face of His Highness’s castle and residence (for the building is both
one and the other) displays a bright coating of plaster and whitewash
over the unseemly patchwork beneath it.
The oity 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 appearance.
I t must, however, be confessed that this is much improved
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 frequently,
perhaps, of mud only, here dignified by the appellation of
houses, do not certainly present very brilliant examples either of
taste, execution, or convenience.1 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 Mahometan 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
confined to Europeans; for the greater part of the Mahometan
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. 1
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 W arrington
have brought to' light some very interesting objects; particularly several large sepulchral
urns of glass, the most perfect we have ever seen.