books or writing-tables in the hand, and repeat the cries and songs of their master, but in complete discordance. This will give an exact notion of these Moorish schools. As to the subjects which are treated of here, I can assert that, though disguised by various names, morality and legislation identified with their worship and dogmas, are the sole topics; that is to say, all their studies are confined to the Koran and its commentations, and to some trifling principles of grammar and logic, which are indispensable for reading and understanding even a little of the venerated text. From what I have seen I believe that most of the commentators do not understand themselves."

They have no printing-presses; and, by the Bey's account of their language, it is a most wretched and hopeless instrument for any operation belonging to intellect.

He was at Fez during the season of the Ramadan, of which he recounts all the ceremonies; taking occasion also to describe a variety of modes and rules in the Mahomedan worship, and to notice some of the leading sectarian distinctions. He professes to deplore that the religion is degenerated into a superstition.

After defeating some petty scheme which envy had contrived for his mortification, and enjoying not a little the tumult and consternation caused by a solar eclipse which occurred as he had predicted, he set off for Morocco at the invitation of the Sultan, who had gone thither before him; and who had probably not wasted a single lock on the snow-clad range of the Atlas, which rises to view as the traveller approaches the city of Morocco. Our mathematical Turk computes their highest point to be about 13,200 feet above the level of the sea. On this journey he had an opportunity of observing and describing some of the phenomena of the moving sand of the desert.

At Morocco he enjoyed another course of gratifications from imperial favour, and what he represents as a very splendid notoriety. From the Sultan he received an absolute donation' of one of his Majesty's villas in the vicinity of the city, with the estates, gardens, plantations, and town-house appertaining. All this was vastly fine and commodious at the time; but we wonder at his falling on a joke so little exhilarating assuredly to himself, as to say, giving the precise date of the Firman that put him in full possession, 'These donations are sti!! my property.' But perhaps he receives the rents with all due regularity, though it was in so rude a manner that he was ultimately dismissed from the territories of the imperial donor.

The city presents, in its wide walls and ruins, occupied by hardly thirty thousand inhabitants, a mere funeral relic of its former grandeur, or rather bulk, when it contained, if we may believe our adventurer, seven hundred thousand souls.' Wars

and the plague have the credit of thus lessening the number of the supporters of an execrable superstition.

After a serious illness, a protracted residence, and all manner of flattering distinctions, he set his face in good earnest towards Mecca, proposing to go over land to Algiers. By his account he was almost overwhelmed with caressing conjurations not to desert his affectionate royal and noble friends. It is rather amusing to behold these fond charities, and to observe, on this and on former occasions, with what real gravity the flattered adventurer relates how copiously Mahomedan tears flowed at his inexorable determination to withdraw the happiness his presence conferred. There is indeed, we suspect, a great deal of vanity in friend Ali's constitution; which, however, we can better excuse than the immoderate egotism which pervades his very entertaining story.

We have no room to notice his account of the effect of the seasons in the country about Morocco; of a storm; of the present from the Sultan of two of his own women, and of Ali's manner of receiving this token of favour; of the economy of government; of the state of the army; of the constant dreadful effects of the uncertain and disputed succession to the throne; or of the pestiferous farce of saintship, as played by several im postors, whom he describes as having, by the device, acquired an almost paramount influence in the country.

On his way for Algiers, he was delayed a considerable time at Fez; and proceeding forward thence, in an eastern direction, as far as Ouschda, his progress was there stopped by the disturbed and dangerous state of the country; and, at the same time, there arrived from his dear friend the Sultan, who was in this short interval become suspicious or inimical, a military party to take cognizance of his movements. The result was, that his journey was directed back to Laraish, on the western coast, where he was very hastily and roughly sent on board a corvette bound to Tripoli, which the Sultan had ordered to be made ready for him. One part of the narrative of this journey is exceedingly striking. The route was across an extensive burning sand, totally destitute, though the Bey had not been so informed, of water; of which element, so precious in such a region as to be almost adored, an alarm caused by a party of enraged soldiers, had prevented his company from furnishing themselves with a proper supply before entering on the desert. Their situation became dreadful, and every man and beast must infallibly have perished, but for one occurrence, which he attributes to a good Providence, whether from any genuine prompting of that thought, or from a consideration of Mahomedan propriety, we pretend not to say. When at the very last extremity, and when most of the party, and Ali among the rest, had fallen

insensible on the ground, to rise, but for this interposition, no more, they were met by a large and friendly caravan, which, in consequence of a false report of two or three thousand men being waiting on the road to attack them, had diverted a great way from their proper road, and fallen exactly into the line in which our traveller had been advancing, in the contrary direction They threw large quantities of water on the men, as they found them, one after another, lying senseless on the sand, and gave it plentifully to them and the beasts to drink; and so effectual was the relief, that they all revived and reached their destination. The tract they were traversing, is thus described:

Not a tree is to be seen; nor a rock which can offer a shelter or shade. A transparent atmosphere, an intense sun, darting its beams upon our heads, a ground almost white, and commonly of a concave form, like a burning glass, slight breezes, scorching like flame.'

We transcribe a few sentences of the narration.

At two in the afternoon, a man dropped down stiff as if he were dead. I stopped with three or four of my people to assist him. The little wet which was left in one of the leather budgets was squeezed out of it, and some drops of water poured into the poor man s mouth, but without effect. I began to feel that my own strength was beginning to forsake me.' 'From this moment others of my aravan began to drop successively, and there was no possibility of giving them any assistance; they were abandoned to their unhappy destiny, as every one thought only of saving himself. Several mules with their burthens were left behind, and I found on my way two of my trunks on the ground, without knowing what was become of the mules which had been carrying them. The drivers had forsaken them, as well as the care of my effects and instruments.

