I have already, under the title of "The Yellow Flag," described in what manner, and with what auspices, we floated into the quarantine harbour of Malta. The complaisant reader will now, I trust, consent to accompany me to prison, and partake of the entertainment which I found there. On entering our apartments, the very best in the lazaretto, situated in the upper story of the building, and exceedingly spacious and lofty, we found that the Maltese friends of one of the gentlemen of our party had already been mindful of our comforts. On a large table placed near the open window, commanding a fine view of the shore, tea and coffee were smoking in elegant porcelain cups, and piles of white French rolls, delicate fresh butter swimming in water, and bowls and dishes heaped with the richest fruits of the season.

While dispatching these dainties we made a somewhat grotesque figure, with our red Fez caps, long drooping moustaches, untrimmed beards, and half-oriental, half- European costume. Close by my side sat the little eastern maiden before spoken of, with jet black tresses escaping from beneath her gold-edged Fez, and falling down her shoulders in profusion over her silken jacket, striped purple and white. An Arab servant, in the most picturesque costume of Egypt, broad white turban, light blue vest, silken trousers, and crimson shawl, waited on us instead of the Maltese guardano, pouring out our coffee and handing round the fruit and rolls. Our conversation immediately smacked of the change in our condition. We were now a prey to no uncertainty. In twenty days we should be at liberty; for we had been informed that the fragment of twenty-four hours from tea- time till night, would be counted as one day.

The great question now was, who would bear imprisonment most patiently, least diligently count the hours, and experience the fewest temptations to scold the guardiano, find fault with the claret, and anathematise the excellent dinners sent us from one of the best houses in Valetta? It struck me that he who had most employment would be the least likely to fall a victim to ennui; and this busiest person was myself, since I had not only, like my companions, to write letters to my friends at home, but was under the necessity of bringing up my journal, and studying a mass of materials in the form of notes, which had been for some time accumulating in the countries I had travelled through.

Under the impression that the days would speed rapidly along, and that I should soon find myself again in motion, climbing the mountains of Sicily, descending into the subterranean-streets of Herculaneum, strolling through the ruins of Pompeii, threading my way through the lazy crowds on corsos and chiajas of Naples, or mounting and descending the Alps, I at an early hour threw myself on one of those iron bedsteads with which the British government has furnished the lazaretto of Malta. Sleep almost at once threw its mantle over me; and what did I see then? Certainly not the chambers of "our prison house," or the waves of the Mediterranean, whether angry or still, or the vast deserts I had traversed, or those landscapes of inimitable beauty, composed of rocks and water, and mosques and tombs, and villages surrounded and overshadowed by the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics. No, the genius of sleep was more indulgent to me. It displayed to my view the interior of a beautiful cottage on the Leman lake, where I beheld a mother with an infant in her arms, surrounded by a number of children at play, some of which would, from time to time, stand by her knee, look in her face and say, " I wonder where father is now?" As the only reply, the mother would bend over her infant, as if to hide certain tokens of emotion which nature at times will force into the eyes. I seemed suddenly to make my appearance among them, to feel the embrace of one, the kiss of another, and the feelings becoming too tumultuous to be confined within the narrow channels of a dream, I started on my iron couch, and, looking around me, beheld my bedroom filled with the bright light of a May morning, and a cloud of mosquitoes, rising from my face through the tough brown, weather- beaten skin of which, they had in vain been endeavouring to penetrate. I detected the traces of the dream upon my cheek, in that thin delicate brine which, in the microcosm of man, swells like the tides of the ocean, when the sun of joy or the cloud of sorrow passes over him.

It is a luxury to inhale the early air of the morning in the south, I accordingly dressed rapidly, clapped on my Fez, and hastened to examine the topography of my prison. It was a large quadrangular building erected round a long narrow court, of which the inmates could command a view from the wooden gallery running along the front of every story. With the persons on the opposite gallery we could very easily converse, which, had we stood in need of amusement, might have been an advantage to us. On the terrace below, however, we met and walked together, though as they had been in confinement several days before us, they were careful to avoid closer contact, as, had we touched each other, our guardians would have reported the fact to the proper authorities, and thus have extended the duration of their captivity.

On approaching the window overlooking the quarantine harbour, I observed several merchantmen and ships of war lying there, among which were a Russian frigate and an English sloop of war, last from Tunis, commanded by a son of Lord Grey. The crew of this craft sometimes afforded us considerable amusement. Having little else to do, they spent much of their time in the water, occasionally upsetting a boat, and then attempting to scramble up its wet and slippery sides, laughing, pulling, and clutching each other, to the great entertainment of the plague-suspected population of the lazaretto. The Russian vessel lay apart from every other at the further extremity of the harbour. She appeared to be of a very handsome build, and was said to be kept scrupulously clean. Here and there, on projecting points of land, we could perceive, pacing to and fro, the sentinels stationed there to enforce the observance of the quarantine regulations. Their orders were to fire upon any persons who should attempt to overstep the prescribed boundaries, and hold communication with the people of the city. And ought we at all to wonder at this severity? There were several plague patients at that very moment in the lazaretto, not three doors from our apartments, and had the rules of quarantine been infringed, the same thing would, in all probability, hate happened again, that occurred in 1810, when the plague was introduced into Valetta and carried off ten thousand victims. I am aware that an opinion prevails rather widely, more especially among political economists, hostile to the maintenance of quarantine establishments. Because the free play of the commercial machine is somewhat impeded by a strict attention 

to public health, they jump to the conclusion that the plague in reality is not contagious, that it diffuses itself through the channel of the atmosphere; and that, consequently, whatever precautions you may take there can be no escape for you, if your lungs once breathe the infected air. But this ingenious theory is not consistent with experience. We find, on the contrary, that you may converse with a plague-smitten patient, that you may dine with him, sleep in the same chamber with him, and yet escape the malady, provide you neither touch his person nor his garments. This is the general belief of Europeans in all parts of the Levant. As I have said, however, there are persons who maintain the contrary opinion, chiefly to be found in those countries of Europe which are seldom or never ravaged by the pestilence.

