If you are not already tired with my remarks, please to remember that I was lately speaking of the outlets to the country from the town of Algiers, and conceive me cicerone-ing you in imagination out of the gate of Babazoun. Leaving that gate on the right, you are led by a fine spacious road, cut on the side of the hill by the orders of the Duke of Ragusa, and very creditable to his memory. In ascending, it is pleasant to look back below. There is a palm tree that, with its feathery foliage, gives an oriental character to the scene. Whether it is a gentleman or a lady tree I do not know; but whichsoever it is, it is fruitless, because it stands alone, for palm trees will not fructify unless they grow in couples. They have no notion of single blessedness. Heaven smile on the gallant vegetables!

You see also from this ascent several picturesque Maraboot chapels, and the guide pointed out to me a spot which he said was the tomb of Barbarossa.

At the top of this hill you get to the great road that goes towards Douera and Boufaric. From this eminence the view is superb-the bay with its mighty blue semicircle, fringed with creamy foam-the white country-houses with their orange-gardens-the maraboots, interspersed with here and there a palm-tree-the plain below, where the vapours of the river Arach, as it discharges itself at Cape Matifou, are seen sporting in the sun, and the noble mountains towering behind the Metidjah. All these objects, when I looked around me, filled me with but vain regrets that I had not beside me some capital artist to note the scene. The French sent hither the younger Verney; but he is long returned; and I have never been able to get a sight of his Algerine sketches. But England is exuberant in painters; and why are none of them here? What studies would not Wilkie find among the Arabs and Kabyls,—the laughing negroes and the merry Jew-boys of the market-place! What scope on these sea-shores for the grace of Callcott! and what mountain lights and shades for the sublimity of Turner! The altitude of those mountains I find differently estimated. I love them too well to quarrel about a few hundred toises as to their stature ; but the highest of them seem to me to be twice the height of Ben Nevis. They have an aspect peculiarly bold. Stretching in a long sweep, with visibly deep indentations and ravines-with cliffs that are purpled, and masses of precipices that are bronzed by the sun; they strike the fancy-if one may compare mountains to men-as soldierfeatured beings, that bid defiance to invasion. And full sure, amidst those passes, the Kabyles have often taught both the Turks and French, that Freedom is a mountain-nymph.

But the ascent to this excursion is too fatiguing for a pedestrian excursion, and at noon it is apt to be too sunny for a ride. You should go out thither on horseback, when the crier from the minaret is chaunting to matin prayers, and when the cannon in the harbour announces day-break-whilst the jackal and hyena are skulking home through the dewy nopals-and whilst the daylight is blushing in Heaven like the life-blood returning to a lovely countenance.

The only foot promenade you can well enjoy at Algiers is on the outside of the gate Bab-el-Oued. The most interesting place to which this outlet takes you after you pass the fort of twenty-four hours (so called, because it is said to have been built within that time), and the burialgrounds, is the place still called the Dey's Gardens, which contain many

buildings, marble-paved courts, and magnificent fountains. The edifices, by the side of which the French have constructed numerous wooden barracks, have been converted into a military hospital, whilst the gardengrounds are laid out as an experimental nursery for rearing the chief botanical productions which the French are ambitious of cultivating in Africa. This Bab-el-Oued Pépinière, however, is on a much smaller scale than the one to which you go out by Babazoun: it contains only a few acres. Here I have made acquaintance with the worthy and accomplished Dr. Maris, the head physician of the hospital, who allows me to come down every morning with a napkin full of wild flowers, the botanical names of every one of which he writes for me on a slip of paper, besides teaching me how to preserve the flowers. Domesticated with him, and equally hospitable, I find two twin brothers, who are the head botanists of the now existing establishment. Their likeness in form and face makes them perfectly undistinguishable, even when they are together, and they speak and laugh so similarly, that if you were to shut your eyes in overhearing their conversation, you would swear that it was a man speaking to himself. Their studies and progress in life have been the same, and their very souls seem to be twins.

In those Gardens of the Dey you meet with both the cotton-tree and the cotton-bush, the sugar-cane, and the cochineal insect, feeding on that particular species of the Indian cactus which is without prickles. And how are these productions prospering, you will ask me? Why the botanists who tend them tell me they are succeeding admirably, and of the candour of those men I entertain not a doubt; but may not their very devotedness to the culture of them make them over-sanguine in their hopes? And supposing that those productions thrive well in a snug nursery, is that a sure prognostic that they will repay the cost of extensive field-cultivation ? On this subject, it would require the practical experience of a tropical farmer to speak with confidence. Commend me, therefore, to the sagacity of a young Dutchman whose acquaintance I have made here. His father has given him several thousand pounds to buy land and settle as a colonist. The land, he told me, he had bought for a trifle; but that he should not put a spade or a plough into it, till he had been a year and a half on the other side of the Atlantic, and studied there the cultivation of sugar, indigo, &c. for this purpose he is embarking for America.

