The admiral or captain of the port was a handsome, mild, gentlemanly person. The old Bey, the morning of my arrival, had been administering summary justice, for on my going into the market-place I saw three ill-looking Moors hanging by the neck. It is not the fashion in Barbary to place caps over the criminals’ faces before they are executed. Upon inquiring what those three wretches had been doing, the vice-consul gave me the following account:--“A Moorish merchant, with a special passport from the Bey, had permission to travel into the interior to traffic, when he and his party were waylaid on the mountains, robbed, and all, except one, murdered. The person who escaped immediately informed the proper authorities, who reported it to the Bey. A body of troops was instantly sent to the mountains, who arrested all the chiefs of the tribes, and brought them before his Highness. He, looking at them sternly, said, ‘On such a day a merchant from my city, with my passport, was murdered and robbed on the mountains. If in three days from this time you do not bring before me the whole of the offenders, your own heads shall answer for it. Begone!’ In less than forty-eight hours eleven fellows were brought in, and led directly to the palace. The Bey demanded who committed the murder. Three men were pointed out. They did not deny it. ‘Very well,’ said the Bey, ‘take these men, and instantly hang them up in the market-place.’ Three others, who had been most active in plundering, had their right hands cut off, and the remaining five received each from three to five hundred bastinadoes on the soles of their feet.” The third evening, at sunset, the murderers were cut down and buried. They have a very expeditious way of staunching the blood after amputation. The stumps of the arms are plunged into a kind of boiling pitch, which has the effect of searing the arteries. Over this is placed a dressing and bladder, when the sufferers are turned out. I used to go occasionally, with our vice-consul and some of my own officers, out shooting. We always found the people tolerably civil--except the boys, who used to abuse and spit at us, calling us, amongst other names, Christian dogs. Now and then we got a shove and a sly stone. Coming home one evening from an excursion to a small lake, about sixteen miles distant, where we had been for the purpose of shooting flamingos, &c., we got into a serious scrape, owing to a young commissary having taken his servant, a Portuguese boy, with him, who did not understand managing a horse.