Mr.
Goldsmith Celebrated Our Last Dinner With A Profusion Of Champaigne,
And Though Glad To Get Out Of The Vessel, We Felt Unfeignedly Sorry To
Take Leave Of Our Kind Commandant.
We were, of course, up by daylight,
in order to lose nothing of the view.
Much as I had heard of the gay singularity of the appearance of Malta,
I felt surprise as well as delight at the beautiful scene around;
nor was I at all prepared for the extent of the city of Valetta. The
excessive whiteness of the houses, built of the rock of which
the island is composed, contrasted with the vivid green of their
verandahs, gives to the whole landscape the air of a painting, in
which the artist has employed the most brilliant colours for sea
and sky, and habitations of a sort of fairy land. Nor does a nearer
approach destroy this illusion; there are no prominently squalid
features in Malta, the beggars, who crowd round every stranger, being
the only evidence, at a cursory gaze, of its poverty.
Soon after the Megara had dropped anchor, a young officer from the
Acheron, the steamer that had brought the mails from Gibraltar, came
on board to inquire whether I was amongst the passengers, and gave me
the pleasing intelligence that a lady, a friend of mine, who had left
London a few days before me, was now in Malta, and would proceed to
India in the vessel appointed to take the mails. She was staying at
Durnsford's Hotel, a place to which I had been strongly recommended.
Mr. Goldsmith was kind enough to promise to see our heavy baggage on
board the Volcano, the vessel under sailing orders; and a clergyman
and his wife, resident in Malta, who had gone to Marseilles for a
change of scene and air, inviting Miss E. and myself to accompany them
on shore, we gladly accepted their offer.
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