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as no one can tell where they may be making their destructive burrows, perhaps through the thin plank that separates the whole crew from their eternity!

In these cases there is no method of destroying them, but by sinking the vessel in shallow water for some days, until they are all drowned.

The principal useful trees, shrubs, and plants, on this island, are those that bear the cocoa-nut, areca-nut, pepper, and betel. The cocoa-nut tree is raised by burying the nut (stript of its fibrous root) at some depth in the ground; and it is very singular that the stem is nearly as thick when it makes its appearance above ground, as it ever becomes afterwards, though it sometimes rises to the height of fifty or sixty feet.

The areca-tree makes averyhandsome appearance; its branches are small, but its leaves are very beautiful, forming a round tuft at the top of the trunk, which grows as strait as an arrow to the height of twenty-five or thirty feet. The shell which contains the fruit is about the size of a wall-nut, and of a yellowish red colour outside, and rough within; when ripe it is astrigent, and not unpleasant to the taste.

It is needless to say how much this nut (when mixed with leaves of the betel and chunam) is used in chewing by all classes of the natives. This composition is called Penang (whence the name of the island), and though it has an agreeable flavour, it gives the mouths of the natives, who use it, a most d abolical appearance, rendering what few straggling teeth they have as black as jet;

while their disgusting chaps seem as gory as if they had been mangling a piece of raw flesh.

The pepper-plant is a shrub whose root is small, fibrous, and flexible; it rises into a stem which requires a tree or prop to support it; its wood has the same sort of knots as the vine, and when dry it exactly resembles the vine branch. The leaves which have a strong smell and pungent taste, are of an oval shape, but they diminish towards the extremity, and end in a point. From the flower buds, which are white, and sometimes placed in the middle, sometimes at the extremities of the branches, are produced small bunches 'resembling those of the currant tree; each of these contains from twenty to thirty corns of pepper; they are com monly gathered in October, and exposed to the sun seven or eight days. The fruit, which is green at first, and afterwards red, when stripped of its covering, assumes the appearance it has when we see it; it is not sown, but plar ted; a great nicety is required in the choice of the shoots; it produces no fruit till the end of three years, but bears so plentifully the three succeeding years, that some plants yield six or seven pounds of pepper in that period. The bark then begins to shrink, and in twelve years time it ceases bearing.

The culture of pepper is not difficult; it is sufficient to plant it in a rich soil, and carefully to pull up the weeds that grow in great abundance round its outs, especially the three first years. As the sun is highly necessary to the growth of the pepper plant, when it is ready to bear, the trees

that

that support it must be lopped, to prevent their shade from injuring the fruit.

The betel is a species of this genus. It is a climbing and creeping plant like ivy and its leaves a good deal resemble those of the citron, though they are longer and narrower at the extremity. It grows in all parts of India, but thrives best in moist places; the natives cultivate it as we do the vine, placing props for it to run and climb upon; and it is a common practice to plant it against the tree that bears the areca nut.

Fruits are plentiful on this beautiful island; the pine-apple grows wild, while shaddocks, plantains, jack-frit oranges, lemons, &c. are reared with the greatest ease. Though Prince of Wales's Island exports very little of its own productions, except pepper and wood, yet there is a very considerable trade carried on here, from its being in a central situation between India, China, and the Eastern Islands.

The merchants take advantage of the fleets passing and repassing, to export to China, &c. opium, betel, pepper, tin, rattans, and various other articles which they have already collected; and for which they receive either dollars, or the productions of China, and the Eastern Isles, which they afterwards ship off to India, or send home to Europe, whichever they may find most advantageous.

THE PLAGUE.

couriers have crossed the deserts from Tunis to this city, disseminating the plague in their way; and consequently the country round us is every where infected. Even the Moors now allow it; but their precautions are rendered useless by not continuing them; for though from circumstances they are induced at one moment to check an indiscriminate intercourse between the sick and healthy, they give way to it the

next.

May 28, 1785.

