304 BENGAZI.

now enjoys*. We often conversed on the subject of the existing war with the Greeks, and they manifested at all times extreme curiosity to know what part we should take, in the event of the arrival of any Greek vessel off their port. Our answers were always satisfactory to them ; and a report of the English being favorably , inclined towards the Porte having by some means reached them, we were in subsequent interviews addressed as Sahab, or ally.

This confidence in our intentions was not, however, so strongly felt among the lower classes of people ; at least it did not appear to have been so on the occasion which we are about to mention.

Some vague reports of the successes of the Greeks, and their merciless treatment of the prisoners which they had taken, having reached the people of Bengazi, they became, on a sudden, uncommonly nervous, and were in momentary apprehension of an invasion, and of an indiscriminate slaughter of themselves and their families.

The appearance of the Adventure, about this time, on their coast, which had not been visited by a man-of-war for a long time before, together with the arrival, soon after, of our party, whose real objects were for the most part unintelligible to them, added to the circum-* Previously to these measures, the town was constantly subject to the attacks of the neighbouring tribes of marauding Arabs, who, as occasion offered, made incursions into it without ceremony, and retired with their plunder into the interior. The garrison and citizens opposed them as well as they could, and many a desperate skirmish frequently ensued ; but as Bengazi is unprovided with walls, it was difficult to prevent a surprise, and the people lived in continual fear. Mahommed Bey began by building a I'ound fort on the sandy traet to the eastward cf the town, and then collecting his forces, carried the war into their territory, and after making severe examples of the most refractory, succeeded in reducing the Bedouins to subjection.