246 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



real English chime, which was pleasant to hear among the louder 

 and prouder bells from the other church towers." After 

 mentioning the fortifications, his letter proceeds : " One use of 

 the walls is to grow caper bushes, which were springing fresh 

 and green wherever there was a crack. The caper bush at a 

 distance looks like a stout convolvulus, as its stems trail about in 

 every direction over the stones. Seen closer, however, it is more 

 woody and thorny, and rambling as a bramble. It has small, 

 simple, deep green glossy leaves and yellowish white flowers with 

 a great many long stamens, and the pistil raised on a stalk in 

 the middle, as in the passion-flower. The flower bud before 

 opening is the part pickled. You might collect plenty on all 

 the rocks and walls around Valetta, that is, if you be allowed to 

 cut capers within the fort. The prettiest tree or rather large 

 shrub that 1 saw about the town was what is called the pepper 

 hush, which you can see as a poor potted plant in College 

 gardens, but which here is a most gracefully weeping-tree-bush 

 some twenty feet high, with more the aspect of one of the 

 Australian acacias than anything else. It was planted on 

 some of the terraces with Melia (Pride of China) and Ailanthus 

 (Tree of Heaven), and looked well. 



"When we returned on board we found 150 deck passengers, 

 Arabs bound for Mecca, a strange, wild-looking set of men, 

 swarthy, bony, bearded — dressed in long loose flannels, like night- 

 shirts, falling down to their heels. What a change is coming 

 over the world when pilgrims from Sahara to Mecca travel in 

 an English steamer. They would not be the worse for a regular 

 steaming, seeing they are rather dirty. Many are pilgrims on 

 their own account, others are proxies, who have hired themselves 

 to carry their neighbours' sins to the tomb of the Prophet, and to 

 bring back from it a bottle of the holy water in which whoever 

 is washed at dying is sure of a safe passage to Heaven." 



On board the Bentinck, August 21, 1853. 

 On the Eed Sea, a few hours from Suez, and near the place 

 where the Israelites crossed — as is supposed. 



I am very comfortably enjoying a pleasant cool 



breeze blowing over the dark-Hue waters of the Eed Sea ; at 

 one side, about six. or eight miles off, the high, bare, red, barren, 

 African mountains looking as if they were half roasted. At 



