any of the Christian gentlemen are obliged to go out on business during this interval, before the houses are closed, a guard walks before and one behind, to prevent any person approaching too near; and, un returning, the guards are put into quarantine for some days. Without these precautions, it would be impossible to escape this dreadful disorder, the rage of which increases every hour.

May 28, 1785.

It is impossible to give you a just description of this place at present; the general horror that prevails cannot be described. Hadgi Abderrahman sailed from the harbour of Tripoli on the 20th of this month, as ambassador to Sweden and England. From the state Tripoli is in, sinking under plague and famine, the departure of the ambassador from his handsome Greek, Amnani, and her children was dreadful. He made up his mind to see but few of them again, and with reason : the dire infection had entered his walls, nor was it to be imagined, that even his own suite could embark untainted with the same. If he is so fortunate as not to fall a victim to the plague before he reaches Malta, he will perform there a heavy quarantine of ninety days at least. They perceived before they quitted the harbour, one of his people, a Jew broker, severely attacked with the plague; and they put him on shore before they sailed. Abderrahman is so much beloved, that the people in general participate in his sufferings, and the screams for the calamity of his family, which be

:

harbour of Tripoli, have continued to the present moment, and are still augmenting from increasing deaths. At this awful period, the care of Lilla Amnani, his wife, and his favourite eldest daughter, devolves on his brother Hadgi Mahmute, who is dying in torments unheard of, from the singular instance of the plague having at first seized him in his mouth, producing violent tumours, by which he is now starying he is at times so raving that many people are required to secure him. Though none of his family were ill when his brother sailed for Europe, his wife and children (one already buried), with many more relations of Abderrahman's family, are dying very fast. Lilla Amnani, Abderrahman's daughter, and his niece, are all the ladies that remain of his family. Of his slaves and attendants only an old black eunuch lives, who is confined with the plague for the third time. In the short space that has elapsed since the ambassador left Tripoli, only eight days, nearly one hundred persons have died belonging to him; and consequently, it is thought, not one will remain of his family to give him an account of these sad times.

The plague now depopulating this place is said to be more severe than has been known at Constantinople for centuries past, and is proved by calculation to destroy twice the number of people in proportion to those who died of the same disorder lately at Tunis, when five hundred a day were carried out of that city. To-day upwards of two hundred have passed the town gate. The

city of Tripoli contains 14,000 inhabitants, and the city of Tunis 30,000..

Our house, the last of the Christian houses that remained in part open, on the 14th of this month commenced a complete quarantine. The hall on entering the house is parted into three divisions, and the door leading to the street is never unlocked but in the presence of the master of the house, who keeps the key in his own possession. It is opened but once in the day, when he goes himself as far as the first hall, and sends a servant to unlock and unbolt the door. The servant returns, and the person in the street waits till he is desired to enter with the provisions he has been commissioned to buy. He finds ready placed for him a vessel with vinegar and water to receive the meat, and another with water for the vegetables

Among the very few articles which may be brought in without this precaution is cold bread, salt in bars, straw ropes, straw baskets, oil poured out of the jar to prevent contagion from the hemp with which it is covered, sugar without paper or box. When this person has brought in all the articles he has, he leaves by them the account, and the change out of the money given him, and retiring shuts the door. Straw previously placed in the ha'l is lighted at a considerable distance, by means of a light at the end of a stick, and no person suffered to enter the hall till it is thought sufficiently purified by fire; after which a servant with a long stick picks up the account and smokes it thoroughly over the straw still burning, and locking the door

returns the key to his master, who has been present during the whole of these proceedings, lest any part of them should be neglected, as on the observance of them it may safely be said the life of every individual in the house depends.

Eight people in the last seven days, who were employed as providers for the house, have taken the plague and died. He who was too ill to return with what he had brought, consigned the articles to his next neighbour, who faithfully finishing his commission, as has always been done, of course succeeded his unfortunate friend in the same employment, if he wished it, or recommended another: it has happened that Moors, quite above such em. ployment, have with an earnest charity delivered the provisions to the Christians who had sent for them. The Moors perform acts of kindness at present, which if attended by such dreadful circumstances, would be very rarely met with in most parts of Christendom. An instance very lately occurred of their philanthropy. A

Christian lay an object of misery, neglected and forsaken self-preservation having taught every friend to fly from her pestilential bed, even her mother! But she found in the barbarian a paternal hand: passing by he heard her moans, and concluded she was the last of her family; and finding that not the case, he beheld her with sentiments of compassion mixed with horror. He sought for assistance, and till the plague had completed its ravages and put an end to her sufferings he did not lose sight of her, disdaining her Christian

friends,

friends, who left her to his benevolent care.

