1818.] Observations on the Ruins of Carthage and the Barbary States. 207 of pare his a then it means, to pitch, (com from, Exodus ii, 3,) but in neither case does it mean 66 to ex- "A vesture of supplication"-Strange! I never heard of such a dress before. We find the same 2 Sam. xiii, 18 and 19, according to which it appears that it was a garment worn by the daughters of kings, and perhaps by other persons of high rank, and on account of its being precious and costly, Jacob chose it for his favourite son to distinguish him from the others. Want of time does not allow me to enlarge more upon this new translation; I have therefore only made some ani madversions upon those alterations of the Hebrew text, which to me appeared ill-founded, and seemed to be introduced either for the purpose of novelty, or to arise from the translator's having mis understood the original Hebrew. Now I appeal to the intelligent reader to answer me this question: Is our Holy Bible, which divine Providence has laid down with so much beauty and perspicuity, a book which ought to be darkened by a mysterious and false interpretation? Has it gained, or can it possibly gain, by such a new translation? No; it is not the book which ought to be sported with! Let divine truth be set in a clearer light to us short-sighted mortals, and not be clouded by the spirit of controversy. Iam, &c, S. To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. I conduct you directly to the ruins of ancient Carthage; but there are only some of the late Roman buildings, and very few in good preservation: only the upper cisterns for the rain water, and the lower ones, which received the water brought by the aqueduct from the mountain of Zoavan, about 36 miles distant, still exist; of all the rest hardly a distinguishable trace remains: we see, however, outlines, as it were, of temples, theatres, amphitheatres, of baths, of the is Roman brickwork of a more or less anwalls of the city and of the port; but all cient date. Of the elder Carthage there is not a vestige to be found. Count Camillo Borgia, nephew of the celebrated Cardinal, (whose Museum has been removed from Velletri to Naples, and deposited ai Studii,) and who, from political reasons, lived here with me a year and a quarter, has proposed the very ingenious hypothesis which Shaw has in part slightly touched upon, that the most ancient city of Carthage lay near to the tion. With a good map you will easily more modern city, but in another direc understand it. The original city lay quite turned to the sea, running from north-east to south-west: its port was where the gardens of the convents now are; its entrance behind the mountain Gamantii is now choked up with sand, for the land has here evidently gained upon the sea, and the isthmus is now a pretty broad plain between Tunis and the ruins. The new or Roman Carthage lay in another direction, as is shewn by the ruins along the bay, where the road of Goletta is now, from the East to the West. It is highly probable that the religious Romans in their political superstition did not build the new city on the accursed foundation of the ancient one. The situation of the new city does not agree with the description given by the ancients of the camp and the military operations of Scipio. The Byrsa, as it is called, of the new Carthage is much too low; the place where our country houses stand is still called in the Arabic lan guage the harbour, El Marsa. The houses of the port of the new town shew that it never could have had the extent, position, arrangement, &c. which are affixed to that of the new city. These, and an infinite number of other local reasons, are much in favour of Borgia's ingenious hypothesis, which you will find more circumstantially detailed in the description of Tunis, which the Count, who returned 208 Observations on the Ruins of Carthage & the Barbary States. [April 1, to Naples six months ago, is now composing; and which, in respect at least to the quantity of materials that he has collected in his journey into the interior of the country, by his researches, measurements, drawings, &c. will far surpass all that have hitherto appeared; for Shaw is the only one, who though very short, is however exact, and whose views are just and often acute. Père Caroni borrowed his from him, and saw little himself; he is besides more of a connoisseur in coins than in the greater remains of antiquity. Of all the rest it is not worth the pains to speak, and least of all of the pompous phrase-maker, Chateaubriand, who saw the ruins only en passant, and très cavalièrement. The two Englishmen, M, a merchant, and B, a petty naval officer, are most wretched and inaccurate compilers. Of the ruins of Utica, which I have seen only once, and that in the suite of the accomplished Princess of Wales, several remains exist; Count Borgia has not only taken plans and drawings of them all, but has also had excavations made, and discovered a considerable public building, as we conjecture a Basilica, built of the finest marble, but all the columns broken to pieces. The building seems to have been destroyed by fire. The very unhealthy season, want of funds, and his departure caused him to suspend his researches, which however, he has not given up all thoughts of renewing, and which would certainly lead to highly interesting results. The interior of the country through which the Count travelled is full of ruins of numerous towns, some of them very considerable, of the buildings in which he had made plans or drawings, and also copied several inscriptions. The maps which he has made during his travels would greatly contribute to correct the present, and to illustrate the ancient geography of this kingdom. It is a pity that he could not penetrate far enough into the