But Malta proper is only one of the Maltese group. As the geography books have it, there are three main islands, Malta, Gozo, and between them the little one of Comino, which with Cominetto, a still smaller islet close by, seems to have been the crest of a land of old, submerged beneath the sea. The voyager is barely out of sight of Sicily before the faint outlines of these isles are detected, like sharply defined clouds against a serenely blue sky. Yet, undeniably, the first view of Malta is disappointing; for with Etna fresh in the memory of the visitor from one direction, and the great Rock of Gibraltar vivid in the recollection of those arriving from the other end of the Mediterranean, there is little in any of the three islands to strike the imagination. For most of the picturesqueness of Malta is due to the works of man, and all of its romance to the great names and mighty events with which its historic shores are associated. But there are also around the coasts of this major member of the Maltese clump the tiny Filfla, with its venerable church; the Pietro Negro, or Black Rock; Gzeier sanctified by the wreck of St. Paul; and Scoglio Marfo, on which a few fishermen encamp, or which grow grass enough for some rabbits or a frugal goat or two; and, great in fame though small in size, the Hagra tal General, or Fungus Rock, on which still flourishes that curious parasitic plant, the _Fungus Melitensis_ of the old botanists, the _Cynomorium coccineum_ of latter-day systematists. The visitor who has the curiosity to land on the rock in April or May will find it in full flower, and perhaps, considering its ancient reputation, may be rather disappointed with the appearance of a weed which at one time enjoyed such a reputation as a stauncher of blood and a sovereign remedy for a host of other diseases that the Knights of Malta stored it carefully as a gift for friendly monarchs and to the hospitals of the island. It is less valued in our times, though until very recently the keeper of the rock on which it flourishes most abundantly was a permanent official in the colonial service. The place indeed is seldom profaned nowadays by human feet; for the box drawn in a pulley by two cables, which was the means of crossing the hundred and fifty feet of sea between the rocks and the shore of Dueira, was broken down some years ago, and has not since been renewed. But, apart from these scientific associations of this outlier of Gozo, the second largest island of the Maltese group is worthy of being more frequently examined than it is, albeit the lighthouse of Ta Giurdan is familiar enough to every yachtsman in the "Magnum Mare." For it is the first bit of Malta seen from the west, and the last memory of it which the home-coming exile sights as he returns with a lighter heart from the East. Yet except for its classical memories (it was the fable isle of Calypso, the Gaulos of the Greeks, the Gaulum of the Romans, and the Ghaudex of the Arabs, a name still in use among the natives), the tourist in search of the picturesque will not find a great deal to gratify him in Gozo, with its bay-indented shore, rugged in places, but except in the southern and western coast rarely attaining a height of three hundred feet above the sea. Still, its pleasing diversity of hill and dale, its occasional groves of trees, and the flourishing gardens from which Valletta market is supplied with a great portion of its vegetables, lend an appearance of rural beauty to Gozo seldom seen or altogether lacking in the rest of the group. Gozo appears to have suffered less from foreign invasions than Malta or even Comino. Its goat cheese still preserves something of the reputation that comestible obtained in days when the world had a limited acquaintance with dairy produce, and the "Maltese jacks," potent donkeys (the very antipodes of their tiny kindred on the Barbary coast) are mostly exported from this spot. But, like the peculiar dogs and cats of the group, they are now getting scarce.