Romans, each left tangible
evidences of their sovereignty here. The ubiquitous Phoenicians, who
are considered to have been the earliest of the commercial tribes, were
by no means entirely free from the charge of piracy, which seems to have
been almost universal upon this central sea in the earlier and middle
ages. Strange, that sea-robbery should have been one of the active
agencies in the world's advancement! It is said that all progress since
the beginning has been from scaffold to scaffold. In our day no lapse
from honorable commercial methods is so abhorrent to civilized nations,
and no crimes are more severely punished. Next to the Turks and
Algerines, the Greeks were the most reprehensible in this respect,--a
people whose love of "freedom" has become a proverb; a country which has
enjoyed more of American sympathy and material aid than any other, but
whose sons in former times never failed to adopt a corsair life when
opportunity offered.

There are very few monuments relating to the occupancy of these islands
by the Arabs, who were settled here for more than two centuries. The
most durable memorial of that people is their language, a tongue
unsurpassed in poetic beauty of expression. After the lapse of ten
centuries it is still spoken among the natives, and is held to be
remarkably pure, especially in Gozo, the sister isle of Malta. Though it
is customary to say that the natives speak Arabic, still it can hardly
be a pure tongue; and yet the newly arrived Arabs can understand the
Maltese, proving that the basis of the two languages must be identical.
An educated resident took occasion to prove to the author that here and
there one could select words from the current speech of the common
people, the derivation of which was clearly Phoenician. Residents of
the capital who are engaged in commerce, and many others of
intelligence, speak English, French, and Italian fluently, and most of
them speak the native tongue as well. The facility for acquiring foreign
languages is a national trait. Cultured Maltese are surpassed only in
this respect by educated Russians.

Italian is the official tongue of the law courts, though English is
gradually superseding it. Why the former language should be persisted
in, it would be difficult to say, though it is the key to all those
common in the Levant. The Maltese are not Italians, and never were. Not
to put too fine a point upon the matter, they are Arabs in their
manners, custom