66 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



serve as grinding-stones for their mills, and to 

 make a pavement for their cities. You do not so 

 much as find in it vitrifiable substances; everything 

 there is calcareous, if you except the talc, the 

 gypse, and the clay ; and besides, this last substance 

 is found in very small quantities, and always mixed 

 with calcareous matter ; it is in greater abundance, 

 and more pure, in the isle of Gozzi, which is close 

 by that of Malta, and dependent upon it. 



There are, moreover, no mountains in the 

 island of Malta, nor in that of Gozzi ; they are 

 nothing but a plain, interrupted by some hills of 

 very little elevation. 



It is impossible to tire in admiring the industry 

 of the Maltese farmers, who have succeeded in 

 diffusing fertility over a rock, for the greatest part 

 naked, or scarcely covered by a few inches of earth. 

 In order to reduce a soil, apparently so ungrateful, 

 to a state favourable to vegetation, these laborious 

 men scoop out the rock, and break it down. The 

 parts nearest the surface, and which the contact of 

 the air had hardened, serve to construct, round the 

 fieid, a dry wall, which, at the same time, clears it 

 of the stony substances which are too solid to be 

 decompounded, and prevents the rain water from 

 washing away the vegetable earth. A part of the 

 rock is reduced, by dint of labour, into small par- 

 ticles, 



