flict of sounds, the predominant one of which is a shrill cry of the women, which they are in the practice of uttering, both on occasions of ceremony, and whenever they would express respect or congratulation.

They utter these in honour of the king's presence; and when I became of some consideration among them, they conferred these compliments on me. As this exertion is considered as a talent, and is the result of art. they seize every opportunity of making it, and endeavour to excel each other in it, as well in the shrillness as in the length of the sound. Sometimes I heard them pass my house in groups, at one and two o'clock after midnight, shrieking out their horrible exclamations.'

The ignorance of the people, of whatever rank, is gross in the extreme; and so general that there is hardly an exception to be found, unless we are to consider as such a few cunning rogues, who carry on a most thriving trade of saintship at the expense of the barbarian community. One of these saints became quite social and frank with our pretended Moslem, and often repeated to him his favourite saying, that fools are made for the 'amusement of men of ability; and our zealot, (for Ali always affected to be most devoutly intent upon the duties of his religion, instead of rebuking this scoundrel, seems to have fully shared in the glee with which, in confidential conversation, he laughed at the credulity of his dupes.

Counterfeit saints these people can thus manufacture among themselves; for counterfeits of other things it seems they are beholden to more skilful nations. Bad money is very common in their circulation, and the result of all the Bey's inquiries about it was, that it is supposed to be coined in England.' It does not therefore contribute to aggravate that rancour against the Jews, which, by our Author's account, inflicts on them systematically so many grievances in Morocco. He recounts the humiliations and iniquities they are doomed to suffer; and these are just as many as all the possible ways in which their interests and feelings can be placed in any sort of competition with those of their tyrants; and their tyrants are just as many as there are Mahomedans around them; for the very children of the Mahomedans will insult and strike a Jew, whatever be his age and infirmities, without his being allowed to complain, or to defend himself.' The only alleviation of the oppression they suffer, is derived from their corruption the young Jewesses have much more agreeable countenances than the Moorish women; and some slight mitigation of tyranny is the consequence, to the sect, of the tyrants often liking to have Jewish mistresses.

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The sort of lordly style so judiciously assumed by this representative of the Abbassides, and the power of science or di

vination which he evinced in calculating an eclipse, soon secured him great respect, consequence, and notoriety in the country; so that he was quite a fit person to be introduced to Muley Soliman, Emperor of Morocco, who at that time made a visit to Tangier. He took mightily with his Majesty and other branches of the imperial family, who insisted on the honour of his company at the seats of empire, Fez and Morocco. He set off therefore for Fez, by way of Mequinez; constantly making, as indeed throughout all his peregrinations, such observations on matters connected with science, as travelling inconveniences allowed; and as he durst do, for fear of the observations of which he was liable to become himself the subject; for he found it uniformly a characteristic of his brethren of the Islam church, that a mixture of contempt and suspicion is excited in them by any appearance of the minute, inquisitive, and earnest observation which distinguishes a philosopher: so that he was obliged to keep himself under much management and restriction in collecting flowers or mineral specimens, and in his celestial observations He must have been very adroit to make the number of observations, in different apartments, which he has put on record.

A minute description, with every appearance of accuracy, is given of the appearance, condition, and principal structures, of Fez, where he resided nearly four months, in high favour and intimacy with whatever was the most powerful, or opulent, or illuminated, or saintly, in the city. Every thing belonging to architecture is wretched, whether in houses. palaces, or mosques. The streets are narrow, dark, and unpaved, with mud in rainy weather to the depth of the knee. The houses are high and projecting in front; the two sides of the street, therefore, approach very near each other at the exterior galleries of the upper stories. This construction, and the badness of the walls, which, he says, ' are almost all fissured and bulging,' have made it necessary to prop them by walls across at certain distances. These walls have arched passages, which are shut at night; and the city becomes then divided into several quarters, and all communication between any one part of the town and the rest, is effectually precluded.' Most of the fronts to the street are without windows, and the few that are seen are placed very bigh, are not larger than a common sheet of paper, and are generally either shut or covered with blinds, from jealousy." The residences of persons of rank are generally disposed in the form of a court-yard, with long colounades and galleries. There is a universal meanness of workmanship, and a prevailing appearance of decay and ruin. And no wonder at this latter circumstance, if the information given to Ali was correct, that the 100,000 souls it is now computed to contain, are but half the

number it contained before the last visit of the plague, of which event he does not mention the date.

mosques.

It is said that Fez contains more than two hundred Our Mahomedan had every possible advantage for inspecting every thing about such a wretched load upon the earth. Each of them has its court-yard surrounded by arcades. The handsomest is one dedicated to the Sultan Muley Edris, the founder of Fez. Its chief use is that of being a sacred asylum for criminals; the greatest criminal is there in safety, and no one would dare to 'arrest him.' The largest of them contains, in one of its minarets, some mouldering and defaced relics of a pair of globes, and a quantity of books. It has another very remarkable singularity,

A covered place for women who may choose to participate in the public prayers this is a circumstance unique, and peculiar to this building; for, as the Prophet has not assigned any place for women in his paradise, the Mahomedans give them no place in the mosques, and have exempted them from the obligation of attending the public prayers.'

There are large and well supplied markets for provisions, and the shew of shops is prodigious Baths are numerous; in the one resorted to by our adventurer, he found pails full of hot water carefully placed in corners. I asked them the reason of

C this. "Do not touch them, Sir," answered all the people 'belonging to the bath, " do not touch them !" "Why not?" "hese pails are for the people below." "Who are they?" "The demons who come here to bathe themselves at night." On this topic they told me many ridiculous stories.' He says they actually believe that the storks which frequent the town during part of the year, are men from some distant islands,' who have taken the shape of birds, and after a time return to their own country, where they resume the human form.

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It is not, however, that the city has not schools, an academy,' and a good complement of doctors, denominated Fakihs. With these sages the Bey held divers learned and philosophical disputations. He reports that he confounded them; and more, that he almost made some of them suspect the barbarism of their lore, and their mode of reasoning. They could not, however, be made to comprehend the difference between astronomy and astrology, though he avers that he posed them from the Koran with respect to the merits of the latter.

The technicalities of the academic course are not unworthy of the dignity of its subjects.

• Imagine a man sitting down on the ground with his legs crossed, uttering frightful cries, or singing in a tone of lamentation. He is surrounded by fifteen or twenty youths, who sit in a circle with their

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 still 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 impostors, 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