by a good wall, composed of square stones. The people, who at present inhabit this town and adjacent country, are wretchedly poor, having neither trade, fishing, nor husbandry to support them; but entirely subsist by piracy and robbery. Near this town is a spring of very hot sulphureous water, which is conveyed into the place by an aqueduct, but it must be exposed for twenty-four hours to the air before it is drinkable.

Zoora, or Zara, is supposed to be the port Pisidian of the ancients; but the many vicissitudes it has undergone has reduced it to a mean town, surrounded by a ruined wall, and inhabited only by poor labouring people, who either burn lime for their living, or follow piracy or fishing,

These are all the places of note in this kingdom, and even those which were for merly such trading and opulent cities are, at present dwindled into almost uninhabited villages, whose wretched inhabitants are reduced to the utmost degree of misery by taxes, and all kinds of oppressions. In short, their commerce is reduced to the lowest ebb, consisting chiefly in the great quantity of ashes brought hither by the Arabians, which the French, and other European nations, purchase to make glass and soap.

Their principal riches consist in the prizes taken by the corsairs, which are about seven in number, but very small, having but one ship among them, the rest being little gallies. The government, trades, and custom of this republic, have so near a resemblance to those of Tunis, that it would only be a disagreeable as well as needless repetition to describe them, before we speak of that town. However, they differ from them in one particular point, being more observant of treaties; at the same time never failing to punish severely any who dare to violate them. Whether this proceeds from real probity, or a consciousness of their own weakness, is uncertain; but punctuality is of very great consequence to navigation.

The reigning bashaw in 1784, Alli Caromalli, or Caromanli, was the grandson of Hamet, who after treacherously causing the assassination of the Turkish soldiery, whom he looked upon as his gaolers, succeeded in procuring a firman from the Grand Signior,

which settled the succession of the pachalic in the Moorish line. Alli had three sons from one wife, the eldest of whom (Sidi Hassan) had the title of bey; by which is designated the legitimate successor to the throne, and was about thirty years of age; the second was named Sidi Hamet; and the youngest, about twenty, Sidi Useph, who at present wields the sceptre of Tripoli: the two younger brothers, but particularly Sidi Useph, conceived a hatred against the bey, and, as usual in all the Mahometan governments, conspired to deprive him of the suc cession. On the feast of Beiram, which immediately follows the fast of Ramadan, every good Mussulman endeavours to settle all quarrels which may have disturbed the peace of his family in the foregoing year. On the first day of this feast also, it is usual for the subjects of a certain rank to do homage to the sovereign. On such occasions, two of the people in whom the bashaw has the greatest confidence, stand on each side of him; their office is to lay hold of the arm of every stranger that presents himself to kiss the bashaw's hand, for fear of any hidden treachery; and only people of confidence and trust are permitted to enter his presence armed. The drawing-room in honour of the day was uncommonly crowded; when all the courtiers were, in a moment, struck with a sight that seemed to congeal their blood: they appeared to expect nothing less than the slaughter of their sovereign at the foot of his throne, and themselves to be sacrificed to the vengeance of his enemies. The three princes entered with their chief officers, guards, and blacks, armed in an extraordinary manner, with their sabres drawn. Each of the sons surrounded by his officers and guards, went separately up to kiss the bashaw's hand. He received them with trembling; his extreme surprize and agitation were visible to every eye, and the doubtful issue of the moment appeared terrible to all present. The princes formed three divisions, keeping distinctly apart; they conversed with the consuls, and different people of the court, as freely as usual,but did not suffer a glance to escape each other. They staid but a short time in the drawing-room, each party retiring in the same order they had entered; and it.

became apparent that their rage was levelled against each other, and not against their father, though the bashaw seemed only to recover breath on their departure. The bey is stated to have used every means to conciliate his brothers, but in vain; and he is described, indeed, as a man of very engaging manners, of a calm and tranquil disposition, which had assumed a cast of melancholy, from having lost all his sons in the dreadful plague that desolated the Barbary states in the year 1785. Savage as these fraternal broils must be deemed, they are sometimes not altogether divested of a noble sentiment. On a rencontre of the two brothers, at the head of their armed followers, Sidi Hamet, the elder, approaching his brother, Sidi Useph, thus addressed him: "Sidi Useph, what shall we get by cutting our servants to pieces here, who are all friends, wield-el-bled sons of the town); we may fill the castle with blood, and frighten the women, but here we shall escape each other's arms; if we fall, it may be by some of our own people, and our private quarrel will remain unrevenged. Call for your horse, mine is ready, and let us instantly go out in the pianura (or plain), and there settle this dispute between us." At this moment the wife and mother of Sidi Hamet rushed forward, screaming in despair, and, followed by their slaves, awakened the bashaw, by the woulliahwoo which ran through the castle. The bashaw ordered them to disarm, and to embrace each other. Sidi Hamet and Sidi Useph approached the bashaw; they each kissed his hand, and laid it on their heads; then kissed his head, and the hem of his garment, and wished him, in the Moorish manner, a long life. They were retiring, and did not offer to salute each other; the bashaw seized both their hands in his, and said, "By the prophet, by my head, by your hands, and by this hand that holds them, there is peace between you." The two brothers had not long before this taken the most sacred oaths of friendship and fidelity to each other, at the shrine of their temple; and they had very recently gone together to renew these oaths in a still stronger manner, by performing the last ceremony resorted to in this country-the mixing of blood. To ac

