He Had Previously Made Twelve Voyages
To India; But Now Availed Himself Of The Shorter Route, And Proposed
To Join His Vessel At Bombay, Dispose Of The Cargo, And, After Taking
In A New Freight, Return Through Egypt.
The only coasts in sight,
during our voyage from Marseilles to Malta, were those of Sardinia
and Africa, Sicily being too far off to be visible.
We were not near
enough to Sardinia to see more than a long succession of irregular
hills, which looked very beautiful under the lights and shades of a
lovely summer sky. The weather was warm, without being sultry, and
nothing was wanting excepting a few books. Mr. Goldsmith regretted the
absence of a library on board, but expressed his intention of making a
collection as speedily as possible.
The excessive and continual motion of the vessel caused me to suffer
very severely from seasickness; the exertion of dressing in the
morning always brought on a paroxysm, but I determined to struggle
against it as much as possible, and was only one day so completely
overpowered as to be unable to rise from the sofa. This sickness
was the more provoking, since there was no swell to occasion it, the
inconvenience entirely arising from Sir Somebody Symonds' (I believe
that is the name) method of building. What the Megara would be in a
heavy sea, there is no saying, and I should be very sorry to make the
experiment.
We found ourselves at Malta at an early hour of the morning of
the 25th, having been only five nights and four days on board. Mr.
Goldsmith celebrated our last dinner with a profusion of champaigne,
and though glad to get out of the vessel, we felt unfeignedly sorry to
take leave of our kind commandant. We were, of course, up by daylight,
in order to lose nothing of the view.
Much as I had heard of the gay singularity of the appearance of Malta,
I felt surprise as well as delight at the beautiful scene around;
nor was I at all prepared for the extent of the city of Valetta. The
excessive whiteness of the houses, built of the rock of which
the island is composed, contrasted with the vivid green of their
verandahs, gives to the whole landscape the air of a painting, in
which the artist has employed the most brilliant colours for sea
and sky, and habitations of a sort of fairy land. Nor does a nearer
approach destroy this illusion; there are no prominently squalid
features in Malta, the beggars, who crowd round every stranger, being
the only evidence, at a cursory gaze, of its poverty.
Soon after the Megara had dropped anchor, a young officer from the
Acheron, the steamer that had brought the mails from Gibraltar, came
on board to inquire whether I was amongst the passengers, and gave me
the pleasing intelligence that a lady, a friend of mine, who had left
London a few days before me, was now in Malta, and would proceed to
India in the vessel appointed to take the mails.
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