We came in sight of Malta at daybreak on the 28th of September, and about noon dropped our anchor in the Marsamuscetta, or quarantine harbour, where all ships under the rank of a frigate must go. This celebrated isle, the master-key of the Mediterranean, the link that connects us with Egypt and India, was a new scene to me. Mostyn and some others on board the Urgent had been quartered there before, and while I was surveying the vast strength of its batteries of white sandstone, with those apparently countless cannon, that peer through the deep embrasures, or frown _en barbette_ over the sea; the quaint appearance of those streets of stairs, which Byron anathematised; the singular architecture of the houses, so Moorish in style and aspect, with heavy, overhanging balconies and flat roofs all connected, so that the dwellers therein can make a common promenade of them; the groups of picturesque, half-nude, and tawny Maltese; the monks and clerical students in rusty black cloaks and triangular hats; the Greek sailors, in short jackets and baggy blue breeches; the numbers of scarlet uniforms, and those of the Chasseurs de Vincennes (for two French three-deckers full of the latter had just come in); the naked boys who dived for halfpence in the harbour, and jabbered a dialect that was more Arabic than Italian--while surveying all this from the poop, through my field-glass, Mostyn was pointing out to me the great cathedral of St. John, some of the auberges of the knights, and anticipating the pleasure of a fruit lunch in the Strada Reale, a drive to Monte Benjemma, a dinner at Morell's, in the Strada Forni, a cigar on the ramparts, and then dropping into the opera-house, which was built by the Grand-master Manoel Vilhena, and where the best singers from La Scala may be heard in the season; and Price of ours was already soft and poetical in the ideas of faldettas of lace, black eyes, short skirts, and taper ankles, and anticipating or suggesting various soft things. While the soldiers clustered in the waist, as thick as bees, the officers were all busy with their lorgnettes on the poop, or in preparation for a run ashore, when the bells of Valetta began to ring a merry peal, the ships in the harbour to show all their colours, and a gun flashed redly from the massive granite ramparts of St. Elmo, a place of enormous strength, having in its lower bastions a sunk barrack, capable of holding two thousand infantry. "Another gun!" exclaimed little Tom Clavell, as a second cannon sent its peal over the flat roofs, and another; "a salute, by Jove! What is up--is this an anniversary?"