But, be this as it may, certain it is that the neighbourhood of the disease is sure to excite very unpleasant reflections. For example, when it was whispered through our division of the lazaretto that one of our near neighbours had died of the plague, and that he was to be carried along oar terrace to be buried, I noticed that every countenance assumed an additional shade of gravity. No one, you may be sure, who was not compelled by the duty of his station, attended that unfortunate traveller to his grave. He had no relations, no friends near. We never heard his name. Four of the guardians with hurried step and in utter silence bore him past our door; the gates which separated the several divisions of the lazaretto were successively thrown open; the apparition passed, the gates closed behind it, and dust was committed to dust in comparatively few minutes. No bell tolled, no service was said, but the shock communicated by this single death to every heart within that vast building, left behind it a quicker pulse, a long throb of apprehension, which, like the heaving of the sea after a tempest, continued to be felt for several days.

Little did I think then, that my most lively, healthful, and agreeable friend, the Her. Vere Monro, whose willy and learned company had imparted additional charms even to the banks of the Nile, and who was at that moment with pilgrim feet traversing the Holy Land, would in a few short years come to that self-same spot to die. He was a man who loved travelling for its own sake; neither fatigue nor privations could disgust him with it . With the Bible and Herodotus, and the necessary cash in his carpet-bag, he joined me at Rosetta. We journeyed in all directions nearly three thousand miles together, and at the close of our journey projected another to the banks of the Volga and the shores of the Caspian Sea. When afterwards he came to put this design in execution, circumstances prevented my accompanying him, and he performed but a small part of his intended tour. From Nishni Novgorod and a port in the Crimea, he forwarded me an account of his travels and of the obstacles which prevented their extension. The correspondence then suddenly ceased, and in the obituary of the daily journals I soon learned the cause. He had come to Malta, bringing the germs of fever, perhaps of plague, along with him, and there died in the midst of strangers, sincerely regretted, I may truly add, by all who ever knew him.

Nevertheless, our situation—to return to my subject—was far from being dulL Visitors from the city came constantly to see us in boats, bringing with them the news and scandal of the day. One of the gentlemen in the opposite wing of the building happening to be an acquaintance of Wolfe, the missionary—at that time pursuing his journey through ]]wp:Persia|Persia]] and Afghanistan, and now again on his way to Bokhara to inquire into the fate of our gallant countrymen, Stoddart and Conolly; his wife, who resided at Malta, was generally, with her infant daughter, to be seen among the visitors at the foot of our terrace stairs. Besides, we mustered six travellers in all, and we had traversed between us a very large portion of the globe. Occasionally, therefore, as we sat and smoked in the evening sun, narratives and personal adventures rapidly succeeded each other, seasoned sometimes with the description of a typhoon in the China seas, sometimes with an Indian alligator, a residence in the plague hospital of Alexandria, or a visit to the river Jordan or the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Occasionally we spent an hour in exhibiting the curiosities we had collected; as chaplets of wandering derwishes, bracelets from the arms of African women, daggers, sea-shells, holy beads from Mecca or erusalem, papyri, chips from the great pyramid, seals or amulets found in the tombs of the kings at Thebes, variegated agates or cornelians from the Great Desert, or apples of Sodom exactly such as -they are described by Tacitus.

But, whatever may have been the case with my companions, I own that my principal pleasure during our imprisonment consisted in projecting myself forward by an effort of the imagination, and conversing proleptically with persons who were at that time perhaps exceedingly uneasy on my account; for so mismanaged are the affairs of the post-office in that part of the world that few of my letters arrived at their destination until many months after they were written, and even the joyous missive which I had submitted to be smoked on the very evening of my arrival at Malta, did not reach my family in Switzerland, until I had been myself a fortnight or three weeks at home. The individuals, with whom chance brings you in contact, may be and often are very pleasant people; but the current of their general sympathies runs necessarily in channels very different from yours. The real affections of a knot of men, thus bound together a moment, operate faintly on the spot where they happen to be placed, but, diverging to every point of the compass, flow with impasssioned force towards persons and places at a distance. These merry friends, therefore, as they seem, could they be admitted into the recesses of each other's natures, and behold, as in a mirror, the world of busy thoughts hived and working their honey there, would be wonderfully surprised at the unsuspected exhibition. I can, at all events, answer for myself. For often as I sat, at the great window of our saloon, apparently listening to the lively conversation going on around the claret, I would recline my head on my hand, grow gradually forgetful of every person present, and gaze in a sort of dreamy rapture on the vast carpet of waves, silvered by the moonbeams, which stretched from the foot of that rock to the mole of Genoa, within a comparatively few hundred miles of Lausanne. I would then contract the distance, throw Poseidonian steps over laud and sea, and detect myself among the snows of the Simplon. while in reality catching the soft and balmy breeze fresh from the orange groves of Malta.