tance," but nearness lent "enchantment to the scene." Mrs. P. soon fancied that she saw fruit-trees,-Mrs. Smith applying the spy-glass saw a man, and queried whether he were not an Anakim. We read St. Paul's account of approaching Malta, in the 27th of Acts, as we advanced towards the island. All was glee and good nature on deck; the mates and sailors were painting and brushing up the brig, and appeared as solicitous that she should make a fair appearance, as good matrons and young misses are for their parlors before a party.

Cumino is a small island in the channel, between Gozo and Malta. At half past one, P. M., we were off "St. Paul's Bay," where the apostle is supposed to have been shipwrecked. As we advanced toward La Valletta, the capital of Malta, its lofty walls, forts, towers, spires and fine edifices impressed us with the strength and beauty of the city. A pilot boat came out a mile and a half to meet us. "What do you charge for piloting us in?" inquired the captain. "Fifteen dollars," was the reply. The captain refused to give that sum, but the boatmen kept along side some time, and at length offered to pilot us in for ten dollars, and their offer was accepted.

Just before we entered the harbor, about twenty small boats, finely painted and manned by natives, met us, requesting to tow us in. They surrounded the vessel and importuned the captain like so many harpies for the job, but the pilot's dexterity superseded the necessity of their aid. We rode majestically into the harbor and threw out our anchor at two o'clock, P. M. We were heartily glad to cease from our rolling and tossing, which had been almost incessant for forty-eight days. We were still unable to enter the city, being compelled to lie a week in quarantine.

In the course of the afternoon the captain went near the shore, and took directions from the first officer of the port respecting our quarantine. A watch-Guardiano, as he is called-came on board, to see that none of us should go into the city and contaminate its inhabitants, who, together with the pilot must stay on board, lest they also should become vehicles of contagion. The din of the busy city around us reminded us forcibly of home. But its lofty walls and towers impressed us with the fact, that we were no longer in the New, but in the Old World; and the incessant chiming of almost innumerable bells, soon sickened our hearts with the painful certainty, that we were also in the heart of the dominions of the "man of sin."

Nov. 9. We anchored yesterday in the main harbor, because the wind was too strong from the quarantine harbor to allow us to enter it. This morning, soon after light, the pilot boats again swarmed around us, clamorous for the opportunity of towing us from one harbor into the other. The captain rejected their offers as extravagant, and they at length disappeared. But seeing him make preparations to sail out without them, they returned more clamorous than ever for employment. A few were finally engaged for

VISIT FROM THE MISSIONARIES.

49

three dollars-half their first offer, at which others still demurred. The captain added two dollars, which seemed to satisfy all, and the arrangement was accepted. We weighed anchor at eight o'clock, the wind still blowing strong as ever from the quarantine harbor. Just as we began to enter it, the Maltese boatmen importuned the captain to throw out his anchor, declaring that they could pull us no farther. But the captain refused to release them, and kept them almost the whole forenoon, tacking back and forth across the harbor, to gain one fourth of a mile. The boats were filed in two lines, and attached by ropes to the bows of our vessel and to each other. Their appearance was truly amusing, as they were thus strung out in two parallel teams, some fifteen or twenty rods long. They soon relaxed their efforts and lay leisurely on their oars; but what they saved in strength they lost in time; for the captain kept them wheeling back and forth across the harbor, until by the exertions of his sailors in the jolly boat, rather than by any aid from the towmen, he reached his place of anchorage. How depressed must be the condition of a people, where eighty men, as in this case, there being twenty boats with four men in each boat,-gladly labor a whole half day for the scanty sum of five dollars!

We threw out our anchor along side of a Turkish vessel. It was amusing to observe its motley crew and passengers. On board were Greeks, Arabs, Moors, negroes and Turks. They stared at us with eager curiosity, and we as eagerly at them.

The captain went on shore and returned laden with dainties,fresh beef, vegetables and fruits. Among the latter were pomegranates, Maltese chestnuts, winter melons, cauliflowers and tomatoes. This melon resembles our musk-melon. We left home in the season of melons and found them fresh at Malta, which reminded us of our difference of climate. The grass and flower bushes, on the shore around the harbor, were also green as in midsummer in New England.