The prime minister, Mustapha Serivan's house is at present as much in a state of quarantine as he can put it, consistent with the ideas of the Moors; yet he will not admit to any one, nor to the Bashaw, the necessity of taking precautions at the castle, where he alleges sovereignty is the greatest shield, and whence he says it is necessary to give the Moors an example, not to try to resist the hand of fate.

It is against the Mussulman's faith to number the dead, they are not, therefore, exactly aware of the increasing mortality: but the castle, is much infected; one of the princesses, a child of six years old, died two days since, and one of the three remaining queens of the last sovereign was buried to-day. By the Bashaw's orders, her funeral was attended by several of the officers of state, and by four black slaves, freed by him in compliment to this relict of his father: she was buried in very rich

(From Narrative of a ten Years Residence clothes, and with all the jewels

in Tripóli.)

April 1785.
In the last few weeks several

found in her possession. The four enfranchised slaves who fol lowed her were worth about four hundred pounds; they cost from

five

five to six hundred
each. (A maboob is about seven
shillings.)

A long succession of coffins, purposely kept back for some hours, were carried close after this queen's funeral, to profit by the mass (much grander than usual) that was to be performed for her. From the richness of most of these coffins, they appeared in the bright glare of the sun, a line of burnished gold, too dazzling for the sight. The castle gates were for the first time closed to-day, allowing only a partial admittance. Four people who were perfectly well in the morning were taken ill there yesterday afternoon; they were brought out of the castle last night at ten, and died at midnight. Two of them went raving mad, and they were all afflicted with large swellings on different parts of the body when they died.

maboobs for a strict, and we fear, a long quarantine. The terraces and windows fronting the street are to be secured from the servants, and the halls prepared for a mode of receiving what is wanted with safety to the family. Should it be necessary to change servants, or to take in additional ones, it can be done only on condition that they relinquish the clothes they have on; go into a bath prepared for them in a skiffar or hall of the consular house; and submit to remain in one room a fortnight to ascertain their not hav ing the plague. Many jars, containing several pounds each, are prepared with ingredients for fumigating the apartments, twothirds of which are bran, and the rest equal parts of camphire, myrrh and aloes. This perfume, and small quantities of gunpow der, are burnt daily throughout the houses. All animals and fowls whatever are sent out of the Christian houses, for fear of the infection being communicated by their hair or feathers.

The symptoms of the plague at present are, that of the person being seized with a sort of stupor, which immediately increases to madness, and violent swellings and excruciating pains in a few hours terminated in death.

The Bashaw expresses great regret at the thought of the Christians shutting their houses so soon, as the country is in so famished a state; for, he says, that will declare it in a state of infection, and prevent the arrival of grain. The Christians' houses will, however, all be closed in about a week, each one hiring a set of servants to remain with them imprisoned till the plague, is over. Halls, windows and ter races are undergoing a scrutiny

The present moment is the nost dangerous period of the disorder for the Christians. When once the houses are shut, their safety will depend greatly on the strictness of the quarantine they keep. No business is now transacted but with a blaze of straw kept burning between the person admitted into the house and the one he is speaking to. A friend is admitted only into a matted apartment, where he retires to the farther end of the room to a straw seat, which is not touched after his departure till it is fumigated. The keys of all the ways into the house are kept by the

master

master of the family only. If any of the Christian gentlemen are obliged to go out on business during this interval, before the houses are closed, a guard walks before and one behind, to prevent any person approaching too near; and, un returning, the guards are put into quarantine for some days. Without these precautions, it would be impossible to escape this dreadful disorder, the rage of which increases every hour.

May 28, 1785.