interior, but this can only be done with the annual detachments of troops, which collect the tribute from the various Arab tribes that inhabit the country. It seems certain that the coast of the country has in many places gained a great deal upon the sea, and was changed particularly by the course of the These intentions have been frustrated by the death of Count Borgia soon after his return to Italy, as mentioned in one of our former numbers,-EDITOR. Mejerda or Bagrada. Thus the harbour of Utria is now miles from the coast, though the marshy soil and tradition both shew that the sea penetrated to it. There are very fine ruins remaining of a town which is still called Udina, the name of which I have found only in the Greek and Latin itineraries, five or six leagues from Tunis, to the N. W. The magnificent aqueduct of colossal dimensions, which lies now mostly in ruins, is a work worthy of the Romans. At the source is the temple of which Shaw speaks, and of which Count Borgia has made a drawing. Several statues have been found here; but they were partly much damaged by time, and by the su perstition of the Moors, and partly very indifferent copies of a late age. To give you an idea of the skill of the first antiquarian here, a certain Netherland engineer of the name of Humbach, who possesses a very good collection of coins, I need only say, that till my arrival, he was confident that the splendid ruins of the abovementioned, aqueduct, evidently a Roman work, were a work of the Carthaginians, and called a statue of Trajan, though a striking likeness, a Cæsar. He has since changed his erudite opinion. This man had found or copied numerous Latin inscriptions, of which he did not understand a word; I advised him to send them through me to the learned Marini at Rome, but in vain.— At last Count Borgia with great difficulty obtained copies from him, which will now be published. Among them are some Latin, Greek, and Punic. I have here one Punic, and one old Spanish for Bishop Münter, copied by Count Borgia. Coins that are good for any thing are here rarer and dearer than in Italy, or even in England, and hardly any but Roman are to be had; sometimes too counterfeits are to be met with: here every foreigner sets up for an antiquarian, and even my Italian cook deals in coins and engraved stones, of which I have a small collection; I have all the Vandal Kings. Medals are in proportion rarer and dearer than coins, and for the same reason. Here every thing is an object of speculation, except virtue and honesty, which have no current value. I ought now to say something to you concerning the government, religion, character, and manners of the Barbaresques (properly Berberes). I shall be short. The ill-peopled country is inhabited by Moors, partly descended from 1818.] M. Pananti's Narrative of his Captivity at Algiers. the ancient Numidians, but very much mixed with the other races, who live in the towns; by Bedouins, who living under tents, rove about in tribes, in certain parts; by Turks, who properly govern the country, (though the present government is hereditary) and are only soldiers; fine, handsome, but rude men; and by Renegadoes, who are here called by the more honourable name of Mamelukes, and come partly from Georgia, partly from Europe, the very refuse of the criminals of these countries. Read the immortal Montesquieu; in his Spirit of Laws he has painted despotic government with the hand of a master, and you will have the clearest idea of the government of this country. Three years ago we lost a very distinguished prince, Hamuda Pacha, who reigned thirty years. There are many traits in his life and character worthy of a Harun Alrashid. 209 To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. (Concluded from page 107.) IT is a war of religion which the three Regencies incessantly carry on against the Christians. They have no particular wrongs to revenge, no political aim to attain; they seek not at the expense of their present repose to ensure future tranquillity; they do not wage war that they inay enjoy peace; they have no other object than war itself, or rather piracy. It is for the purpose of seizing our countrymen and friends, of subjecting them to all the outrages and tortures which they would fain extend to every one of us, that their ships continually plough the seas, that they violate treaties as soon as they have concluded them, and that mutually lending their flag to each other, they alternately pretend to belong to Tunis, Tripoli, or Algiers, whenever by changing their denomination, they can, under borrowed colours, wreak upon Christians this neverceasing hate. If you read the entertaining "Arabian Nights' Entertainments," you have a better knowledge of the manners of the East, than through all the glasses of the Europeans: modify this faithful picture a little to suit the rather ruder, but still very polished Barbaresques of this country, and you see with what people I have to do. Coarse sensuality, fanatic pride, ignorance and cunning, avarice and prodigality, insolence and cowardice, falsehood and flattery, are some features in their character. If any one finds it difficult to believe how despotism and fanaticism can change and debase nature and mankind, let him come hither, and behold this magnificent and fruitful country now lie desert, and buried in ruins; let him see beggarly slaves in the half decayed dirty towns, dwelling in miserable huts, or roving about half naked under tents, and often perishing with famine-tents which the description of Sallust admirably characterises: "Edificia Numidarum agrestium, quæ mapalia illi vocant, oblonga incurvis lateribus, quasi navium carinæ sunt." And yet this noble country produces every thing which the Europeans have purchased by their