Drugs were provided by the government; but, before the galleys were placed under better management, the surgeons were in the habit of selling the government supplies. It will scarcely be believed in these days, that among the persons condemned to the galleys were peasants who had been torn from their wives and families, and placed among the most depraved characters, for the crime of purchasing salt in another province than that in which they resided. Salt was heavily taxed, and the laws for collecting the tax were rigorous in the extreme. The French peasant lived almost wholly on soup, and this condiment, so absolutely essential, was not within his scanty means in one province, but might be in another, to which his poverty compelled him to resort, in spite of the apprehended punishment.

Splendid fêtes were sometimes given on board the galleys to persons of distinction, and costly viands and the strains of music mocked the sufferings of the wretched slaves. They were required to receive the visiters with a round of cheers. Happily this system at Malta and elsewhere is at an end. At the former place" our boats are hauled up in the galley arches: our admiral hoists his flag on the house of the admiral of the galleys."

Our engraving represents a party of sailors enjoying their brief sojourn ashore. having hired a calesse the better to indulge their freaks. How different in character and spirit from the wretched slave of the galleys. "The calesse of Malta," says the Penny Cyclopædia," is an uncouth-looking vehicle slung upon a clumsy pair of wheels and shafts, and is made to carry four persons, but always drawn by one horse, by the side of which the driver runs." Our seamen find themselves quite at home in the island, and Mr. Slade, in his work on "Turkey, Greece, and Malta," says: "In consequence of the aquatic and nautical turn of the Maltese, sailors are decidedly the favorites over all classes of people." But Mr. Slade is himself a naval officer, and perhaps, therefore, too partial to his profession; but in the following extract he is well entitled to speak on behalf of its members: "Sailors love the place; returning to it from a cruise is like returning home. Expressly calculated for our wishes, our follies, our wants, all enjoy it, from the captain down to the cabin-boy. Balls are gay, dinner-parties are numerous, horses are fleet, wine is cheap, grog is plentiful, fruit is abundant, the police is civil, the soldiers are friendly, the ships lies near the shore."

The most memorable event in the military history of Malta is what is termed "The great siege.' This occurred in 1565, when La Valette (a worthy successor to L'Isle Adam) was great master of the order, and Solyman the magnificent, the conqueror of Rhodes, was still on the Turkish throne.

The Turkish fleet appeared off Malta on the 18th of May: it consisted of one hundred and fifty-nine vessels, as well galleys as galliots, having on board thirty thousand land forces, Janizaries, and Spalis, all picked men : it was closely followed by many transports, which carried heavy artillery, the horses of the Spahis, more land troops, ammunition, and provisions. To oppose this force La Valette could only reckon upon seven hundred knights and eight thousand and five hundred soldiers; but the fortifications of Malta, though not perfect, were already excellent, and taking posts upon them according to their languages, as they had done at Rhodes, the chivalry of Europe determined to defend them to the last. The Turks effected their landing at St. Thomas's creek, sometimes called the ladder port. A swarm of the barbarians separated from the main body to pillage in the country, and more than fifteen hundred of them were cut to pieces by the Christian soldiery. The grand. master at first permitted this fighting beyond the walls, in order to familiarize his men to the horrid cries and the manner of firing of the Turks; but husbanding his men, he soon put a stop to it, and kept close within the different fortresses.

On the 24th of May, the Turkish artillery began to batter in breach. The first place attacked was Fort St. Elmo, which defends the entrance into the great harbor on the west, as Fort Ricasoli defends it on the east. Eighty ten-pounders, two culverins (sixty-pounders), and a basilisk, carrying stone balls of a prodigious diame. ter, kept up a constant fire from the landside, while seaward St. Elmo was battered by long culverins which did great mischief.