Close by the Dey's Gardens and Palace, there are buildings now employed as barracks, which were formerly used as a Poudrière. If I understand that French word rightly, it means a powder-mill; a palace and a powder-mill in juxtaposition-is not that a droll alliteration? And yet this was the palace where the Deys used to keep their finest women. Did their highnesses wish to blow up the beautiful creatures in some case of emergency? No, surely, for they exposed themselves to the same. peril. And this powder-mill stood so close to the sea, that an enemy's bomb-ship might have thrown a shell into it, without advancing dangerously close to the neighbouring batteries. The last Dey however had, for many years, discontinued to live in this country-house, having removed up to the Cassaba, from the fear of a blow up of a different nature among his Janissaries.

LETTER V.

The population of the city of Algiers, and of all parts of the Regency that are actually occupied by the French, has been pretty well ascertained; but what may be the number of souls, reckoning a soul for every individual, inhabiting the whole territory, is more a matter of guess than computation. Hamdan, a living Moorish author, whose work on Algiers has been translated into French, begins his book with a bold assertion at the first sentence, that the population amounts to ten millions. This conjecture is rather too gay, as it would imply this savage country to be nearly as thickly peopled as England. Shaler thinks that they scarcely exceed one million, others compute them at two millions, and though I confess that I am only guessing through the guesses of others, I can scarcely suppose the whole population to exceed the latter amount. Dr. Shaw says, that according to the most exact observations which he could make himself, or receive from others, the length of the kingdom from Twunt on the east, to the river Zaine on the west, may be a little more or less than 480 miles: but here Dr. Shaw certainly means length as you would measure it on the globe, without including the undulations of the coast; for all the ship-masters with whom I have spoken describe the voyage between Bona and Oran as between 500 and 600 miles in length. The breadth of the kingdom is very unequal in one part it exhibits only forty miles between the Mediterranean on the north, and the Zahara or Desart on the south; but to the eastward of Algiers it is very considerable, and Dr. Shaw thinks that at a medium the extent of what the Arabs call Tellie (meaning, that is), the land proper for tillage, may be called sixty miles. Now, if we multiply say 500 miles for length by sixty for breadth, the result will be 30,000 square miles: the allowance of 100 heads to a mile would make out the population to be 3,000,000; but for a people half migratory this allowance is too large, and the whole regency does not probably contain above half that number.

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But did the Deys of Algiers, you will ask, keep no registers of the subjects who paid them taxes, and cannot some census of Algerine population be inferentially computed from extant documents? Why, unfortunately, the French destroyed so many archives at the occupation of the Cassaba, as to leave themselves ignorant of much that it would now be their interest to know respecting the former finances of Algiers; but one Turkish document has been preserved by M. Genty de Bussy, which exhibits the imposts paid to the Dey by the various Arab tribes. From this register, it appears that the sums brought in by the tributary natives amounted in French money to a trifle more than 892,000 francs, less than 40,000/. sterling. To estimate the population of the Algerine regency by this document is, however, impossible; before we can infer the population from their taxes, we must know the average value of money in the country; at what rate the natives were charged per head, and whether the imposts here registered were the only taxes exacted from them.

By looking at "Arrowsmith's Comparative Atlas of Ancient and Modern Geography," you will see that the modern regency of Algiers ex tending from Oran to Bona, corresponds to a locality in the ancient world which included almost, though not entirely, the whole of Mau

retania Cæsarensis, the whole of Mauretania Sitifensis, and the whole of what was strictly Numidia. Observe, that with regard to this identity on the map of the modern Algerine Regency and the above Roman provinces, I speak only longitudinally or coastwise; for I believe that from north to south, the Roman dominion extended deeper into Africa than that of the Deys of Algiers ever went. I could inflict on you if I chose a great deal of classical speculation as to the ancient state of the country, and discourse lengthily on the names of Jugurtha, Juba, Syphax, &c.; but what would be the good of it if I did so? I should rise no higher in your opinion than Swift's servant-man, who used to show his learning by writing his name with the smoke of a candle on the roof of the kitchen. Let me be brief, then, in my allusions to antiquity: the Romans, after conquering Carthage, took possession of this country. Their vestiges are everywhere to be traced among ruins by the antiquary. The principal mosque of Algiers exhibits a stone with a Latin inscription on it. This stone had belonged, we may suppose, to a heathen temple in Icosium, and was thrown in accidentally into the materials for constructing a Mahometan one in Algiers. The very sewers under the streets of the city may be believed to be of Roman construction. During the decline of Roman power, Barbary was ravaged by the Vandals, and the white complexion of some of the Kabyles leaves a suspicion that they are of Vandal origin; but Belisarius, in the reign of Justinian, restored Africa to the Eastern empire, though only for a short time; for in 697 the Saracens reduced the whole coast, and Algiers became Mahometan. Centuries elapsed, however, before the place rose to any importance. It was not till the Moors were expelled from Spain, and that 20,000 of them settled here and in the neighbourhood; hence the most of the Algerines are reputed to be of Andalusian origin. The name of Algiers signifies in Arabic an island, owing to the first population of the town having dwelt on that insular spot which is at present connected to the continental harbour by a strong mole.