blood, and which they still seek through danger and death in distant colonies; and this country is left in the hands of cowardly barbarians, whom we allow to exercise piracy in the midst of peace, and to whom we pay tribute!!The princes that govern this country, who have ascended the throne through deeds of blood, are insignificant beings, who think only of enjoyment, and may -easily perish in it. J. B. Whoever has not been at Algiers, says M. Pananti, whoever has not beheld the state to which Christians reduced to slavery by the people of Barbary are doomed, knows not all the horror and bitterness of adversity, or into what a forlorn and wretched state it is possible for the souls of the miserable sons of men to be plunged. I, who have witnessed and experienced this, am unable to express in words all that is felt and endured by one precipitated into this horrible calamity. As soon as a man is declared a slave he is stripped of his clothes and supplied with others of coarse stuff; he is most commonly left without shoes and stockings, and with his bare head exposed to the burning rays of the sun. Many allow their beards to grow as a mark of desolation and sorrow, and live in a state of filth which excites equal disgust and pity. Part of these wretches are employed in making ropes and sails in the arsenal; these are constantly under the eyes and scourges of the alguasils who grossly abuse their barbarous authority, and extort from them the little money which they sometimes possess. Others remain slaves to the Dey, or are sold to wealthy Moors, who doom them to the most degrading offices; while others again are condemned like beasts of burden to carry wood and stone, and to perform the hardest labour with their legs confined by an 210 M. Pananti's Narrative of his Captivity at Algiers. iron chain. Of all the slaves these are the most wretched. They have no bed to lie down upon, no clothes to cover them; and their only food consists of two loaves, as black as soot, which are thrown to them as if to dogs. At night they are shut up in the bagnio, like criminals sentenced to the galleys. The galleys were in fact invented by the Christians for the captive Africans. The disgraceful example of this cruel and humiliating usage was set by us: our forefathers were actuated by that religious animosity to which our contemporaries are victims; and it was because the punishment of the captive Mussul mans appeared more severe than any other, that the Europeans conceived the idea of associating with them the vilest criminals in the bagnios of Rome, Genoa, Leghorn and Malta. Let us not hesitate to admit that we have been unjust and cruel persecutors, especially as it was with us that the system originated; but after repairing the wrongs done by us to humanity, after abolishing the negro slave trade, and the bagnio of the Knights of Malta, we have a right to demand for ourselves that justice which we render to the professors of a different faith. Europe no longer dooms a free man to slavery for the mere crime of having been born a Mussulman; neither ought she any longer to suffer the African to condemn the European to servitude for the sole crime of having been born a Christian. The slaves, continues M. Pananti, lie crowded together in open corridors, exposed to wind, rain, storms, and all the inclemencies of the air and seasons. In the country they sleep under the canopy of heaven, or shut up in deep holes to which they are obliged to descend by a ladder, after which the top is secured with an iron grating. At day-break they are roused by the opprobrious cry: A trabajo cornutos! and driven to work like beasts of burden with stripes accompanied with blasphemies and curses. Many are employed in emptying wells or digging sewers, where they remain for whole seasons up to the middle in water, and breathe a mephitic air. Others are obliged to descend frightful precipices, with death over their heads, and death beneath their feet. Others are harnessed to carriages together with mules or asses; but it is they that are obliged to draw the greatest part of the burden, and they too receive the largest proportion of stripes. Many are crushed to death in the quarries by the falling-in of the earth; [April 1, and many, buried in profound recesses, never again behold the light. Hundreds die every year for want of food or attendance, of the blows which they receive, or merely of grief, despondency, and despair. Woe be to them if they dare to murmur of utter the slightest lamentation. For the smallest negligence they receive two hundred blows on the sole of the feet, or back; and for the least resistance they are punished with death. When a wretched slave is rendered incapable of proceeding farther by excessive fatigue, or cruel treatment, he is left in the middle of the road, where he remains exposed to the cutting contempt of the Moors, and is sometimes crushed to death by the wheels of their carriages. They return from the mountains dripping with blood or covered with bruises; they sink from fatigue and inanition, and meet not with a compassionate heart or an assisting hand. One evening as it began to grow dusk I heard a faint voice calling me. I went up to the spot from which it proceeded, and saw an unfortunate wretch extended on the ground. His lips were covered with foam, and the blood gushed copiously from his eyes and nose. I stopped over whelmed with pity and horror. "Christian! christian!" said he in a doleful voice, "have compassion on my sufferings, and put an end to a life which I can no longer endure."—" Unhappy man," said I," who are you then?"