Amongst our passengers was a French gentleman, the commandant and owner of an Indiaman, which had sailed from Bordeaux to Bombay under the charge of the first officer.  He had previously made twelve voyages to India; but now availed himself of the shorter route, and proposed to join his vessel at Bombay, dispose of the cargo, and, after taking in a new freight, return through Egypt.  The only coasts in sight, during our voyage from Marseilles to Malta, were those of Sardinia and Africa, Sicily being too far off to be visible.  We were not near enough to Sardinia to see more than a long succession of irregular hills, which looked very beautiful under the lights and shades of a lovely summer sky.  The weather was warm, without being sultry, and nothing was wanting excepting a few books.  Mr. Goldsmith regretted the absence of a library on board, but expressed his intention of making a collection as speedily as possible.

The excessive and continual motion of the vessel caused me to suffer very severely from seasickness; the exertion of dressing in the morning always brought on a paroxysm, but I determined to struggle against it as much as possible, and was only one day so completely overpowered as to be unable to rise from the sofa.  This sickness was the more provoking, since there was no swell to occasion it, the inconvenience entirely arising from Sir Somebody Symonds’ (I believe that is the name) method of building.  What the Megara would be in a heavy sea, there is no saying, and I should be very sorry to make the experiment.

We found ourselves at Malta at an early hour of the morning of the 25th, having been only five nights and four days on board.  Mr. Goldsmith celebrated our last dinner with a profusion of champaigne, and though glad to get out of the vessel, we felt unfeignedly sorry to take leave of our kind commandant.  We were, of course, up by daylight, in order to lose nothing of the view.

Much as I had heard of the gay singularity of the appearance of Malta, I felt surprise as well as delight at the beautiful scene around; nor was I at all prepared for the extent of the city of Valetta.  The excessive whiteness of the houses, built of the rock of which the island is composed, contrasted with the vivid green of their verandahs, gives to the whole landscape the air of a painting, in which the artist has employed the most brilliant colours for sea and sky, and habitations of a sort of fairy land.  Nor does a nearer approach destroy this illusion; there are no prominently squalid features in Malta, the beggars, who crowd round every stranger, being the only evidence, at a cursory gaze, of its poverty.