Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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CATACOMBS AT CITTA VECCHIA, MALTA.

The great catacombs at Citta Vecchia, Malta, were constructed by the natives as places of refuge from the Turks. They consist of whole streets, with houses and sleeping-places. They were later used for tombs. There are other remains on the island of much greater antiquity, Hagiar Chem (the stones of veneration) date from Phœnician days. These include a temple resembling Stonehenge, on a smaller scale, where there are seven statuettes with a grotesque rotundity of outline, the seven Phœnician Cabiri (deities; “great and powerful ones”). There are also seven divisions to the temple, which is mentioned by Herodotus and other ancient writers.

To come back to our own time. In 1808, the following remarkable event occurred at Malta. One Froberg had raised a levy of Greeks for the British Government, by telling the individual members that they should all be corporals, generals, or what not. It was to be all officers, like some other regiments of which we have heard. The men soon found out the deceit, but drilled admirably until the brutality of the adjutant caused them to mutiny. Malta was at the time thinly garrisoned, and their particular fort had only one small detachment of troops and thirty artillerymen. The mutineers made the officer of artillery point his guns on the town. He, however, managed that the shots should fall harmlessly. Another officer escaped up a chimney, and the Greeks coming into the same house, nearly suffocated him by lighting a large fire below. Troops arrived; the mutineers were secured, and a court-martial condemned thirty, half of whom were to be hanged, and the rest shot. Only five could be hanged at a time: the first five were therefore suspended by the five who came next, and so on. Of the men who were to be shot one ran away, and got over a parapet, where he was afterwards shot: another is thought to have escaped.