Mr. Temple and the other missionaries* residing in Malta came along side and afforded us opportunity of delightful conversation. They also brought us many comforts to cheer our confinement in quarantine. And seldom are persons in circumstances more fully to appreciate kind attentions, or keenly to feel any apparent want of them, on the part of their friends, than while, after the fatigues and exposures of a long voyage or journey, they lie as prisoners in quarantine. In company with the missionaries, Mr. Carabet, an Armenian bishop, in their employ, came to visit us. He is a venerable looking man. Under the influence of the mission he has got so much the better of his canonical scruples on the virtue of episcopal celibacy, that he has married a young wife, and is rearing a family. His fine little girl who came with him, brought us some

* Soon after this time, Messrs. Temple and Hallock removed with the press to Smyrna, and there have since been no American missionaries in Malta.

50

LEAVING THE GEORGE-MALTA.

beautiful nosegays. They were the first flowers which we saw in the Old World, and after being so long excluded from everything of the kind, we highly prized the attention. They were thrown into our cabin window, and within five minutes completely perfumed our little dwelling.

The urbanity of bishop Carabet and of other foreigners, soon impressed me with the stiffness and roughness of the American character, a point of which I have been more and more reminded, during my entire residence in foreign lands. Even the tawny, degraded Maltese are incomparably more respectful and polite than the mass in New England. It may, indeed, be in them a servile politeness, or the garb of secret intrigue. And nobody, and least of all a yankee, doubts the general superiority of the sons of brother Jonathan to all other nations, unless it be their English cousins who may be nearly their equals. With all their excellence, however, they might be yet more excellent, had they, with the plentitude of their fortiter in re, a mediocrity of the suaviter in modo, especially in their intercourse with foreigners.

We remained on board the George, during the week of our quarantine, instead of going into the Lazaretto. The accommodations in the Lazaretto are said to be superior. The apartments are spacious, airy and delightfully situated on the sea. A good hotel furnishes all needed comforts and conveniences to the inmates, which is very different from the dreary encampments which we subsequently encountered under our tent, among the mud-shantees of the Cossacks in the Russian provinces.

Nov. 13. Our period of purgation, in quarantine, being completed, we took pratique, and were cordially welcomed at the houses of our missionary brethren. We felt a kind of painful reluctance, at last, on leaving our quiet cabin in the George, which had so long been our home, and the captain and crew seemed heartily to regret our departure. The next day, we went on board, for the last time, and presented Bibles to them all-a nice quarto Bible to the captain-which were very gratefully received. In their increasingly serious deportment, toward the close of the voyage, we had some reason to hope that our conversations, our preaching and our prayers had not been in vain.

The island of Malta is composed of white limestone, so soft, that much of its surface is beaten up and pulverized, and formed into cultivated terraces. The soil thus obtained is extremely fertile and produces excellent crops-particularly fruits. The climate is very mild, there being little or no winter on the island. Oranges and lemons were in their prime on the trees when we were there in the middle of November. Its inhabitants are about as dark as the American Indians. They are a mixed race, said to have descended from Arabs and Carthaginians; and they speak a corrupt dialect of the Arabic, containing many words from the old Punic language. La Valetta, the capital of the island, is a fine city. It is cleanly and

BEGGARS-PRIESTSLA VALETTA.

51

well-paved; and its houses are well-built of stone. They are very high and airy, and form delightful residences. House-rent is low, and its ample and well stocked markets furnish provisions and clothing remarkably cheap. In the prospect of being beyond the reach of European tailors in Persia, I procured two suits of clothes there, one of broadcloth for winter, and the other of a thin material for summer, for both of which when made up, I paid a little short of twenty-nine dollars; and almost everything else seemed to be cheap in proportion.

