and Marseilles, Valletta has naturally become a popular
port of call, as well as an important coaling station for many lines of
steamships. This is particularly the case with those bound to or from
England and India by way of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. The opening
of that famous and all-important waterway insured the lasting commercial
prosperity of the Maltese group. From that day to the present its
material growth has been steadily progressing and its population
increasing. It is well known how much the Suez Canal promotes the
commerce of Europe and Asia, but comparatively few people realize that
we have in America a similar means of transportation which is the avenue
of a much larger marine traffic. We refer to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal,
which connects the State of Michigan with the Canadian Province of
Ontario. The aggregate of the tonnage which annually passes through the
American artificial river is shown by government statistics to far
exceed that of the great canal which connects the Red Sea and the
Mediterranean.

Malta is the halfway station, as it were, of the P. & O. line between
London and Bombay; but there is other regular communication between the
group and England, as well as mail steamships running to Marseilles,
Alexandria, Belgium, Tripoli, and Tunis. Occasionally a single passenger
or a small party of tourists stop at Valletta until the next packet
touches here, enabling them to resume their journey east or west; but it
is rather surprising how few visitors to Malta remain long enough to see
one half of its many objects of interest, while others, who might easily
do so, will not even take the trouble to land. One can sail half round
the globe without finding a locality from which such a store of historic
information and pleasurable memories can be brought away, or whose
present aspect is more inviting. People who have no poetic sense or
delicate appreciation will not find these qualities ready furnished for
them, either at home or abroad. The dull, prosaic individual whose ideas
run only in a practical groove, who lives purely in the commonplace,
will be impressed by travel much after the fashion of the backwoodsman
from Maine, when he saw Niagara Falls for the first time.

"Great Scott!" said he, gazing approvingly upon the moving aqueous body,
"what a waste of water-power!"

A somewhat similar scene, of which the author was a witness, is well
remembered.

"Are you going on shore, madam, w