MODERN EVENTS AT MALTA. 108 



Vienna in 1814, our possession was formally ratified. We hold it on as good a title as 

 we do Gibraltar, by rights acknowledged at the signing of the Peace Treaty.* 



The supposed scene of St. Paul's shipwreck is constantly visited, and although some 

 have doubted whether the Melita of St. Luke is not the island of the same name in the 

 Adriatic, tradition and probability point to Malta. | At St. Paul's Bay, there is a small 

 chapel over the cave, with a statue of the apostle in marble, with the viper in his hand. 

 Colonel Shaw tells us that the priest who shows the cave recommended him to take a 

 piece of the stone as a specific against shipwreck, saying, " Take away as much as you 

 please, you will not diminish the cave." Some of the priests aver that there is a miraculous 

 renovation, and that it cannot diminish ! and when they tell you that under one of the 

 Maltese churches the great apostle did penance in a cell for three months, it looks still 

 more as though they are drawing on their imagination. 



The great catacombs at Citta Vecchia, Malta, were constructed by the natives as 

 places of refuge from the Turks. They consist of whole streets, with houses and sleeping- 

 places. They were later used for tombs. There are other remains on the island of much 

 greater antiquity, Ilagiar C/iem (the stones of veneration) date from Phoenician days. 

 These include a temple resembling Stonehenge, on a smaller scale, where there are seven 

 statuettes with a grotesque rotundity of outline, the seven Phoenician Caliri (deities ; 

 " great and powerful ones'"). There are also seven divisions to the temple, which is 

 mentioned by Herodotus and other ancient writers. 



To come back to our own time. In 1808, the following remarkable event occurred 

 at Malta. One Froberg had raised a levy of Greeks for the British Government, 

 by telling the individual members that they should all be corporals, generals, or what 

 not. It was to be all officers, like some other regiments of which we have heard. 

 The men soon found out the deceit, but drilled admirably uctil the brutality of 

 the adjutant caused them to mutiny. Malta was at the time thinly garrisoned, and 

 their particular fort had only one small detachment of troops and thirty artillerymen. The 

 mutineers made the officer of artillery point his guns on the town. He, however, managed 

 that the shots should fall harmlessly. Another officer escaped up a chimney, and the Greeks 

 coming into the same house, nearly suffocated him by lighting a large fire below. Troops 

 arrived; the mutineers were secured, and a court-martial condemned thirty, half of whom 

 were to be hanged, and the rest shot. Only five could be hanged at a time : the first 

 five were therefore suspended by the five who came next, and so on. Of the men who 



* The Order of the Knights of St. John exists now as a religious and benevolent body a shadow of its 

 former self. There was a period when the revenues of the Order were over 3,000,000 sterling. It still exists, 

 however, the head-quarters being at Ferrara in Italy. Recent organisations, countenanced and supported by 

 distinguished noblemen and gentlemen for the relief of sufferers by war, and convalescents in hospital in many parts 

 of England, are in some sense under its banner ; H.R.H. the Prince of Wales is President of one of them 

 the National Society for the Sick and Wounded in War. It had been recommended by one writer, that 

 gentlemen of the present day should become members, and wear at evening entertainments a special dress and 

 decoration, and that there should also be dames chevalieres, with decorations also. He believes, of course, 

 that this would greatly aid the funds for those benevolent purposes. 



t For an elaborate, exhaustive disquisition on this subject, vide " The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul," 

 by James Smith. 



