The shortest route to Valletta from Migiarro is to Marfa; but most people will prefer to land at once at Valletta. Here the change from the quiet islands to the busy metropolis of the group is marked. Everything betokens the capital of a dependency which, if not itself wealthy, is held by a wealthy nation, and a fortress upon which money has been lavished by a succession of military masters without any regard to the commercial aspects of the outlay. For if Malta has been and must always continue to be a trading center, it has for ages never ceased to be primarily a place of arms, a stronghold to the defensive strength of which every other interest must give way. All the public buildings are on a scale of substantiality which, to the voyager hitherto familiar only with Gibraltar, is rather striking. Even the residences of the officials are finer than one would expect in a "colony" (though there are no colonists, and no room for them) with a population less than 170,000, and a revenue rarely exceeding £250,000 per annum. Dens, vile beyond belief, there are no doubt in Valletta. But these are for the most part in narrow bye-lanes, which have few attractions for the ordinary visitor, or in the Manderaggio, a quasi-subterranean district, mostly below sea-level, where the houses are often without windows and conveniences even more important; so that there is an unconscious grimness in the prophetic humor which has dubbed this quarter of Valletta (two-and-a-half acres in area, peopled by 2,544 persons) "the place of cattle." Yet though the ninety-five square miles of the Maltese islands are about the most densely populated portions of the earth, the soil is so fertile, and the sources of employment, especially since the construction of the Suez Canal, so plentiful, that extreme penury is almost unknown, while the rural population seem in the happy mean of being neither rich nor poor.
But the tourist who for the first time surveys Valletta from the deck of a steamer as she anchors in the Quarantine Harbor, or still better from the Grand Harbor on the other side of the peninsula on which the capital is built, sees little of this. Scarcely is the vessel at rest before she is surrounded by a swarm of the peculiar high-prowed "dghaisas," or Maltese boats, the owners of which, standing while rowing, are clamorous to pull the passenger ashore; for Malta, like its sister fortress at the mouth of the Mediterranean, does not encourage wharves and piers, alongside of which large craft may anchor and troublesome crews swarm when they are not desired. Crowds of itinerant dealers, wily people with all the supple eagerness of the Oriental, and all the lack of conscience which is the convenient heritage of the trader of the Middle Sea, establish themselves on deck, ready to part with the laces, and filigrees, and corals, and shells, and apocryphal coins of the Knights of St. John, for any ransom not less than twice their value. But in Malta, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean ports, there are always two prices, the price for which the resident obtains anything, and the price which the stranger is asked to pay. To these tariffs a new one has of late years been added, and this is that paradisaical figure, that fond legend of a golden age invoked only when the buyer is very eager, or very verdant, or very rich, "the price that Lady Brassey paid." However, even when the sojourner fancies that he has made a fair bargain (and the appraisements fall suddenly as the last bell begins to ring), the pedler is well in pocket, so well, indeed, that it has been calculated every steamer leaves behind it something like two hundred pounds in cash.