It is impossible to give you a just description of this place at present; the general horror that prevails cannot be described. Hadgi Abderrahman sailed from the harbour of Tripoli on the 20th of this month, as ambassador to Sweden and England. From the state Tripoli is in, sinking under plague and famine, the departure of the ambassador from his handsome Greek, Amnani, and her children was dreadful. He made up his mind to see but few of them again, and with reason: the dire infection had entered his walls, nor was it to be imagined, that even his own suite could embark untainted with the same. If he is so fortunate as not to fall a victim to the plague before he reaches Malta, he will perform there a heavy quarantine of ninety days at least. They perceived before they quitted the harbour, one of his people, a Jew broker, severely attacked with the plague; and they put him on shore before they sailed. Abderrahman is so much beloved, that the people in general participate in his sufferings, and the screams for the calamity of his family, which be

gan before he sailed from the harbour of Tripoli, have continued to the present moment, and are still augmenting from increasing deaths. At this awful period, the care of Lilla Amnani, his wife, and his favourite eldest daughter, devolves on his brother Hadgi Mahmute, who is dying in torments unheard of, from the singular instance of the plague having at first seized him in his mouth, producing violent tumours, by which he is now starving he is at times so raving that many people are required to secure him. Though none of his family were ill when his brother sailed for Europe, his wife and children (one already buried), with many more relations of Abderrahman's family, are dying very fast. Lilla Amnani, Abderrahman's daughter, and his niece, are all the ladies that remain of his family. Of his slaves and attendants only an old black eunuch lives, who is confined with the plague for the third time. In the short space that has elapsed since the ambassador left Tripoli, only eight days, nearly one hundred persons have died belonging to him; and consequently, it is thought, not one will remain of his family to give him an account of these sad times.

The plague now depopulating this place is said to be more severe than has been known at Constantinople for centuries past, and is proved by calculation to destroy twice the number of people in proportion to those who died of the same disorder lately at Tunis, when five hundred a day were carried out of that city. To-day upwards of two hundred have passed the town gate. The

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city of Tripoli contains 14,000 inhabitants, and the city of Tunis 30,000.

Our house, the last of the Christian houses that remained in part open, on the 14th of this month commenced a complete quarantine. The hall on entering the house is parted into three divisions, and the door leading to the street is never unlocked but in the presence of the master of the house, who keeps the key in his own possession. It is opened but once in the day, when he goes himself as far as the first hall, and sends a servant to unlock and unbolt the door. The servant returns, and the person in the street waits till he is desired to enter with the provisions he has been commissioned to buy. He finds ready placed for him a vessel with vinegar and water to receive the meat, and another with water for the vegetables

Among the very few articles which may be brought in without this precaution is cold bread, salt in bars, straw ropes, straw baskets, oil poured out of the jar to prevent contagion from the hemp with which it is covered, sugar without paper or box. When this person has brought in all the articles he has, he leaves by them the account, and the change out of the money given him, and retiring shuts the door. Straw previously placed in the hal is lighted at a considerable distance, by means of a light at the end of a stick, and no person suffered to enter the hall till it is thought sufficiently purified by fire; after which a servant with a long stick picks up the account and smokes it thoroughly over the straw still burning, and locking the door

returns the key to his master, who has been present during the whole of these proceedings, lest any part of them should be neglected, as on the observance of them it may safely be said the life of every individual in the house depends.

Eight people in the last seven days, who were employed as providers for the house, have taken the plague and died. He who was too ill to return with what he had brought, consigned the articles to his next neighbour, who faithfully finishing his commission, as has always been done, of course succeeded his unfortunate friend in the same employment, if he wished it, or recommended another: it has happened that Moors, quite above such employment, have with an earnest charity delivered the provisions to the Christians who had sent for them. The Moors perform acts of kindness at present, which if attended by such dreadful circumstances, would be very rarely met with in most parts of Christendom. An instance very lately occurred of their philanthropy. A

Christian lay an object of misery, neglected and forsaken self-preservation having taught every friend to fly from her pestilential bed, even her mother! But she found in the barbarian a paterial hand passing by he heard her moans, and concluded she was the last of her family; and finding that not the case, he beheld her with sentiments of compassion mixed with horror. He sought for assistance, and till the plague had completed its ravages and put an end to her sufferings he did not lose sight of her, disdaining her Christian

friends,

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