Having brought the more important official correspondence and transactions to this date, it will perhaps be now proper to revert to some of EATON'S familiar letters and private affairs.

TO MRS. EATON.

Tunis, April 6th, 1799.

SINCE I arrived in this city, which was on the 14th ultimo, I have been constantly employed in negociating alterations in the treaty between the United States and the Bey and Divan of this Regency. I have therefore had but little opportunity to acquaint myself with any thing which can afford you entertainment or instruction. On landing at the marine, about half a mile north of the front gate of the city, the flags were hoisted on all the European consular houses, and on arriving to the American house, the consuls of the different nations welcomed me to the place. The day following was assigned for an introduction to the king. I sat off at ten in the morning, in a carriage drawn by two mules, attended by a Turk, two Moors and an interpreter. The palace is four miles from the city. At this I arrived about eleven; and, after waiting a while in the area of the court, was admitted to the apartment of the Bey. He was seated with his legs under him like a taylor, on a sopha covered with a velvet canopy richly embroidered with gold, with a turban about his head, and a very rich kind of surplice flowing loosely about his shoulders. After having passed the formality of introduction, a seat was presented on his right hand, his principal Minister and Secretary of State sitting on a carpet on his left. In a few minutes three Christian slaves entered the

chamber, one of them with a salver of coffee, in beautiful china cups set in gold, richly ornamented with diamonds; another held over his shoulder a napkin; and the third brought a kind of embroidered canopy, which he spread in the Bey's lap. Coffee being served, we entered into a discourse upon the voyage; and this was succeeded by the subject of our negociation. This formality and business continued fifteen days, when at length, by the agency of bribes and presents to a considerable amount, the object of the negociation was obtained, and I took half a day's leisure to ride into the country. I found the king a man of shrewdness, understanding and great ingenuity. His terms, in consideration of his accession to the terms we proposed, were enormous; and we are not yet perfectly on good terms respecting them. I have uniformly resisted them; and the last time I was at the palace, he threatened us with war in case I did not come to an unequivocal agreement to his terms. I told him we were not at this period to be alarmed by menaces; we were prepared for war; and if he chose to commence it on so trifling an occasion, he might have cause to regret his temerity. He left me without ceremony, saying, if I would not accede to his demand I might pull down the American flag, embark in the brig and go home. If I do not find some means to soften his temper or moderate his demand, I may possibly hand you this letter myself.

This country is indeed beautiful; but the people are superlatively wretched. They are humbled by the double oppression of civil and religious tyranny; seem to have but little enterprize, and are grossly ignorant. The houses of the city are built of stone, cemented with lime, one story high, without chimneys, the roofs flat, and so closely joined together that the whole light is admitted through an aperture in the top of the house. They sit always on the floor, which is generally the earth covered with tiles, or with mats made of reeds; feed principally on vég

etable diet made of grain, olives and fruit; and drink nothing but water. The women are never seen abroad, except the poorer classes, and these not without being wrapped about in blankets and handkerchiefs from the crown of the head to the ancles: they are always barefoot, or in slippers only. The inhabitants have exactly the complexion of the American Indians; excepting those of foreign countries who have become naturalized. The city contains about three hundred thousand souls; ten thousand of them Jews, two thousand Christians, six or seven hundred renegades, beside three thousand Christian slaves. These are parcelled out at different public employments, and in private service of their masters. The situation of the 920 Sardinian slaves is here described.]

Many of them have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas, remorse seizes my whole soul when I reflect that this is indeed but a copy of the very barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own native country. And yet we boast of liberty and national justice. How frequently, in the southern states of my own country, have I seen weeping mothers leading the guiltless infant to the sales, with as deep anguish as if they led them to the slaughter; and yet felt my bosom tranquil in the view of these aggressions upon defenceless humanity. But when I see the same enormities practiced upon beings whose complexion and blood claim kindred with my own, I curse the perpetrators and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity. Indeed truth and justice demand from me the confession that the christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among the professing Christians of civilized America; and, yet here sensibility bleeds at every pore for the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery.

I have once passed over the ruins of Carthage and Utica, but this moment is too contracted to afford me

eisure to describe to you my discoveries or feelings on that occasion. Another time shall be devoted to this subject; the present is consumed in preparing necessary dispatches to our government, and in writing letters of business.

Tunis at present, offers no advantage from commerce. The Barbary States are involved in the war with the French Republic. This excludes all intercourse with the States of Italy, the coasts of France and Spain, and indeed with almost all the ports of her usual commerce. I cannot, therefore, promise myself many commercial advantages from my present situation. I hope however, by dint of economy, to be able to save half the amount of my salary. In less than two years from this moment, by the leave of Heaven, I will again embrace my friends in Brimfield and other parts of America. My arrangements are already made for this purpose; and I look forward with an anxiety, which indeed does not become my years, for the moment which shall again restore to me the homely felicity of my native country. But before this period elapses I am resolved to visit Rome, and if possible the Holy Land; but must abandon the idea of visiting Egypt so long as the French hold possession of it. The plague rages at this moment in that devoted country: but, thank divine goodness, no symptom of it has yet shewn itself in this city the present season.

I was never before so thoroughly convinced that infinite wisdom never hit on a more rational discovery than when he "saw it was not good for man to be alone." Do not suppose I would be willing to lose a rib for the manufacture of an help meet for me here. No such thing I assure you: but I should feel not the least objection to undergo the experiment of having the one already lost restored to its place again. Goodnight it is twelve o'clock, and nothing but solitude and dulness to solace the bosom of Yours, &c. N. B. Take care, Eliza, not to let our good old parents die till I return.

:

TO STEPHEN PYNCHON, Esq. BRIMFIELD.

Tunis, April 8th, 1799.

"Give me whatever's pretty, nice and new ;

"All ugly, odd, old things I leave to you."

On the fourth of January of the present year we put to sea from the capes of the Delaware and by the bluster of winter were hurried through the Atlantic over head and ears in brine and suds, without a dry thread about us: and in thirty six days arrived at Algiers. One of our vessels, a ship of between two and three hundred tons and thirty people, broached to in a storm, and went down, poor fellows, in a moment. This happened on the American coast. Another of our company. fell in with a fleet of gun boats at the month of the streights, and fought her passage. This was a schooner commanded by Captain Maley, who told me he expended four hundred balls on the occasion, and received as many; but this must have been at a very respeciful distance, for no blood was lost on our side? That they had skirmishing is true.

Algiers is an immense pile of brick and lime, cemented in a mass, on the declivity of a hill, resembling a marble quarry with excavated cells. This figure you will more easily understand, when I tell you that the roofs, or rather tops of the houses, are flat, and connected with each other in such a manner that a man might walk from wall to wall without touching feet to the ground in almost any direction in the city. The streets, or rather covert ways, are, in general, not more than six feet broad: the broadest will admit, with much difficulty, a loaded camel in the centre, and a footman on each side. They are almost uniformly covered with projected stories of the houses, forming in some places arches and in others planes, and hiding the sun at mid-day. There is not a yard in the whole city; every conve