complish this barbarous idea, they approached together the altar of Mahomet, and, after swearing by the koran, each to hold the other's life sacred, they wounded themselves with their knives, and mixing their blood in a vessel, shocking to relate, they sipped of it. But oaths had no effect in binding the youngest: he was as faithless to the second as to the bey, whose assassination, and the treacherous manner in which it was accomplished, form a striking picture of these barbarians. It is necessary to premise that this finished hypocrite, Sidi Useph, had made to their mother (Lalla Halluma) the proposal for a reconciliation, entreating that it might take place in her own apartment, and in her presence. When the bey came to his mother's apartment, Lalla Halluma perceiving his sabre, begged of him to take it off before they began to converse, as, she assured him, his brother had no arms about him. The bey, to whom there did not appear the smallest reason for suspicion, willingly delivered his sabre to his mother, who laid it on a window near which they stood; and feeling herself convinced of the integrity of the bey's intentions, and being completely deceived in those of Sidi Useph's, she with pleasure led the two princes to the sofa, and, seating herself between them, held one of each of their hands in her's, and, as she has since said, looking at them alternately, prided herself in having thus at length brought them toge ther as friends. The bey, as soon as they were seated, endeavoured to convince his brother, that though he came prepared to go through the ceremony of making peace with him, yet there was not the least occasion for it on his part, for that he had no animosity towards him; but, on the contrary, as he had no sons of his own living, he considered Sidi Hamet and him as such, and would continue to treat them as a father whenever he came to the throne. Sidi Useph declared himself satisfied, but said, to make Lalla Halluma easy, there could be no objection, after such professions from the bey, to their both attesting their friendship on the koran; the bey answered, "With all my heart, I am ready." Sidi Useph rose quickly from his seat, and called loudly for the koran, which was the signal he had given his infernal

blacks to bring his pistols, two of which were immediately put into his hand, and he instantly fired at the bey as he sat by Lalla Halluma's side on the sofa. Lalla Halluma raising her hand to save her son, had it most terribly mangled by the splinters of the pistol, which burst, and shot the bey in his side. The bey rose, and seizing his sabre from the window, where Lalla Halluma had laid it, he made a stroke at his brother, but Sidi Useph instantly discharged a second pistol, and shot the bey through the heart. To add to the unmerited affliction of Lalla Halluma, the murdered prince, in his last moments, erroneously conceiving she had betrayed him, exclaimed, "Ah, madam, is this the last present you have reserved for your eldest son?" What horror must such words, from her favourite son, have produced in the breast of Lalla Halluma in her present cruel situation! Sidi Useph, on seeing his brother fall, called to his blacks, saying, "There is the bey, finish him." They dragged him from the spot where he yet lay breathing, and discharged all their pieces into him. The bey's wife, Lalla Asher, hearing the sudden clash of arms, broke from her women, who endeavoured to restrain her, and springing into the room, clasped the bleeding body of her husband in her arms, while Lalla Halluma, endeavouring to prevent Sidi Useph from disfiguring the body, had thrown herself over it, and fainted from the agony of her wounded hand. Five of Sidi Useph's blacks were, at the same moment, stabbing the body of the bey as it lay on the floor; after which miserable triumph they fled with their master..

Their wanton barbarity, in thus mangling the bey's remains, having produced the most dreadful spectacle, Lalla Asher, the bey's wife, at this sight of horror, stripped off all her jewels and rich habits, threw them in the bey's blood, and taking off from one of her blacks the worst apron among them, made that serve for her whole covering. Thus habiting herself as a common slave, she ordered those around to cover her with ashes, and in that state she went directly to the bashaw, and told him, if he did not wish to see her poison herself, to give immediate orders that she might quit the castle; for she

would not live to look on the walls of it, nor to walk over the stones that could no longer be seen for the effusion of the bey's blood, with which they were now covered.

