TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 5

sary preliminaries being satisfactorily arranged, tea * and lemonade were served with all due decorum, and our party took leave of His

flighness. The guns were brought up the same afternoon, close under the balcony of the palace, and the Bashaw appeared at the

window to inspect them, with some of the officers of his court ; vari-

ous manoeuvres were gone through to the admiration and astonish-

ment of the spectators, under the direction of the gunner of the

Adventure, and the cannoniers acquitted themselves so highly to

the satisfaction of His Highness, that he sent a sword to the gunner,

in token of his approbation, and a bag of dollars to be divided among the crew.

In our interview with the Bashaw it had been finally arranged

that our party should be escorted as far as Bengazi, by an Arab Shekh

who presided over the district of Syrt, and was called Shekh Mahom- med el Hubbah ; at Bengazi we were to be consigned to Hadood,

Shekh of Barka, who was to conduct us as far as Bomba, beyond

which his authority ceased. As Bomba, or its immediate vicinity,

may be considered as the eastern limit of the Eegency, we were

informed that, in our progress from that place to Alexandria, we

must depend upon the protection of the Bashaw of Egypt. We had

foreseen this circumstance before our arrival in Tripoly, and a letter

had been written from Malta to Mr. Salt, His Majesty’s Consul- General in Egypt, requesting him, in the name of the British Govern-

ment, to make the necessary arrangements with His Highness the

* Tea is very generally used by the higher classes throughout the Regency of Ti’ipoly, and coffee but rarely.