Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/31

Rh of steps. At the bottom of these is a square opening large enough to admit easily a man's body, which leads to a small chamber with a curved ceiling. Each chamber contained one or more skeletons laid on a ledge, and several vases. In one of the graves the heads lay to the N.E., in another to the N.W. The pottery was coarse and unvarnished, of a drab colour, and is probably of the late Roman period. Roman coins are found in these tombs, and as I was informed, Greek coins and vases; but I could not verify this assertion, for everything at Malta is dispersed as soon as found, from the want of a well-organized museum.

It is to be regretted that these tombs are not explored in a more systematic manner than at present, when gay parties meet to hold their picnics over the open grave; the pale ale and champagne corks contrasting strangely with the broken vases, relics probably of a funeral feast held on this spot fifteen hundred years ago.

We left Malta in the English mail steamer "Medina," and arrived at Patras after a very stormy passage. Here I first saw a Greek town. The strange half-savage look of the inhabitants, with their shaggy capotes and white kilts, seemed quite in harmony with the wild desolate character of the landscape, shut in by high mountains, which at the time of our visit were covered with snow.

We were most kindly received by the British Vice-Consul, Mr. William Wood, who has been engaged in the currant trade at Patras for some years.

He took us to see a fine marble sarcophagus in