riana are situated the numerous spacious vaults, cut out of the
solid rock, for the storage of grain to support the garrison and
populace in case Malta were compelled to sustain a long siege. Here,
too, are the catacombs belonging to the old Capuchin convent, founded in
1588, where the dead bodies of the brotherhood are preserved, clad in
their usual robes and arranged in sitting postures, filling nooks in the
walls. Here and thus they remain for many, many years, until the slow
process of decay crumbles both body and bones to dust. This is a
Sicilian idea early imported into these islands, "a custom," we should
say, "more honored in the breach than the observance." These dreary,
cadaverous corpses are supported in the positions which they are made to
assume by means of steel wires hidden beneath their scanty robes. If
this strange mode of disposing of human bodies after death has any
really worthy and reasonable purpose, or if it is of any possible
advantage to the quick or the dead, we are too obtuse to believe it.
Sightseers call a visit to the sepulchral chamber, "going to see the
Baked Monks," it being generally believed that the bodies go through
some toasting or drying process which preserves them.

About the walls of this mortuary chamber myriads of bleached human
bones of beings who died centuries ago are fantastically arranged. From
this collection ghostly skulls peer at the visitor with a sort of
derisive, satanic grin. Perhaps it will be argued that all this is
calculated to suggest the fleeting nature of earthly things, but the
moral is too far-fetched. The uncanny smell of the place still haunts
us, like the mummy flavor from certain receptacles in Cairo and
Alexandria. We were told that this mode of disposing of the deceased
monks had been discontinued, that they were now buried like other bodies
after death, and that the Church of Rome tolerated such exposure of the
mortal remains of the faithful simply as a check to human pride. "To
this complexion must we come at last." We were not convinced by the
explanation of the propriety or desirability of these mummy exhibitions.

A somewhat similar display of skeletons, but without drapery of any
sort, may be seen under the Hospital for Incurables at Valletta, in what
is termed La Chapelle des Morts, where bleached skulls and whitened
bones are stored in fantastic shapes by the thousand. Both this and the
Floriana chamber naturally recalled the charnel-house of