Chapter One.
Malta, which I have selected as the opening scene of the following story, is, from its historical recollections, its fine climate, and brilliant skies, a very interesting spot; although, for such beauty as its scenery possesses, it must be acknowledged that it is indebted very much more to art than to nature. Notwithstanding, however, the noise it has made in the world, and will, I suspect, should we ever be driven into a war with our vivacious continental neighbour, again make, it is but a rock some twenty miles long, and twelve broad, in the middle of the Mediterranean, with a smaller rock, Gozo, to the north of it, and was, probably, at one time of this planet’s existence, merely a continuation of Sicily or Italy’s toe, or a lump, as it were, kicked off into the middle of the sea. If, also, report speaks true, the very soil which gives verdure to its valleys, and nourishes its sweet-scented orange-groves, was imported from richer lands; yet, notwithstanding this, a larger number of inhabitants of every religion, colour, and costume, continue to exist on its surface, than on any similar-sized portion of the globe. But in its capital, Valetta, with its magnificent fortifications, and superb harbour, are centred its chief attractions, and which have gained for it a name imperishable on the page of history as the bulwark of Christendom, against the pagan hosts of the Saracens.
But as my tale is with the present rather than with the past, I will not stop to describe how, when it was called Mileta, Saint Paul landed on the island,—how the Vandals and Goths took possession of it, and were driven out by Belisarius,—how in 1530, the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, driven away from Rhodes, here settled,—how they built a fortress which withstood the mighty army of the Turks, and how those gallant gentlemen hurled back the infidels defeated and disgraced,—how they at length degenerated, and its inhabitants, deceived by treachery from within and without their gates, yielded their liberty to the great enemy of Europe, Buonaparte, and were unmercifully ill-treated, and pillaged,—and how, in the year 1800, with the the aid of an English fleet and a small English army, they drove out their conquerors, and put themselves under the protection of Great Britain.
Product description
If you HATE the book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words, this book is for you.
We don't use OCR'd book technology (Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text) to make the kindle version but we bring to you by THE SCANNING OR PHOTOGRAPH PROCESS. So everything you see here is almost same as original version. It may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact.
We hope you enjoy and are satisfied with our book. For more interesting books, please search for ‘AMA publication’.
AMA Publication
Important Notice!! Please read before you purchase.
- This title has landscape orientation. This can cause difficulties in reading this content on some Kindle applications, such as Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac.
- This book was produced from scanning process so you CAN’T use some text feature such as Adjust Font Size, Search or Highlight.
- Since this book does NOT support TEXT adjustment Function, we strongly do not recommend reading it with mobile phone, Android, BB or any small device.
- This book does NOT support Text To Speech Function.
advertisement