But if the rubbish sold in Valletta can be bought quite as good and rather more cheaply in London, Valletta itself must be seen _in situ_. The entrance to either of the harbors enables one to obtain but a slight idea of the place. It seems all forts and flat-roofed buildings piled one above the other in unattractive terraces. There are guns everywhere, and, right and left, those strongholds which are the final purposes of cannon. As the steamer creeps shrieking into "Port Marsa-Musciet" (the "Port" is superfluous, since the Arabic "Marsa" means the same thing) or Quarantine Harbor, it passes Dragut Point, with Fort Tigne on the right and Fort St. Elmo on the left, in addition to Fort Manoel and the Lazaretto on an island straight ahead. Had our destination been the Grand Harbor on the other side of Valletta, Fort Ricasoli and Fort St. Angelo would have been equally in evidence, built on two of the various projections which intersect the left side of that haven. But the forts are, as it were, only the ganglia of the vast systems of fortifications which circle every creek and bay and headland of Valletta and its offshoots. Ages of toil, millions of money, and the best talent of three centuries of engineers have been lavished on the bewildering mass of curtains and horn-works, and ravelins and demilunes, and ditches and palisades, and drawbridges and bastions, and earthworks, which meet the eye in profusion enough to have delighted the soul of Uncle Toby. Sentinels and martial music are the most familiar of sights and sounds, and after soldiers and barracks, sailors and war-ships, the most frequent reminders that Malta, like Gibraltar, is a great military and naval station. But it is also in possession of some civil rights unknown to the latter. Among these is a legislature with limited power and boundless chatter, and, what is of more importance to the visitor, the citizens can go in and out of Valletta at all hours of the day and night, no raised drawbridge or stolid portcullis barring their movements in times of peace. The stranger lands without being questioned as to his nationality, and in Malta the Briton is bereft of the _Civis-Romanus-sum_ sort of feeling he imbibes in Gibraltar; for here the alien can circulate as freely as the lords of the soil. But the man who wishes to explore Valletta must be capable of climbing; for from the landing place to the chief hotel in the main street the ascent is continuous, and for the first part of the way is by a flight of stairs. Indeed, these steps are so often called into requisition that one can sympathize with the farewell anathema of Bryon as he limped up one of these frequent obstacles to locomotion, "Adieu! ye cursed streets of stairs! (How surely he who mounts you swears)."