses might safely descend, though I do
not remember that they do.
We were now on shore, mixed up in the quarters of our brother officers,
previously established here, and began a very pleasant kind of life,
in despite of nightly mosquitoes and daily heat intense, reflected and
reproduced from the glaring rock on which it everywhere smote; and this
memorandum of the heat remains fixed in my memory--the noble streets
of Valetta are extremely regular, and run in broad parallels at right
angles with each other--when the sun, therefore, begins to decline, the
streets which lie north and south are divided by broad lines of shade
and sunshine--down the broad shade then the different parties walk and
talk and lounge, with sauntering pace and head uncovered; but when one
of the broad crossings must be passed, exposed to the sun’s fierce ray,
you see every man put on his hat and dart swiftly across the bright
space, as if escaping through a fire. Various commanders and married
officers helped to furnish our society. Our new-found brethren put all
their resources at our command, and mounting us on the beautiful barb
or Arabian horses, or the scarce less beautiful ass of Malta, “showed
us all the qualities o’ the isle.”
Stationed at Gozo was Edward Ker, one of my boyish friends, and one of
our excursions was to visit him. We were delighted to meet, and though
baked and broiled by sea and land in exploring curiosities, whatever we
saw seemed to compensate our labour.
What pleased me most was a large steep rock, called the Fungus Rock,
because it produces a fungus famous for its styptic power, and which
the Grand Master (of the Knights of St. John) formerly distributed to
the potentates of Europe. Though not for the fungus did I admire the
rock, but for its stupendous eminence over a blue deep bay that lies
still and unfathomable below. You pass from one rock to another at a
terrific height in a basket sliding on a rope; and as I hung in the
air and eyed the sapphire mirror below, I conceived an eager thirst to
plunge into the cooling water; my companions consented to wait until
I had descended and gratified my desire. When sporting about in this
delicious bath, a good swimmer cannot conceive how people can sink in
that salt sea, for the water seems so solid and buoyant it requires a
great effort to keep below.
These rocks form almost such a cave as Virgil describes with such a
thrilling stillness of words:--
Est in secessu longo locus: insula portum
Efficit objectu laterum; quibus omnis ab alto
Frangitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos;
Hinc atque hinc vastae rupes, geminique minantur
In caelum scopuli: quorum sub vertice late
Aequora tuta silent.--_Aen._ i. 163.
It was like the place--nay, perhaps it was the place--whose inviolable
stillness and stupendous barriers Virgil so divinely describes; and
whenever those still words, “Aequora tuta silent” recur to my memory,
so does this scene.
This is “secessu longo locus.”
* * * * *
A fleet from England declared to be in the offing was a subject of
great interest at Malta. We used to repair immediately to the leads of
the Palace, whose great height, carrying the sight clear over every
obstruction of tower, church, and fortress, displayed the wide ocean
to our view, covered with the expected ships, their swelling sails
as white as wool, and the sea and sky more blue and bright than all
comparisons.
Pleasant and full of expectation it was to watch them successively
steering into the narrow port; some stately and huge, plumed with the
pennant of command, displayed the broad and checkered sides of battle;
others more humble, but innumerable; all in gallant trim and guided
seamanlike.
Then eager for the mail! the image of home imprisons the truant
soul, and brings it back to its first tenderness; the sight of the
well-known but long-suspended hand, the endearing accents which
distance has made so infrequent; that day, at least, is sacred to home;
and if the tidings have been cheering, though the eye may glisten and
the cheek of the young soldier may flush with unwonted tenderness, yet
is his heart neither solitary nor sad; his friends partake of some
reflection of the kindness that his soul is inwardly pouring out to his
parents and his brothers.
It is time to close the chapter on Malta, but before leaving I wrote
home to my mother.
LA VALETTA, MALTA, _August 15, 1805_.
DEAREST DONA RAFELA--I believe this will be brought to England
by an officer who has obtained leave. I do not know him. Nothing
at all remarkable has happened since I wrote last. We made an
excursion to the island of Gozo, which is much better-looking
than that of Malta. There is more green and romanticity, but all
prospect here is in the sublime, for you see grateful coincidence
of rock, sea, and sky, which can stretch the mind to great
capacity. But where, my dear mother, are the flowery meads, the
green pastures, the murmuring streams that may soothe the mind into
content with itself and charity to all around? Hot stone houses,
hot brown ground--hot, hot, all hot.
“England, with all thy sullen skies, I love thee still, my
country!” Dear, dear England, dearest Edwinstowe! What is objected
to it? The cold? Why the cold produces that very thing which
gives to England the greatest superiority over other countries--a
fireside!
Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast,
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Upsends a steaming column, etc., etc.