The record-union., 1892-03-05

and gave us the empire of all Africa and
supremacy upon the Mediterranean"
Surely, but only through invasion
and butchery,o replied, marrying him d
little. simply for pillage the Berber in
Vader, Tarik, took Gibraltar and oyerran
Southern Spain, in I'll; with the same
purpose your Berber ancestors, in 19S,
took possession of and held the Balearic
Islands for $50 years; and about thou
sand years ago You seized and held Malta
until the Normans dispossesSed you.
Moslem rights were not deprived by
your expulsion from lands where you
did not belong"
But our imperial Barbary is cut into
pieces. Weare no more a mighty people
Our temples and our treasures are gone"
he passionately retorted.
so are your pirates and slaves per-
sisted unfeelingly. Those are the sort
of things civilization will never again toll
crate. 1t will never disturb an earnest
and jealous religion; but it Will surely
eventually extirpate any religion or race
that depriyes the lowliest of its followers
and people, men or women, of equal JUS
tice.''
He would not dwell upon this implied
contrast between Christianity and Mo-
hammedanism, but continually bewaiied
the English possession of Gibraltar and
Malta as menace to all oriental suprem-
acy, and the direct cause, or permissible
cause, of the ACKNOWLEDGMENT and appro-
priation Of Northern Africa by Spain, It.
ally and France. He admitted that its de-
velopment, especially in Tunis, Tripoli
and Algeria, had been marvellous within
the last quarter of century; that Glib
raltar and Malta in the hands OF the Eng
IlSh guaranteed permanent and peaceful
trade with all Mediterranean countries by
the fleets of the whole world; and
even confessed that without this very
English strategic supremacy in the Med
iterranean his own safety with his hides
and wheat, in transit from Tunis TO any
neighboring port, would be extremely
problematical, if not altogether improb-
able.
In such unusual converse with these
strange folk the voyage from Palma TO
Malta was passed. l was often able to
lead the momentary topic from Moors to
Maltese, and thus secured much valuable
information concerning the real as well
as the sentimental condition OF the latter.
Two very interesting facts developed
through the apparent extraordinary
hatred of English rulers by the Captain
and Tunisian, and their seeming equal
mutual affection for the common people
of Malta, the folk who were its peaSantry
even before its days of chivalry under the
olden knights of Malta whose deeds and
fame were the most luminous in all
medieval history.
The first was the passionate love all
Maltese have for their sterile. sun baked.
sirocco-swept little hump of rock to
which they cling, and nurture so lovingly
that 1t returns them, conditions being
considered, the most bounteouS and lux
uriant rewards of any equal area on the
face of the earth. Flower of the earth"
they call the treeless spot. my country
adoreo' they ever name the casSel or
whprn horn 4 q 6
purgatory" or penance-spot they know
any other land beneath the sun to which
necessity has led them.
/ have noticed this same almost pathet-
icaliy desperate affection for ones birth
spot to be true in other rugged and sterile
abodes of men. Nothing could induce
the half-froZen people OF Labrador To quit
those regions of silence and desolation.
The Highland crofter OF Scotland is a
spiritleSs, heartbroken man when forced
from his wild straths and glens. Who
that has stepped foot on the Arran
Islands, off Galway, ever saw other such
pictures of hopeless poverty and suffer
ing? let for generations their people
have chung to the rocks, like the dolorous
puffins which nest in their sides amid the
Atlantic's howlings, and no power has
been sufficient to tear them away from
their starvation and wretchedness.
1t was a curious thing, too, to learn
from the Tunisian that the peasantry Of
Malta were more Berber and Arab races
than of Greek, Italian and Spanish. BY
all affinitieS, save the one of religion, he
claimed them as brethren to a man. In
their customs, superstitions and many of
their homeside ways, as well as in nearly
all methods, or rather want OF method, in
agriculture they are, he claimed, pre-
ciSely like the Berber tribe farmers in
the valleys behind Tunis and Algiers.
oil
that the Maltese were his kindred, was
his claim, which l have since found to be
true, that while nearly all spoke sort OF
English, Italian or Spanish patois, every
one could at any moment cross into
Northern Africa and converse with the
natives in a measurably pure Arabic
tongue.
1--WE are at Malta, senior. Would you
look upon sleeping Naletta from the sea
in the early morning?'
Such was the CHEEKY call of our
Captain as we approached the most
famous island of the Mediterranean.
When I reached the deck our craft lay
league distant from port, almost imper-
cepGibly moving toward the white island
and whittier city over rippieless sea, with
sails scarcely filled by the faintest OF
breezes which merely whispered of the
morning, for the sun seemed TO stand a
tremendous globe of crimson on the sea-
horizon, away over there between Greece
and Crete.
My eyes never before beheld so tran
scendant and radiant scene. The whole
bosom of the sea seemed enveloped in a
downy mantle of pearl, gold and Grim
son, which, lying low upon the water
showed countless matchless changes OF
color, and possessed the added marvellous
effect of lifting all discernible objects to
an unwonting altitude.
Our brigantine. with other craft here
and there about us, appeared to ride upon
an opalescent, intangible yet palpable
surface of softly flaming cloud. Though
Sicily lay sixty miles to the north, its
shore-line, lifted vertically, and not in
mirage, showed strangely near, with the
huge cone of Etna like spear-head Of
silver above.
But where are the words with which to
paint for another'S seeing the island and
Its ancient city of the Knights as they
rose out of the pulsing, throbbing tints of
that glorious morning witchery? If one
could dream that the gods had trans
formed the sea into bed of cameo rose,
and, through cycles of time, with their
most cunning artifcers wrought it into
miracles of tiligree, and then chiseled
upon it white relief of the islands area,
whose wondrous design had eliminated
in outlines and detail OF massive grandeur
and matchless simplicity where the city
of fortreSses and palaces stood, a vague
hint of this morning scene could come
with the dreaming and seeming.
And on this morning. as we slowly
glided into the eastern OF the two ports,
and the ideal gradually resolved into the
real, the mind, following the imagery of
the cameo, its setting, and those who
wrought, loved to linger on the thought
that those who had built had left their
miracle of labor silent and still, as a
ghostly and stately housing for all who