friends, who left her to his bene volent 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 advantage 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 mis-ed 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 A female in the lying about. agonies of death they would have seized upon, while the spark of life was still lingering, had not 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

thirteen months, from the beginning of June 1785 to the end of

children were wandering about deserted, without a friend be

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,

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.