ordinary silk handkerchief, of two shillings value, was a present for a princess. During the excessive heats of the summer, and especially when we were apprehensive of being intercepted by the free-booting Arabs, or harammees, we then travelled in the night, which having no eyes, according to their proverb, few of them dare venture out, as not knowing the unforeseen and unexpected dangers and ambuscades which they might possibly fall into. At this time, we have frequent opportunities of calling to remembrance the beautiful words of the Psalmist, Psal. civ. 20. "Thou makest darkness that it "be night; wherein all the beasts of the forest "do move." The lions roaring after their prey, the leopards, the hyenas, the jackalls, and a variety of other ravenous creatures crying out to their fellows, Isa. xiii. 22. and xxxiv. 14. (the different sexes perhaps finding out and corresponding in this manner with their mates), break in very awfully upon the solitude, and the safety likewise, that we might otherwise promise to ourselves at this season. may Our horses and camels keep generally a constant pace; the latter at the rate of two miles and au half, the other of three geographical miles an hour; sixty of which miles, according to my calculation, constitute one degree of a great circle. The space we travelled over was first of all computed by hours, and then reduced into miles, which, in the following observations, when Roman is not mentioned, are always to be taken for geo geographical miles. I alighted usually at noon to take the sun's meridian altitude (called by the Arabs, the weighing of the sun), and thereby adjust the latitudes; observing all along the course and direction of our travelling by a pocket compass, the variation whereof (A, D. 1727) I found at Algiers to be 14°, and at Tunis 16° to the west. Every evening therefore, as soon as we arrived at our connack*, for so the spahees call the tents, the houses, or places where we put up, I used to examine what latitude we were in, how many hours, and in what direction we had that day travelled, making proper allowances for the several windings and occasional deviations that we had made out of the direct road. In our passage through the mountains and forests, or where the plains were cut through with rivers (for we no where met with hedges, or mounds, or inclosures, to retard and molest us), it frequently happened, that Connac is at present the same appellation in the East with the Tavdoxuor and xalaλux in the Old and New Testament, which are rendered inns or hospitia. But excepting the caravanserais, which may in some measure answer to the adoxea and xalaλvμara, (those which I have seen were only bare walls), there are, properly speaking, no houses of entertainment in this country, in the sense at least that we understand inns or hospitia; viz. where we can be provided with lodgings, provisions, and other necessaries for our money. For a connac denotes the place itself only, whether covered or not, where the travellers or caravans halt or break off their journey for a time, in order to refresh themselves and their beasts of burden. Thus the malon, or inn, Gen. xlii. 27. and xliii. 21. &c. where the sons of Jacob opened their sacks to give their asses provender, are no other than one of the like stations, which I have described above in Arabia, viz. the place where they themselves rested and unloaded their asses. Vid. not. *, p. xvi. that when we had travelled eight hours, i.e. twenty-four miles, they were, according to the method above laid down, and as far as longitude or latitude were concerned, to be estimated for no more than eighteen or twenty. I found by observation the latitude of Algiers, by which that of other places is regulated, to be 3° 32′ 30′′ east of London, which, in the according to which, down and projected. And here, to digress a little from the diary part, and to give some account of the work itself, I am to acquaint the reader, that the pricked..... or double=lines, which are traced out upon the maps, denote the places they pass through, to be laid down according to the observations of the author. Mr Sanson, who attended for many years the viceroy of Constantina as his slave and surgeon, supplied me with a great many geographical remarks concerning that province; in the description of which, particularly with regard to Lambese, I am likewise obliged to the learned and curious Dr Poissonel, who took, A. D. 1726, a survey of the greatest part of the kingdoms of Algiers and Tunis, at the expence of the French king. In the description of the western portion of the Zeugitania, which the civil wars, A. D. 1727, prevented me from visiting, I am much indebted to the learned Father Francisco Ximenes, then the Spanish administradôr at Tunis, who very generously communicated to me his notes and remarks, which he had made in his several journies over those parts. The prod maps is my first meridian; they are all of them laid VOL. I. vinces vinces of Zaab, Wadrang, and the other southern districts of the kingdom of Algiers, are laid down from the repeated accounts which I received of those countries from the inhabitants themselves; with whom we have frequent opportunities of conversing in almost every city of Barbary. And as I rarely found them disagree in their accounts, I am persuaded that I have been little, if at all, imposed upon by them. The several names of the places and tribes of these kingdoms, are all of them written according to the English pronunciation, and the force of our own alphabet. The Arabic letters, answering to our i, h, and w, make those words (which indeed are very numerous) wherein they occur, to have an easier transition into our language, than into the French or Italian; and, for the want of the like correspondent letters, the authors who have described these countries, have generally miscalled the true Arabic appellations, and thereby rendered them useless to travellers, as I can speak by experience, in making inquiries after particular places there recorded, by being thus strangely expressed in those idioms. The stars (*) that are prefixed to the names of several cities in Barbary, denote them to have been episcopal sees at the time they were possessed by the Christians. We learn from the Notitia, that they were, at one time or other, more than six hundred; though, for want of geographical circumstances, I have not been able to adjust the situation of more than one hundred of them. And, And, in examining their ruins, I have often wondered that there should remain so many altars and tokens of Pagan idolatry and superstition, and so very few crosses or other monuments of Christianity. Yet even this may perhaps be well enough accounted for, from that great hatred and contempt which the Saracens have always had for the Christian name, and of their taking all imaginable opportunities to obliterate and destroy it; wherein they are further encouraged, by finding not only a number of coins, but large pieces of lead and iron also, wherewith the stones which they are thus industrious to pull down, are bound together. But of these coins, I rarely met with any that were either valuable or curious. Such of them as are purely African, or Carthaginian, or carry along with them at least the insignia and characteristics of being struck there or in Sicily, and other of their colonies, may be well accounted the rarest, and of these I have given the reader several drawings and descriptions; not taking the least notice of the Missilia, as they are called, of the lower empire, nor of the coins, which are equally common, of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Alexander, Gordianus, and Philippus; in whose times these parts of Africa appear to have been adorned with the most sumptuous edifices. I have some pieces likewise of glass money, found in the ruins of such of their buildings, as were erected by their sultans, viz. Occ'ba and Ben Egib. For these, no less than those that were erected by their predecessors, the Carthaginians and |