The expense and the danger of burying the dead has become so great, and the boards to make the coffins so very scarce, that the body is brought out of the house by friends to the door, and the first man they can prevail on, carries it over his shoulder, or in his arms to the grave, endeavouring to keep pace with the long range of coffins that go to the buryingground at noon, to take the ad vantage of the great mass. Today the dead amounted to two hundred and ninety.

July 1, 1785.

The cries of the people for the loss of their friends are still as frequent as ever; not a quarter of an hour passing without the lamentations of some new afflicted

mourner. No more masses are said in town at present for the dead; but the coffins are collected together and pass through the town-gate exactly at noon, when the great mass is performed over all at once, at a mosque out of the town, in the way to the bury ing ground. The horrors of the melancholy procession increase daily. A Moor of consequence passed to-day, who has not missed this melancholy walk for the last fifteen days, in accompanying regularly some relic of his family

he is himself considered in the last stage of the plague, yet supported by his blacks he limped before his wife and eldest son, himself the last of his race.

Women, whose persons have hitherto been veiled, are wandering about complete images of despair, with their hair loose and their baracans open, crying and

wringing their hands and following their families. Though a great deal of their grief here by custom is expressed by action, yet it is dreadful when it proceeds so truly from the heart as it does now, while all those we see are friends of the departed. No strangers are called in to add force to the funeral cries: the father who bears his son to-day, carried his daughter yesterday, and his wife the day before: the rest of his family are at home languishing with the plague, while his own mother, spared for the cruel satisfaction of following her offspring, still continues with her son her wretched daily walk.

July 20, 1785.

In the beginning of this month, owing to the increased ravages of the plague, the events connected

with it assumed a more horrid character, and instead of shining coffins, Imans and friends, to make up the sad procession, five or six corpses were bound together, all of them fastened on one animal, and hurried away to

the grave! Collogees (soldiers) were appointed to go through the town, and clear it of objects who had died in the streets and were lying about.

A female in the

agonies of death they would have life was still lingering, had not seized upon, while the spark of the frighted victim with great exertion extended a feeble arm, and resisted the disturbers of her last moments, imploring the patience of the collogees till they came their next round.

Sept. 10, 1786. Since our long quarantine, (having been close prisoners for thirteen

In the country, the villages are empty, and those houses shut that have not been opened since the plague, and where whole families lay interred. The Moors carried a great number of their dead to the sea-shore and laid them in one heap, which seriously affected the town, till the Christians suggested the idea of covering them with lime, which fortunately the Moors have adopted, but only from finding themselves dangerously annoyed, as they consider this expedient a sort of impiety, for which they express great sorrow.

The habitations in the mountains of Guerriana, inaccessible except to the inhabitants, remain entirely deserted. The entrances to the dwellings are so completely covered up with sand as not to be discovered by strangers; but they are now repeopling, and the remnant of those who fled thence are hastening back from Tunis, and the deserts around, to recover possession of these strange re

treats.

The city of Tripoli, after the plague, exhibited an appearance awfully striking. In some of the houses were found the last victims that had perished in them, who having died alone, unpitied and unassisted, lay in a state too bad to be removed from the spot, and were obliged to be buried where they were; while in others,

children were wandering about deserted, without a friend be longing to them. The town was almost entirely depopulated, and rarely two people walked together. One solitary being paced slowly through the streets, his mind unoccupied by business, and lost in painful reflections: if he lifted his eyes, it was with mournful surprize to gaze on the empty habitations around him: whole streets he passed without a living creature in them; for beside the desolation of the plague, before it broke out in this city, many of the inhabitants, with the greatest inconvenience, left their houses and fled to Tunis (where the plague then raged), to avoid starving in the dreadful famine that preceded it here.

Amongst those left in this town some have been spared to acknowledge the compassion and attention shewn them by the English consul. In the distresses of the famine, and in the horrors of the plague, many a suffering wretch, whose days have been spun out by his timely assistance, has left his name on record at this place. Persons saved from perishing in the famine who have remained sole possessors of property before divided among their friends (all now swept off by the plague), come forward to thank him with wild expressions of joy, calling him boni (father), and praying to Mahomet to bless him. They say that besides giving them life he has preserved them to become little kings, and swear a faithful attachment to him, which there is no doubt they will shew, in their way, as long as he is in their country;

POETRY.