The appearance of “Trabulus Gharb,” or “Tripoli of the West,” as viewed from the sea is scarcely more imposing than that presented by the principal towns on the Tunisian coast. The city is built on a rocky promontory stretching out into the Mediterranean, and forming a small bay on its eastern side, which is capable of being converted at any time into an important harbour by the filling up with masonry of the openings in a long line of rocks running from the south-west to the north-east, and commonly known to navigators as the Siboun Shinal. The Pashas of Tripoli, however, have not viewed the projects for carrying out any such scheme with much satisfaction; indeed, one of them told an enterprising contractor that the rocks were far too old to bear any additional weight upon them. Large steamers are able to enter the port even now; but the present state of the Siboun Shinal shoal renders it an unsafe place of anchorage during the prevalence of certain winds. The city borders the shore, and has the form of an irregular pentagon, surrounded by a crenellated _enceinte_ wall in a somewhat dilapidated condition. A line of small, half-ruined forts is supposed to protect one side of the harbour, and the Borj or castle of the Pasha the other. The desert almost touches the western side of the city; while on the east is the verdant oasis of Meshiya, where, amid luxuriant groves of palm-trees, are still to be seen the tombs of the Caramanlian sultanas, and the twelve-domed _marabout_ of Sy Hamouda. In the town itself there are seven principal mosques, six of them possessing more or less lofty minarets built after a purely Turkish model. The streets are narrow, dirty, and unpaved. European quarter there is none. What Tunis was twenty years ago, Tripoli is now—a typical Moorish city. Still the capital of an important province, it can boast of an historical past of no small interest. After falling successively into the hands of the Phœnicians, Romans, Vandals, and Greeks, Tripoli was finally conquered by the Arabs twelve centuries ago, and has remained a Moslem State ever since. For many years it formed part of the dominions of the Caliphs of Kairwán. It finally became independent, but in 1510 it was taken by Ferdinand the Catholic, and given by him thirteen years later to the Knights of St. John, who remained there for thirty years, until they were expelled from it in 1553 by the Turkish corsairs Dragut and Sinan. The former became its pasha and ruled Tripoli as the vassal or vali of the Sublime Ottoman Porte, till his death in Malta. Then came the days when the Tripolitan pirates grew to be the terror and scourge of the Mediterranean, and half the States of Europe sent their fleets to bombard the capital in vain. In 1714, while Heussein Ben Ali was founding the present line of the Beys of Tunis, Ahmed Pasha the Caramanli achieved practical independence, and his descendants governed Tripoli until 1835. On the 20th May of that year the Turks took