—"I am a slave," answered he, " unhappy indeed is the lot of slaves!" At this moment an oldack, a petty military officer, came up. "Infidel dog," cried be to the dying wretch, "don't stop up the road at the moment when an Effendi is passing"-and pushed the poor creature down a precipice. Another day a slave filled me with still greater horror. He was dolefully seated at the foot of an old wall; near him lay an enormous burden under which he seemed to have sunk. His face was pale and emaciated; his eyes dull and fixed, and his brow exhibited the wrinkles of affliction and premature old age. He was in violent agitation, beat his breast and his forehead, and deep sighs burst from the recesses of his heart. "What are you doing, christian?" said I to him. "What misfortune has thus plunged you into despair?"-" Poor christians!" replied he; "they have no one to assist them on earth, and their groans are not heard in heaven! Naples is my country; but have I really a country, when nobody relieves me, nobody remembers me? 1818.] M. Pananti's Narrative of his Captivity at Algiers. At home, I was rich, noble, illustrious; see how misery and slavery alter the looks of men. For eleven years have I suffered, laboured, and implored compassion. But I will cease to complain, or to seek succour. From whom could I expect it? to whom could I apply? in whom confide? what have I done to be thus oppressed, to be thus tormented ?" I exhorted him in the best manner I could to patience and resignation; I spoke to him of the exalted hopes and the eternal rewards of virtue. He gave a bitter smile, and with a look of despair begged me to leave him. I retired with a feeling of not less horror than pity, and soon saw him rolling violently upon the ground, and heard him howl aloud or mutter execrations. I departed with a heavy heart, but it was long before I was out of hearing of the dismal wailings of the slave. Slavery has in it something degrading and debasing, which freezes the heart, disgusts the eye, and revolts the mind. -This degraded being is despised as the Indians despise the proscribed and accursed casts of the Parias and Pulkis. Slaves accustomed to scorn and oppression at length imagine themselves to be not less contemptible than unfortunate. Those iron chains, which among us are a sign of guilt and dishonour, debase the souls of those who wear them. Slavery extends even to the heart. The son of the civilized European at length believes himself to be of an inferior nature to the savages of the African Syrtes; and the free-born man who had learned to raise his eyes to heaven, fancies himself made for the vile condition of beasts of burden. The soul is often purified in the crucible of adversity, but in the condition of a slave, there is something dreary and abject, which deprives courage of its mettle, which extinguishes the fire of every generous passion, and which robs man of his intelligence and dignity. The greatest of all misfortunes is, that virtue, which triumphs over all adversity, which sometimes renders the latter useful to us-virtue itself is often weakened or even stifled in hearts oppressed by the barbarity of men, or crushed by the feeling of a degraded nature. Sorrow, when it breaks the spirits, inakes the heart bad; the virtues all proceed from a noble and elevated soul, while baseness engenders nothing but vice. Religion it self, that heavenly support to which the true believer clings when every other prop is overthrown, religion no longer affords consolation to the ulcerated 211 heart. The wretched cease to turn towards heaven, when they find themselves forsaken upon earth. If at least in suffering together these unfortunates mingled their tears, and supported one another in their afflictions!-but alas! friendship, the mild soother of afflicted hearts be comes mute to beings who have never met with pity. Instead of loving and cheering, they hate and envy one another. He who has too severely suffered from the barbarity of men and the hardships of fate, feels the source of pious tears dried up within him, and the flame of kindness extinguished in his heart: that heart itself becomes dry and hard. Nothing, remarks M. Sismonde de Sismondi, appears to us more striking than this observation of an eye-witness on the moral effects of slavery, on that prostration of character, that contagion of scorn which even extends to him who is the object of it, that confession of inferiority which force alone extorts from weakness, that contraction of the heart which closes it against pity, when our own miseries exhaust upon ourselves our whole faculty of suffering. Many other observations serve to confirm this melancholy truth. We know that in great national calamities, pestilence, famine, and great military disasters, the heart, in the midst of sufferings and dangers, is shut to compassion; and selfishness, called into full action, to preserve our own existence, stifles all other affections. We know that a race rarely incurs universal contempt, without becoming really despicable; that the government which guarantees liberty, renders men more virtuous, by making them respectable in their own eyes, and that despotism degrades even in a still greater degree than it renders them miserable. This observation is as old as the time of Homer, and has stood the test of experience. Yet it is not without pain that we are obliged to acknowledge that the noblest and most valuable possession which is left us—that virtue, like wealth and liberty, may be wrested from us by for tune. The degradation of the Christians in Barbary throws likewise a terrific light on the state of the negro slaves in the colonies. The planters have incessantly repeated that this degraded race cannot deserve our compassion; that, holding an intermediate place between the brute and man, the negroes themselves ac. knowledge their inferiority; that they are born to obey and to suffer; that they have no elevation of character, no gene |