TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 15

houses, do not certainly present very brilliant examples either of

taste, execution, or convenience. Indeed, if we consider the actual

state of Tripoly, we might be authorized, perhaps, in disputing its claims to be ranked as a city at all; and they who are unaccustomed

to jVIahometan negligence might imagine that they had wandered to some deserted and ruinous part of the town, when in reality

they were traversing the most admired streets of a populous and

fashionable quarter. This want of discernment, however, is chiefly

conflned to Europeans ; for the greater part of the Maho-

metan inhabitants of Tripoly are strongly convinced of its beauty

and importance ; while the wandering Arab who enters its gates,

and looks up to the high and whitewashed walls of the Bashaw’s castle, expresses strongly in his countenance the astonishment which

he feels how human hands and ingenuity could have accomplished such a structure.

Of the ancient remains now existing in Tripoly, the Koman arch

we have already alluded to, with a few scattered fragments of tesse-

lated pavement, and some partial ruins of columns and entablatures,

here and there built into the walls of modern structures, are all that

we were able to discover*.

The harbour is formed by a long reef of rocks running out into the

sea in a north-easterly direction, and by other reefs at some distance

* To the eastward of the town, however, on a tract of rocky and elevated ground, is

the burial-place of the ancient city ; where the researches of Mr. Consul Warrington

have brought to light some very interesting objects ; particularly several large sepulchral

urns of glass, the most perfect we have ever seen.