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 different 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. 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. Of the ancient remains now existing in Tripoly, the Roman arch we have already alluded to, with a few scattered fragments of tesselated 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[4]. 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 these, all of which make together a very good shelter. In the deepest part, however, there is very little more than five and six fathoms water. At the extremity of a rocky projection to the northward, forming part of the first-mentioned reef, are two batteries, called the New, and Spanish, forts; and to the westward of these, on an insulated rock, is a circular one called the French fort. Besides these, there are two others on the beach to the eastward, which, with the New and Spanish forts, would prove of considerable annoyance to hostile vessels entering the harbour. The forts are in better condition than the walls and ramparts, which we have already stated to be very much dilapidated, and the guns very little attended to.