As Sidi Useph left the castle he met the great chiah, the venerable Abdallah, the son of the late Turkish bashaw, who was much attached to the royal family of Tripoli, and loved by the people. The officer seeing the dreadful state of Sidi Useph, who was almost covered with his brother's blood, expressed his fears that something fatal had happened. Sidi Useph aware that, from the religious principles of this officer, he would abhor and severely condemn the crime he had committed, at the moment he met him stabbed him to the heart, and the chiah died instantly at his feet. Sidi Useph's blacks, who were following him, threw the chiah's body into the street, before the castle gates, and the porters standing by carried it home to his unhappy family. It was buried at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the same hour with the bey's. The short space of little more than four hours had witnessed the bey in the bloom of health, in the midst of his family-murdered, and in his grave.

So habituated are the people to scenes of this kind, that this atrocious murder caused little or no disturbance in Tripoli. The public crier, by order of the bashaw, proclaimed through the city, "To the bey who is gone give a happy resurrection, and none of his late servants shall be molested or hurt." Notwithstanding this declaration, the followers of Sidi Useph, the murderer, were ordered by their master to put to death the servants of the unfortunate bey wherever they could be found. As to the murderer, the grave was scarcely closed over the brother he had so treacherously assassinated, when he gave a grand entertainment, at which the sounds of firing, music, and women hired to sing and dance, were louder than at the feast of a wedding. A few days after this, Sidi Hamet, the second son, was proclaimed bey.

The wretched widow, according to the custom of the country, paid her first visit at the proper time to her husband's grave. It had been previously strewed with fresh flowers, for the second time that dav Im

mense bouquets of the choicest the season could afford were placed within the turba, or mausoleum, and Arabian jessamine, threaded on shreds of the date leaf, were hung in festoons and large tassels over the tomb. Additional lights were placed round it, and a profusion of scented waters were sprinkled over the floor of the mausoleum before Lalla Asher, the widow, entered the mosque. His eldest daughter, the beautiful Zenobia, was not spared this dreadful ceremony, notwithstanding her severe and dangerous indisposition. The youngest daughter of Lalla Asher, not six years old, was likewise present at this scene of distress; and when this infant saw her mother weeping over the bey's tomb, she held her by her pelisse, and screamed to her to let him out, refusing to let go of her mother, or his tomb, till she saw the bey again. The wretched Lalla Asher, who went there in a state of the deepest dejection, was naturally so much affected at this scene of useless horror, heightened by the shrill screams of all her attendants, that she fainted away, and was carried back senseless to the castle in the arms of the women.

The Moors, instead of lightening the heavy hand of affliction, are ingenious in finding out new means to keep alive the recollection of misfortunes. One of the first requests of Lalla Halluma, the mother of the murdered bey, was, that her company might be taken into the very apartment where, in her presence, the bey met his death. The sight was found by the visitors as strange as it was terrible. Against the walls, on the outside of the apartment, jars mixed with soot and ashes had been thrown. The apartment was locked up, and was to remain in that state, except when opened for the friends of the bey to view it. All in it remained exactly in the same state as when Lalla Halluma received the bey to make peace with his brother. All that the apartment contained was doomed, by Lalla Halluma, as she said, "to perish with the bey, and like him to moulder away in darkness."

The practice of soiling, or defacing, whatever belonged to the deceased, is further instanced in the case of the unfortunate bey. Among the number of horses that had never been mounted by any person but himself, he

had one particular favourite : it was remarkably handsome, and beautifully white. During the obsequies performed during the bey's death, when all was wretchedness, and nothing was to be seen but mourning, this beautiful horse formed a painful contrast.It was the last object that appeared in this scene of horror, in the same state as when it belonged to his late master; but soon its fine appearance was altered. Those who were mourning for the death of the bey sprinkled it with their blood, and strewed it with ashes; and it was led from the place covered with mournful tokens of its master's fate.

We shall now proceed to the history of a more important kingdom.

Tunis is situated in a fine plain, at the point of a gulph to which it gives its names, and about twenty miles from the ruins of the famous Carthage. It lies in the latitude of 36 deg. 58 min. north, and 9 deg. 10 min. east longitude from London. It is above a league in circumference, and forms a parallelogram, or long square. It contains ten thousand families, and above three thousand woollen and linen drapers' shops; their chief trade is with the Venetians and Genoese, in which the Jews are the principal managers, as they are in most towns of any trade in Barbary. But its riches flow chiefly from its piracies, which they account a more noble, or at least a more expeditious trade than husbandry or traffic. The houses are built partly of stone, and partly of brick. Most of them are but one story high, having stone floors, on account of the scarcity of wood.

Africa, or El-media, is a walled town with a good harbour.

Sousa is naturally strong by its situation, standing upon a rock near the sea, and has also a good harbour.

Byserta, formerly a flourishing place, is now but a mean town, built upon the ruins of Utica, famous for the death of Cato.

Goletta is a fort built upon an eminence, having two redoubts, a good harbour, a custom-house and magazines.

Byrsa is a castle built upon the ruins of Carthage, the brave and formidable rival of Rome, but was at last laid in ashes by Scipio.

The most remarkable monuments now remaining among these famous ruins are its