," through which one may look
upon the sea as though it were an artificial opening set with clearest
glass. It very naturally recalled a somewhat similar freak of nature
which occurs on the island of Torghatten, off the coast of Norway, where
one gets a sort of telescopic view, through a stone tunnel five hundred
feet long, of the blue sea and the islands in range far beyond it.

The next largest town to Rabbato is Casal Nadar, the only one on the
island whose population approximates in number to that of the capital.
This place is famous for the fruit which is raised in its neighborhood,
and especially for its excellent apples and choice ornamental trees. It
has nearly four thousand inhabitants. The cultivation of the land is
brought to a much higher standard here than in the larger island, but
the dwelling-houses are inferior to those of the villages of Malta
proper; and yet in estimating the general thrift of the country
population of the two islands, the result is decidedly in favor of Gozo.

A pleasant drive of three or four miles from Rabbato, through a
garden-like region where poppies, clad in imperial scarlet, peep out
from among the hedges to delight the eye, brings one to the Bay of
Scilendi, whose perpendicular cliffs contain many rocky caves, few of
which, probably, have been explored within the memory of living
residents hereabouts. They are believed to have been, in olden times,
the rendezvous of corsairs, where their ill-gotten wealth was stored,
where they held their revels, and where their prisoners were confined
until they were sold into slavery at Constantinople, or on the Barbary
coast. The manifest fertility of the soil lying between here and the
capital is owing principally to the irrigating capacity of several
invaluable and never-failing springs of pure water with which this
region has been exceptionally favored. The tangled masses of kelp and
seaweed, which constantly accumulate on the shore, are regularly
collected by the thrifty natives and liberally applied to the land as a
fertilizer. This material, becoming duly decomposed, imparts its rich
chemical properties to the soil, and thus repays the laborer tenfold.

Malta has been pronounced by an act of the English Parliament as
belonging to Europe, but the fact that the stratification of the
southern part of the island corresponds exactly with that of the coast
of Barbary indicates a similar origin. Ptolemy thought it was African,
but Pliny gi