14 JOURNEY FROM

face of His Highness’s castle and residence (for the building is both one and the other) displays a bright coating of plaster and white-

wash over the unseemly patchwork beneath it.

The city walls and ramparts are for the most part disguised under

a cloak of the same gay material ; and the whole together, viewed

under an African sun, and contrasted with the deep blue of an

African sky, assumes a decent, we may even say, a brilliant ap-

pearance. It must, however, be confessed that this is much im-

proved by distance ; for a too close inspection will occasionally

discover through their veil the defects which we have alluded

to above ; and large flakes of treacherous plaster will occasionally

be found by near observers to have dropt off and left them quite

exposed.

Leo Africanus has informed us that the houses and bazars of

Tripoly were handsome compared with those of Tunis. How far

this epithet might have been applicable at the period here alluded

to, we are not ourselves able to judge; but we must confess that the

beauty of the existing houses and bazars of Tripoly did not appear

to us particularly striking : and if the comparison drawn by Leo

may be still supposed to hold, we do not envy the architects of Tunis

whatever fame they may have acquired by the erection of the most

admired buildings of that city. The mosques and colleges, as well

as hospitals, enumerated by our author, must have been very differ-

ent from those now existing to entitle them to any commendation ;

and the rude and dilapidated masses of mud and stone, or more fre-

quently, perhaps, of mud only, here dignified by the appellation of