friendship, having the use not only of their houses, but of their horses also, their janissaries and servants. But in most of the inland towns and villages, particularly of Barbary, there is a house set apart for the reception of strangers, with a proper officer, called maharak, to attend us, where we are lodged and entertained for one night at the expence of the community. Yet even here we sometimes met with our difficulties and disappointments; as when these houses are already taken up, or when the maharak was not to be found, or when he was inclined to be surly and disobliging; great disputes, and shamatan, as they call brawls and discord, happening at such times. And as there were no inns or public houses to entertain us, and private families (contrary to the charitable custom recorded in Job xxxi. 32. and Matt. xxv. 35.) would never admit us, we had now and then occasion enough to meditate upon the same distress with the Levite and his company, (Judges xix. 15.) when there was no man that would take them into his house for lodging; and of the propriety there was to place (1 Tim. v. 10. Heb. xiii. 2.) the lodging and entertaining of strangers among good works.

But when we travel in the open country, at a distance from these towns and villages, as in Arabia and the greatest part of Barbary, we are to take our chance, both with regard to our food and our lodgings, as will be hereafter more particularly related. As to our food, we were some

times

times provident enough to take care of it, especially in Arabia. But to have furnished ourselves with tents in travelling through those deserts, would have been both cumbersome and expensive; besides the suspicion it might have raised in the jealous Arabs, that the persons they belonged to, were of a more than ordinary rank and condition, and consequently would be too rich and tempting a booty to be suffered to escape. The unfortunate gentlemen, who were concerned not many years ago in an embassy to Abyssinia, by order of the French king, found this to be too true, at the expence of their lives.

As we shall have frequent occasion, particularly in the description of Barbary, to mention the Kabyles, the Arabs and the Moors, it will be necessary to premise, that the Kabyles have generally the appellation of Beni, as the Arabs have that of Welled, prefixed to the name of their respective founders. Both words have the same signification, and denote the children or offspring of such a tribe: thus, Beni Rashid and Welled Halfa, equally signify the sons of Rashid and the sons of Halfa; or the Rashides or Halfides, as the ancient geographers and historians would have named them. We may observe further, that the Kabyles usually live upon the mountains, in little villages, called daskrahs, made up of mud-walled hovels (or gurbies, according to their own appellation); whereas the Arabs, being commonly the inhabitants of the plains, are therefore called Be

doweens,

over

doweens, living, as the Nomades and Scenitæ did of old, in tents; a collection whereof, pitched usually in a circle, with their doors opening towards Mecca, is called a douwar. But the Moors, who are the descendents of the ancient inhabitants, the Mauritanians, live all Barbary, as the Turks likewise do, in cities, towns and villages; habitations more permanent than those of the Arabs, as they are more durable than those of the Kabyles. The language of the Moors is the same with that of the Arabs; the particular dialects being alike in them both, according to their nearer or more distant situation from Egypt, where their language is supposed to be spoken in the greatest propriety and perfection.

If therefore, in the course of our travels, we did not fall in with any of the daskrahs of the Kabyles, or with the douwars of the Arabs, or with the towns or villages above mentioned, we had nothing to protect us from the inclemency either of the heat of the day, or the cold of the night, unless we accidentally fell in with a cave or grove of trees, the shelve of a rock, or with some ancient arches, that had formerly belonged to so many cisterns. At these times, which indeed seldom happened, our horses were the greatest sufferers; and as they were always our first care, we gathered for them stubble, grass, or boughs of trees, before we sat down and examined what fragments of some former meal were reserved for ourselves.

In

In travelling along the sea coast of Syria, and from Suez to Mount Sinai, we were in little or no danger of being either robbed or insulted, provided we kept company with the caravan *, and did not stray from it; but a neglect of this kind, through too great an eagerness in looking after plants and other curiosities, may expose the traveller, as it once did myself, to the great danger of being assassinated. For whilst I was thus amusing myself, and had lost sight of the caravan, I was suddenly overtaken and stripped by three strolling Arabs; and had not the divine Providence interposed in raising compassion in one, whilst the other two were fighting for my clothes (mean and ragged as they were), I must inevitably have fallen a sacrifice to their rapine and cruelty. In the Holy Land, and upon the isthmus betwixt Egypt and the Red Sea, our conductors cannot be too numerous, whole clans of Arabs, from fifty to five hundred, sometimes looking out for a booty. This was the case of our caravan, in travelling (A. D. 1722.)

from

* Vox Persica est carvan, id est, negotiator, vel collective negotiatores; sc. tota eorum cohors simul iter faciens, quæ Arabice cafila vocatur. Hinc mercatorum hospitia publica, qua Arabibus audiunt can, Persis carvan serai nominantur, i. e. caravane hospitium. Nam serai est quævis domus ampla; unde in Constantinopoli, imperatoris palatium foeminarum Turcis dicitur, nomine Persico, serai, Europæis minus bene serail et seraglio. Vid. Perits. Itinera Mundi, ed. T. Hyde, p. 61. In these cans, kanes, or caravan serais, we can sometimes purchase straw and provender for our horses, mules, &c. though, generally speaking, they supply us barely with a dirty room to lodge in, being built in squares, with an area or quadrangle within for the reception of our horses, &c.

from Ramah to Jerusalem; where, exclusive of three or four hundred spahees, four bands of Turkish infantry, with the mosolom, or general, at the head of them, were not able, or durst not at least, protect us from the repeated insults, ravages, and barbarities of the Arabs. There was

scarce a pilgrim, and we were upwards of six thousand, who did not suffer, either by losing a part of his clothes, or his money; and when these failed, then the barbarians took their revenge, by unmercifully beating us with their pikes and javelins. It would be too tedious to relate the many instances of that day's rapine and cruelty, in which I myself had a principal share, being forcibly taken at Jeremiel or Anathoth, as an hostage for the payment of their unreasonable demands, where I was very barbarously used and insulted all that night; and provided the aga of Jerusalem, with a great force, had not rescued me the next morning, I should not have seen so speedy an end of my sufferings.

But in Barbary, where the Arabian tribes are more under subjection, I rarely was guarded by more than three spahces and a servant; all of us well armed with guns, pistols, and scimitars; though even here we were sometimes obliged to augment our numbers, particularly when we travelled either among the independent tribes, or upon the frontiers of the neighbouring kingdoms, or where two contiguous clans were at variance. These, and such like harammees, as the free-booters are usually named in these countries,

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