A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

4 CASAL CRENDI.
sites that the island contains ; they are but few,
and certainly when compared with the monu-
ments possessed by other lands are deficient in
artistical merit ;
yet not to see them ^vould argue
an apathy foreign to my nature. Accordingly
one of our first excursions has been to Casal
Crendi, a Maltese village seven miles from Valet-
ta, in the neighbourhood of w^hich, (that is to say
about a mile and a half further,) is to be seen at
once the greatest antiquity and the greatest no-
velty contained in the island. Within the last
five or six years excavations were made there
under the direction of the late governor. Sir
Henry Bouverie, which brought to light the re-
mains of what is supposed to have formed part of
either a Phoenician Temple, or a place of sepulture,—
probably both, since the human bones and
the rude stone altars discovered in some of the
chambers would infer that it had been devoted
to either purpose. No inscription has been found
to give any data of these remains, but their
Druidical form, (or, w^hat is technically termed,
Cyclopean architecture,) argues the remotest an-
tiquity. The chambers are oblong in form, and
the larger ones rounded at one end ; the walls
and partitions composed of huge blocks of stone
placed upright on the ground ; the window^s and