The Maltese cart ruts

Abstract

Malta as it exists today might be looked upon as having attained almost as high a degree of agricultural development as it is possible for any small state to attain, considering its situation and its present rather unfavourable climatic conditions. Although most of the island is subdivided by stone walls into thousands of little fields which are cultivated throughout like kitchen gardens, yet there are to be seen here and there small barren patches where the original bedrock shows on the surface in its old-time nakedness. In fact, we might say that the Maltese take as much as it is possible to take out of the parts of the island which are under cultivation, and are, as far as their means allow them, slowly reclaiming the uncultivated bare areas. History relates that some five or six centuries ago a large portion of the surface of Malta was naked and uncultivated, and that for some considerable time after the occupation of the island by the Knights (A.D. 1520), the inhabitants regularly imported thousands of shiploads of earth, and spread it over the ground to make a skin of soil for cultivation. The inhabitants of Malta are by nature very industrious,and the conditions of peace which they have enjoyed since the occupation of the island, first by the Knights and afterwards by the British, have enabled them to bring their little state to a condition of agricultural perfection which, considering all the adverse circumstances of climate, distance from markets, etc., with which they have to contend, might be regarded as model. For one half of the year, from May to November, practically no rain falls orn Mlalta, and although during the other half year there is a fair average rainfall, yet the desiccating action of the summer so predominates over the winter railns that if it were not for the number of sheltering stone walls which are erected all over the island, and the artificial watering carried on by the natives, Malta would soon be reduced to the semi-barren rock condition which it was in some centuries ago. This condition of affairs is characteristic of many parts of the littoral of the Mediterranean, and it is a curious fact that although there is, as a rule, in most places a fair total annual rainfall, the conditions found are of arid, dried-up countries. A rainfall of 25 or even 30 inches does not seem to help a country if it all falls in one short season and leaves the land parched for the rest of the year. The stone walls, then, and the artificial watering, are the preservation of Malta, and these could only be carried out in a country protected from plunder and pillage. Let us now visit some of the barren patches alluded to as existing here and there over the island, and we shall be surprised to see what seem to be peculiar cart ruts cut in the hard rock.