After the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, war had long continued between the Christians of Europe and the Mahometans of Africa, when, in the year 1516, a petty king of Algiers, named Eutemi, solicited the aid of the two memorable brothers surnamed Barbarossa, the younger of whom placed his newly acquired dominions under the protection of the Grand Signior, and received from him a Turkish garrison sufficient to overawe any attempt of his Moorish subjects to regain their liberty; Algiers thus became a Pachalic of the Porte. At first the Sultan appointed the Deys or Pachas of Algiers; by degrees, however, it became the custom for the Turkish garrison, either directly or through their officers, to nominate their chief, at the same time the Grand Signior still reserved the right of confirming or refusing the election, by sending or withholding the caftan (or mantle) and the sabre of office.

In this manner the Turkish garrison came to form the warlike caste ; the aristocracy, or we might rather say, the stratocracy of the Algerines. The Turkish government discouraged marriage among the Janissaries, and their numbers were yearly recruited by levies in the Levant. The sons of Turks who were born in Algiers, (they were called, as a class, Colouglis, or Coloris), were not entitled by law to succeed to the Janissary privileges of their fathers-not even the sons of the Dey, for the

throne was elective and not hereditary. This was the general rule, but it had exceptions, and I find instances of Colougli sons inheriting the Beylics of their fathers. Neither was the military force of the country exclusively composed of Turks, for it included squadrons of Moorish cavalry. Nevertheless, in a general view, the Turk regarded himself here as the lord of the creation. The Colougli was respected only because he was a Turk's son, and his African birth was an implied derogation from his grade. Those Colouglis or Coloris certainly now form no class of society in Algiers that is distinguishable by the superficial eye of a stranger from that of the gentlemen Moors. I have visited one of them, and had from him a polite, I may say hospitable reception; for though it was the time of the Mahometan fast, and he could not partake of the regale that he offered, he pressed me to coffee, sweet cakes, and sweetmeats. His father and uncle were successively Deys of Algiers: I trust, though I dare not vouch for it, that both of them died a natural death. The room in which he received my interpreter and myself struck me as extremely elegant; its furniture, though rich, was simple; an uncurtained bed, with a crimson coverlet, a bright amber-coloured floor-cloth of cane, low stools and sofas with gilded arms and legs, a clock and mirror of the most beautiful manufacture, and pistols and yatagans chased with gold and silver disposed about the walls.

Having caused it to be explained to my host that this was the first time I had ever been in the house of a Moorish gentleman, and that I hoped he would not think me ill-bred for looking curiously at his furniture, he smiled, and signified that he took my curiosity rather as a compliment; I, therefore, ventured to lift the coverlet of the bed, and found that its furniture consisted only of wool mattresses and bolsters, without feather-bed or blankets. These two last articles would indeed be insupportable in this climate. The poorer Moors, he told me, have neither mattresses nor pillows, but use some sheep-skins for underclothes, and their haicks or bernouses for a covering. The principal subject of our conversation was a rumour very current here respecting the intentions of the French to give up the colony to the Turks. I do not believe a word of it myself, but I said nothing to him about my incredulity, in order that I might hear his sentiments. He was very discreet, as might be expected, in political conversation with an utter stranger, but through the veil of his reserve I could make out two points of his opinion. The first surprised me, namely, that I saw he gave credit to a report so utterly improbable. The other sentiment which he expressed was natural and reasonable. "If the French give us back to the Turks," he said, “ will it not be an unfair transference? If the country is left to itself, who ought to govern it? Surely we, the Moors, who are the great majority, and the most civilized part of its inhabitants."

Of the Turkish aristocracy there is now not a wreck left behind. I have seen a few Turks to be sure, but they are of the lower order. The rich and the landed proprietors have been banished to the number of hundreds. A few miles from town I have visited some of their deserted villas, and their orangeries and gardens, that have been desolated by the soldiery of the Christian civilizers. I sat down during my visit to one of these scenes in a marble kiusk, or summer-house, still shaded by fruit-trees, and looking out to a spot that is still luxuriant in its ruins.