position to generate any sort of malady. No vegetable matter is
permitted to decompose, nor are objectionable substances allowed to
remain aboveground. Malta no doubt has its drawbacks, but its climate,
as a rule, is very healthy. "Malta healthy?" responded a local physician
to our inquiry. "Why, we professionals are simply starved out for want
of practice." "How about the plague and the cholera?" we asked. "Ah, an
occasional visit of that sort occurs, to be sure, at wide intervals,
otherwise our occupation would be gone." He added, "All the world is
liable to such visitations; but as to the general healthfulness of this
island, no one can justly find fault." Such is probably the truth.
English physicians continue to send certain classes of their patients
hither regularly.

The men one meets outside of the city, in and about the villages,
engaged upon the land, or otherwise, form a hardy, swarthy, and capable
race,--industrious, ignorant, and very pious. These men, on an average,
are not quite so tall as those of North America, but they are strong,
broad-shouldered, frugal, and honest, with a decided Moorish cast of
countenance, whose usual expression is a compound of apathy and
dejection. That the Maltese are a temperate people is very plain.
Drunkenness is scarcely ever to be met with even in the humbler portions
of the capital, or along the shores of the harbor, where seamen
congregate, and where every facility for indulgence is easily
procurable. It is but fair to say that sobriety of habit is the rule
among the common classes of the people. In the rural districts great
simplicity of life prevails. Vegetable diet is almost universal, varied
by an occasional meal of fish. Meat is much more costly, and is seldom
indulged in by ordinary people, in town or country. Fish, which abounds
along the shore, is both cheap and nourishing. Shell-fish, especially,
are a favorite food in Malta. We say meat is costly; it is only so, as
compared with the means of the common people, and the amount of money
they realize in the form of wages. Beef sells in the market here at
about the same price as is charged in our Atlantic cities. Considerable
mutton is raised in the group, but the beef which is used for food
purposes is nearly all brought from over the sea, the larger portion
coming from the Barbary coast. As regards the cost of living at Malta,
that depends so much upon individual requirements that no general rule
applies, but it