Some of the churches in Malta are very large and splendid edifices. St. John's, which we visited, is the most celebrated. Its vaults are filled with the ashes of saints-its walls covered with gaudy paintings-its floors are of a superior order its dome is mounted with several large bells which are almost constantly chiming as the signal of some religious festivity,-and it is altogether a most imposing monument of the idolatrous worship of Rome. Many other churches on the island are of the same general description.

The greatest nuisances of Malta are its hosts of beggars and priests. The former are in some measure the agents, as well as the offspring, of the latter. The beggars are so numerous and importunate in the streets, as seriously to impede one's passing, They would even seize hold upon us like ravenous animals, stun our ears with their entreaties, sometimes pathetically appealing to us for the SOULS of their friends in Purgatory,—an artifice far more successful with Papists than with us incredulous Protestants, to the use of which the miserable mendicants had doubtless been instructed by the wily priesthood. The capital which contains about twenty thousand inhabitants, is said to be scourged by at least 1,100 priests of various orders, including, to be sure, the inmates of the convents, but all of whom must feed upon the famished population. These priests thronged the streets in all directions and at all hours of the day, like swarms of locusts, eager to devour the land. Some of them were mere boys, twelve or fourteen years old, whose broad brimmed hats and other grotesque canonicals, gave to them a truly ludicrous appearance. In few places in the world, and perhaps nowhere, does the Pope reign with more tyrannical sway, than in Malta. Nowhere have I seen a more squalid, miserable, priestridden populace.

La Valetta is a strongly fortified city. This, rendered well nigh impregnable by art, and Gibraltar rock at the straits, which is fully so by nature, give to the English the perfect command of the Mediterranean. The town is also kept strongly garrisoned. There were, I think, five regiments in it when we were there, who were under the finest discipline. One of them was the fanious 42nd regiment of Scotch highlanders. They were tall, athletic men, and their highland costume, with their legs bare to the knee, give to them a very hardy, warlike appearance. The English government of the island is strict and firm, but ameliorating in its policy and influence,

52

VOYAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE.

as much so as a government well can be, over so wretched and debased a population.

While at Malta, we made the acquaintance of the Rev. Mr. Wilson, a missionary of the London Society; and Mr. Schlienz, a clergyman, and Messrs. Brenner and Wise, laymen, missionaries of the Church Missionary Society. The former was engaged in miscellaneous labors. The three latter, who are Germans, were occupied mainly in the preparation and printing of books. While the truly catholic and excellent spirit of the Society under which they labor is conspicuous, in its employing as it does, so many men of another nation and a different religious communion, it reveals a painful deficiency in the missionary spirit of its own church, that men of devotion to the cause cannot be found in sufficient numbers within her pale to go in person and apply her missionary funds. May the mantle of Martyn rest on more of her rising sons! The operations of the press under the Church Missionary Society, at Malta, are extensive and efficient. The missionaries had in their employ, as a translator, at the time I was there, a Mr. Rassám, a Chaldean from Mosûl, by whose aid they kindly prepared and lithographed for me a Nestorian spelling book, which proved a very timely and valuable passport, on my first entrance among the Nestorians. Mr. Rassám, at the instance of Mr. Schlienz, also gave me a letter of introduction to Mar Oráham, (Abraham,) the metropolitan of Oróomiah, with whom he was acquainted, but who died before I reached the field. We were laid under much obligation to those excellent German brethren, as well as to the missionaries of our own Society, at Malta, for their kindness and aid to us during our short stay on the island.

CHAPTER IV.

VOYAGE FROM MALTA TO CONSTANTINOPLE.

As it was seldom that vessels sailed directly from Malta to Constantinople, I had apprehended considerable delay, before an opporportunity should occur for us to proceed to the Turkish capital. Providentially, however, the day we took pratique, I found a Greek brig, bound for that city, which was to sail in a few days. The captain was well recommended to me by Mr. Aneaud, then American consul at Malta; and the vessel was chartered by a Mr. Petrakokino, a Greek gentleman whose brother had been my classmate some years before at Amherst College; and more favorable still, that same brother, who was then, and is still, connected with our mission