We

'I looked upon this loss with the greatest indifference as if they had not belonged to me, and pushed on. But my horse began now to tremble under me, and yet he was the strongest of the whole caravan. proceeded in silent despair. When I endeavoured to encourage any of them to increase his pace, he answered me by looking steadily at me, and by putting his forefinger to his mouth to indicate the great thirst by which he was affected.' Our fate was the more shocking, as every one of us was sensible of the impossibility of supporting the fatigue to the place where we were to meet with water. At last, about four in the evening, I had my turn, and fell down with thirst and fatigue. Extended without consciousness on the ground in the middle of the desert, left only with four or five men, one of whom had dropped at the same moment with myself, and all without any means of assisting me, I should have perished with them on the spot, if Providence, by a kind of miracle, had not preserved us.'

He then relates the happy intervention. He says that when he became sensible, and wished to speak to his kind restorers, 6 an invincible knot in his throat seemed to hinder him.' He af

terwards describes the manner in which the victim of this fearful destitution of water is affected.

This attack of thirst is perceived all of a sudden, by an extreme aridity of the skin; the eyes appear to be bloody, the tongue and mouth, both inside and outside, are covered with a crust of the thickness of a crown piece; this crust is of a dark yellow colour, of an insipid taste, and of the consistence of the soft wax from a bee-hive. A faintness and languor take away the power to move; a kind of knot in the throat and diaphragm, attended with great pain, interrupts respiration. Some wandering tears escape from the eyes, and at last the sufferer drops down to the earth, and in a few moments loses all consciousness."

He had a safe but rough and hazardous voyage to Tripoli, where renewed civilities and honours awaited him. But before proceeding to this part of the story, he goes into the famous question of the site of the ancient island Atlantis, which he will maintain to have been no other than the very ridge of the Atlas itself, anciently surrounded by the ocean to its base; and he pretends to find good evidence for the once submarine state of what is now a vast sandy desert, in the composition of its substance, and the lowness of its level as now evident relatively to the sea. He is still more zealous and confident on a theory of a sea

or

enormous lake now existing in the centre of Africa; towards the assumed locality of which sea, the Niger, and other named rivers, take their direction from the different points of the compass. It is impossible, he professes, even to demonstrate, that all these waters can be disposed of any other way. He does not seem to have even heard the name of the Zaire, which brings out into the Atlantic, probably from the central region, as much water as all his enumerated streams carry toward that region. It is nothing unlikely that there may be one, or more than one, considerable lake about the centre of Africa; but, for some little time to come, any laborious discussion of the matter among speculative geographers, would be a lamentable and impertinent waste of time: two resolute, well-appointed bands of practical geographers will, we hope, before many months, be actually and with impunity, seeing the objects of so many vain conjectures and presumptions, and making, in the midst of the scene, observations and sketches which shall render familiar in Europe the geography and imagery of this, as yet, most unknown tract on the globe.

At Tripoli the Bey set sail for Alexandria, but was actually carried, through the stupidity of the Turkish captain, to the Morea, then to within sight of Alexandria, and back again to Cyprus, of various antiquities in which island he has given a considerably interesting description. At last, after more perils, we have no doubt, than have sometimes occurred in a circum

navigation of the world, he attained Alexandria, Cairo, and the shore of the Red Sea. In this sea, which has never been crossed without danger but once, of which the treacherous and deadly character is so much akin to that of the perfidious and malignant Mussulman barbarians on its shores, the voyagers passed within the narrowest possible distance of destruction, and were saved for the purpose, the worthy purpose, of touching the Holy and forbidden Land,' of beholding the awful fane of the Devil's most successful individual Agent on earth, of performing all the devout antics, sweepings, and drenchings of the Kaaba.

Not only the temple and city, but the whole region, to a great extent, is sacred, and interdicted to all unbelievers. It is peculiarly, therefore, in this part of his work, that our Author's hypocritical guise has enabled him to confer an obligation on the inquisitive infidels, by a more precise and minute description of 'what, however, was, in substance, well known before. The same deception and privilege have obtained for us the results of an admission into the grand mosque on the site of Solomon's Temple. These two mosques are regarded as pre-eminently distinguished by an intense and awful sanctity.

The Mussulman religion acknowledges but two temples, that of Mecca, and that of Jerusalem; both are named in Arabic, El Haram, which strictly signifies a temple or place consecrated by the peculiar presence of the Divinity; both are equally prohibited by the law to Christians, Jews, and every other person who is not a Mussulman. The mosques are named in Arabic, El Djammàa, or the place of assembly; they are respectable places it is true, but they are not consecrated by the especial presence of the Divinity. Entrance into them is not prohibited to Infidels by any canonical precept; the people, however, do not like to see strangers in them, nor can the latter enter them except by virtue of an order from a public authority; for, even at Constantinople, Christians enter the mosque of St. Sophia, and the other mosques, when they are bearers of a firman granted by the government. But no Mussulman governor dares permit an infidel to pass into the territory of Mecca, or into the temple of Jerusalem. A permission of this kind would be looked upon as a horrid sacrilege; it would not be respected by the people; and the infidel would become the victim of his impudent boldness.'—Vol. II. p. 215.

The description of the orgies in Mecca and its vicinity is ample and circumstantial, and carries in its manner the strongest marks oftruth: it is all in the plain matter of fact style, and is extremely lively and striking merely by its crowded, changing, tumultuous, and fanatical exhibition. Wanting that direfulness which has so generally characterized the grand celebrations of Paganism, in consequence of cruelty and blood constituting a part of the rites, these solemnities of Islam may, however, be