CHAPTER III.

BRUCE TRAVELS THROUGH THE KINGDOMS OF TUNIS AND TRIPOLI-IS WRECKED-BEATEN BY THE ARABS-SAILS TO CRETE, RHODES, ASIA MINOR, AND SYRIA-VISITS PALMYRA AND BAALBEC-IS DETAINED AT CYPRUS SAILS

FOR EGYPT.

he says,

THE Dey, secretly admiring the firmness and integrity of Bruce's character, had furnished him with recommendatory letters to the Beys of Tunis and Tripoli, states independent of the Dey of Algiers, but over which the circumstances of the times had given him considerable influence. Sailing along the African coast, Bruce landed at Bona, the ancient Aphrodisium, and anchoring at Biserta, he paid a visit to Utica, as out of respect to the memory of Cato.' He then landed at Tunis, and, delivering his letters to the Bey, he obtained permission to visit the country in whatever direction he should please. From the French and English consuls he received great attention and assistance; and about the middle of September, while the weather was still dreadfully hot, he set out for the interior of the kingdoms of Algiers and Tunis, accompanied by his draftsman, Luigi Balugani, a French renegado named Osman, and ten spahis or foot soldiers, 'who,' says Bruce, were well armed with firelocks and pistols, excellent horsemen, and, as far as I could ever discern, as eminent for cowardice,

On

at least, as they were for horsemanship.' reaching Tucca, he found a Corinthian pillar of Parian marble, and the ruins of a temple, among which he remained fifteen days, making various most valuable drawings, which, we are sorry to say, still remain unpublished.

After visiting several other places, he came to Hydra, the Thunodrunum of the ancients, the frontier of the two kingdoms of Algiers and Tunis, and inhabited by a tribe of Arabs called Welled Sidi Boogannim. These Arabs were immensely rich, paying no tribute either to Algiers or Tunis, the pretence for this exemption being a very singular one. By the institution of their founder, they are obliged to live upon lions' flesh, and thus eating up the enemies of the state, they are not taxed like the other Arabs. Seated among these wild people, Bruce openly partook of their fare, and having done so, he acknowledged it in words which are highly characteristic of himself:

Before Dr. Shaw's travels first acquired the celebrity they have maintained ever since, there was a circumstance that very nearly ruined their credit. He had ventured to say in conversation, that these Welled Sidi Boogannim were eaters of lions; and this was considered at Oxford, the university where he had studied, as a traveller's license on the part of the doctor. They thought it a subversion of the natural order of things that a man should eat a lion, when it had long passed as almost the peculiar province of the lion to eat man. The doctor flinched under the sagacity and severity of this criticism: he could not deny that the Welled Sidi Boogannim did eat lions, as he

had repeatedly said; but he had not yet published his travels, and therefore left it out of his narrative, and only hinted at it in his appendix.

With all submission to that learned university, I will not dispute the lion's title to eating men; but, since it is not founded upon patent, no consideration will make me stifle the merit of the Welled Sidi Boogannim, who have turned the chase upon the enemy. It is an historical fact, and I will not suffer the public to be misled by a misrepresentation of it on the contrary, I do aver, in the face of these fantastic prejudices, that I have eat the flesh of lions, that is, part of three lions, in the tents of Welled Sidi Boogannim.'If the spirit of these noble animals had entered Bruce's heart instead of his stomach, he could not have expressed himself in bolder terms !

From Hydra he went to the ancient Tipasa, where he found a most extensive scene of ruins; and then entering the eastern province of Algiers, he reached Medrashem, a superb pile of building. Passing Gibel Aurez and Cassareen, the ancient Colonia Scillitana, he at last reached Spaitla, in the kingdom of Tunis. The Welled Omran, a lawless, plundering tribe, disturbed Bruce very much during the eight days which he occupied in minutely measuring and drawing the extensive and elegant ruins of Spaitla. It was a fair match,' he says, 'between coward and coward. With my company I was enclosed in a square, in which the three temples stood, where there yet remained a precinct of high walls. These plunderers would have come in to me, but were afraid of my fire-arms; and I would have run away from

them, had I not been afraid of meeting their horse in the plain. I was almost starved to death, when I was relieved by the arrival of Welled Hassan, and a friendly tribe of Dreeda, that came to my assistance, and brought me at once both safety and provision.'

From Spaitla he proceeded to Muchtar, and Musti, and then returning to Tugga, he went down the Bagrada to Tunis. From Tunis he again went to Spaitla, where he remained five days more, correcting and revising the drawings and memoranda which he had already made there. Passing Feriana, he came to a large lake, the Palus Tritonidis, now called the Lake of Marks, because there is in it a row of large trunks of palm trees set up to guide travellers across it. This was,

says Bruce, the most barren and unpleasant part of my journey in Africa; barren, not only from the nature of the soil, but by its having no remains of antiquity in the whole course of it." This desert scene was at last most agreeably and suddenly changed, by the small river Triton, the water of which caused the adjacent country to be covered with all kinds of flowers and verdure. Bruce had now reached the Lesser Syrtis. He here turned to visit El Gemme, where there had been a large and perfect amphitheatre, until Mahomet Bey blew up a part of it, to prevent its being occupied as a fortress by the Arabs. Continuing along the coast to Susa, Bruce once more arrived at Tunis, possessing drawings of what he considered to be all the antiquities worth notice in the territories of Tunis and Algiers.'

6

Notwithstanding the great heat of the sun to