In a few days the breach was opened, when the most murderous actions took place. The grand-master continued to send reinforcements to the important post, and every night the wounded were removed from it in boats. For more than a month, with open breaches, and with the walls falling around them and under them, did the knights gallantly hold out in St. Elmo where the Turks fell by thousands. In

storming the raveline the infidels lost three thousand men-the order twenty good knights and one hundred soldiers. Scenes occurred that were worthy of the infernal regions. The gunners of the order invented a kind of firework, which had a frightful effect. Hoops of the lightest wood were dipped into brandy, rubbed with boiling oil, then covered with wool and cotton, soaked in other combustible liquors, and mixed with saltpetre and gunpowder. On an assault fire was set to these hoops, which were then taken up with tongs, and thrown down in the midst of the assailants, who, crowded and driven together, had no means of escape. Such as got enangled in them almost inevitably perished, and not unfrequently two or three Turks were involved in the fiery embrace of one hoop, and burnt alive together. The cries, the shrieks of these poor wretches-the groans of the wounded, the long rattling of the musketry, and then the roar of the artillery, made a very pandemonium upon earth. At last St. Elmo fell, having been so surrounded by the Turks, that it could receive no more reinforcements from other parts of the garrison. When the infidels entered that little fort, they found not a single knight alive. One hundred and thirty of the best of the order, with more than thirteen hundred soldiers, fell in the defence, but in the attack the Turks lost eight thousand men.

This bloody page may serve as a specimen of the horrid warfare which we have neither space nor inclination to describe in detail. After many variations of fortune, under some of which they were near taking St. Angelo, St. Michael's, and the other forts and works, the Turks, utterly dispirited by the arrival of a general of the viceroy of Sicily with reinforcements for the Christians, broke up the siege, and fled in the greatest confusion to their ships. During the siege, which lasted three months and a half, the Turks are said to have lost twenty-five thousand men ; the Christians seven thousand, between soldiers and inhabitants, besides two hundred and sixty knights. The walls and buildings of the towns were little better than a heap of ruins; the casals, or villages, were nearly all burnt; the cisterns, upon which the island almost wholly depended for water, were drained; and there remained in the hands of the knights neither money, provisions, nor men, to meet another siege, for which the sultan immediately prepared. In these circumstances La Valette had recourse to bribery, and engaged a set of desperate incendiaries, who succeeded in burning the arsenal at Constantinople, together with nearly all the Turkish ships intended for the expedition against Malta. This daring deed gave the knights a respite, and in the course of the following year their powerful enemy, Solyman the Magnificent, died while making war in Hungary. In the meantime the fortifications were repaired, extended, and made infinitely stronger than ever; the stone was laid for a new city, which was called La Valetta, and the name of the Borgo (Burgh), where, next to St. Elmo, the hardest fighting had taken place, was changed into that of" Città Vittoriosa."

CHAPTER XIX.-TYROL.

THE TYROL, Or TIROL, is a province of the Austrian empire, bordering on Bavaria, Austria, Illyria, the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, Switzerland, and Lake Constance, comprising a superficial area of 1,650 square miles, and a population of 774,457 souls. Of all the countries in Europe, the Tyrol is the most exclusively mountainous. The Tyrolese Alps extend through the country. Some of the most remarkable summits are Ortler, Glockner, and Brenner. Tyrol resembles Switzerland; the valleys and lakes are less extensive, the cascades less numerous; but there is the same sublime scenery, similar lofty and perpendicular mountains, covered with perpetual snow and ice; the same contrast of the beautiful and terrific, of vineyards and wastes, of uninhabited summits, and populous valleys.

No country contains a more romantic road than that over Mount Brenner, along the Adige. The climate, in consequence of the height of the mountains, is cold. Among the productions are corn, wine, silk, hemp, flax, and tobacco. Almost all kinds of minerals have been found; but the only mines that have been worked to advantage are those of salt, iron, copper, and calamine. There are no less than sixty mineral springs in the country. The Lech, Etsch, Isar, Drave, and Brenta, rise in Tyrol; the Inn, which rises in Switzerland, traverses it; the Rhine only touches its borders; Lakes Constance and Garda are also on its frontiers. The manufactures of silk and of metallic wares are the most important; cotton and linen goods are also manufactured. The position of Tyrol, between Germany and Italy, and the facilities for passing over the Alps by good roads, render it the theatre of considerable transit trade. The Tyrolese wander all over Europe, and are even seen in America, but they always return to spend their savings at home. The number which leave the country annually in this way, is estimated at 30,000 or 40,000. The Tyrolese are chiefly of German extraction, only about 150,000 in the southern part of the country being Italians. The prevailing religion is catholic. The Tyrolese is gay, lively, faithful, honest, and ardently attached to his country, and hunting forms one of the principal employments of the Tyrolese mountaineer. He is seldom seen without his gun; and the accompanying engraving will convey some notion of the picturesque character of his costume.

