So TRAVELS IN UPPER 



the Mussulmans, a rampart capable of protecting 

 bis own possessions against their enterprises. 



Other nations likewise knew how to avail them- 

 selves of the obligations which the Order of Malta 

 had contracted. France, in particular, derived 

 great advantages from them. Though, for many 

 years past, that Order had fallen from its ancient 

 grandeur, though its war with the Turks was now 

 nothing more than an empty bugbear ; though, in 

 a word, its actual hostilities, as I have said, were 

 reduced to the cruises of a few miserable privateers, 

 the Maltese name was so formidable in the Turkish 

 seas, that the appearance of the smallest felucca 

 carrying the flag of the Order was sufficient to dif- 

 fuse terror, and to prevent the ships of the country 

 from venturing out. All carriage of jroods, in seas 

 where commerce has much activity, was through 

 the medium of foreign bottoms. Marseilles, and 

 the small ports adjacent, sent into them annually 

 near five hundred. These vessels returned, at the 

 end of three yeats, during which their crews had 

 subsisted at the expense of the Orientalists, to en- 

 rich our ports with the piastres of the Levant, 

 and with about five thousand seamen, whom that 

 species of coasting trade had formed and inured to 

 the navigation of a sea extremely difficult and em- 

 barrassed with a labyrinth of islands and shallows, 

 hese commercial and maritime riches France 



owed 



