r to state for the
information of the general reader.

Malta holds an important place in the records of history as far back as
three thousand years ago, during which period the island has been
constantly associated with heroic names and startling events, playing a
prominent and tragic part in the mighty drama of the past. The transient
visitor to the group, however well read, fails to remember its vivid
story in detail, and to apply it intelligibly. He is too ardently
stimulated by the unique surroundings, the strange mingling of races,
the Oriental style of the architecture, the curious site of the capital,
and the general glamour of local color impregnating everything, to pause
for comparison or analysis. Like one sitting down to a table teeming
with choice viands, he is at a loss where to begin to appease his
voracious appetite. It is while engaged in quiet afterthought, when
reviewing the experiences gained upon the spot, that the fullness of
interest is aroused, as he turns to the quaint pages of many an ancient
tome, to seek for the story of its earliest inhabitants. We can recall
no other country which has experienced so many and such notable changes
among its rulers, though it requires but little research to discover the
paucity of detailed information concerning its early history, which is
absolutely lost in the mist of ages.

Three thousand years--this is not looking backward very far,
comparatively speaking. The author has seen objects of Egyptian
production, in the Boolak Museum, on the banks of the Nile, which were
six thousand years old. The Sphinx, standing in its grim loneliness ten
miles from Cairo, is still older, while in the South Sea Islands there
are prehistoric ruins which are believed to antedate the Sphinx. The
probability is that a degree of antiquity applies to this globe so
inconceivably remote that, like stellar distances, the mind can hardly
realize the truth. Professor Agassiz talked confidently in his day of a
million years having been required to bring about the present conditions
of the earth. Since Agassiz's time geologists and scientists generally
do not hesitate to add the plural to million, guided by the light of
modern progress and discovery.

Such ancient mention of Malta as does exist is crowded with fable, like
the early history of Greece and Rome. An example of this is found in the
popular legend of its having once been inhabited by a cyclopean tribe, a
race of giants, "half