The estates of Tyrol were confirmed in their former privileges in 1816. There are four estates-the prelates, the nobles, the citizens, and the peasants. The seat

of the government authorities is Innspruck; the principal fortress, Kuffstein. This country was first conquered by the Romans in the time of Augustus, and at a later period was traversed and desolated by various barbarous tribes. The Franks, and, after the extinction of the Carlovingian dynasty, the dukes of Bavaria, obtained the sovereignty, but some of the counts continued to be powerful. In 1359, Margaret Maultasche, the only daughter of one of these, conveyed her possessions to the duke of Austria; and Tyrol has since belonged to that power, with the exception of a short time, from 1805 to 1814.

The Tyrol is one of the most picturesque countries in Europe. Its towering Alps, its glaciers, lakes, and waterfalls, are as striking as those of Switzerland, while its ruined towers, perched like eagles' nests on the summit of lofty rocks, and its royal and baronial castles, built during the middle ages, far exceed in number not only what are found in Switzerland, but in any country of the same extent. There are the charms, too, of picturesqueness of costume, and, among the peasantry, of a simplicity and primitiveness of manners, which would be sought for in vain in Switerland, except among the small mountain and pastoral cantons which do not lie on the traveller's route or the highway of Europe; and though the Tyrol has been less fortunate than her neighbor in securing her independence, and the blessings of a free and national government, the inspiring associations of patriotism aud heroic courage are far from being wanting. Like the brave Swiss, the Tyroleans, few in number but bold in heart, have stood shoulder to shoulder in their mountain-passes, and driven back or destroyed hosts of foreign invaders; they have often sent forth the sacred voice of liberty over the land and the lakes that lie embosomed within it; and in our own days, when all the continent of Europe lay crouching before Bonaparte, the echoes of their sure rifles were heard ringing among the mountains, as, headed by Hofer, they maintained a most unequal and heroic struggle with the French and Bavarians. While, however, Switzerland is annually traversed by thousands of tourists, the Tyrol, which may be called its next-door neighbor, is rarely visited by the traveller. The reasons for this are obvious enough, for Switzerland in good part lies on the great highway; it is the road into Italy, and is very accessible on the side of France and Germany, whereas the Tyrol lies off the great route; it leads to nowhere, must be sought for itself, and is not particularly easy of access, seeing that the tourist must either make a circuit of part of Bavaria and cross the Bavarian Alps, or travel through the Grison valleys of the Engaddine, where all accommodations are of the roughest description. Within these few years, however, several have trav elled through parts of Tyrol, and published their notions on the country. From their accounts, we will endeavor to draw up some information for our readers.

A glance at a good map will show the situation of this rugged country, which is divided into two unequal parts, or the German Tyrol, which leans on Bavaria and Austria, and the Italian Tyrol, which slopes down to the lakes and the fertile plains of Lombardy. Drawing a line across the country from east to west, leaving Botzen to the north, all the territory lying northward of this line will be the German Tyrol, and all south of it the Italian Tyrol. The German portion is the larger by nearly one third, but the Italian is, in proportion to its extent, much more populous, and abounding in larger and better-built towns and villages. The character, habits, and appearance of the people in the two divisions differ very widely. The inhabitants of the German Tyrol are passionately fond of liberty, and retain unalloyed much of the sturdiness, frankness, and simplicity of the old Germanic race. They are nearly all proprietors, and cultivate their own lands, and have thus a feeling of indepen dence superior to what the mere hired laborer can experience. They preserve a national dress, primitive usages, and early hours. The inhabitants of the Lower or Italian Tyrol, on the other hand, are more patient of the Austrian yoke that weighs on the whole country; they for the most part cultivate the lands of others, and have been far less retentive of ancient manners and usages. Luxurious habits, late hours, &c., have crept into the larger of their towns; and their character, in general, has more of the suppleness and complaisance of the Italians than of the sturdiness and roughness of the Germans. A very considerable portion of the judges, commissaries of police, and civil employées of the emperor of Austria, in Milan, and other Veneto-Lombard cities, are natives of Lower Tyrol, and are distinguished by their unscrupulousness and subserviency to their employer.

The valley of the river Inn, which runs through the whole northern portion of the country, may be called the principal part of Upper or German Tyrol. It is entirely