The climate and soil of these countries are various, as may be suspected from their situation and the inequalities of their surface. Of the interior we know but little, and deductions from facts must supply the place of observation. On some of the mountains the snow remains during nearly the whole year, while the valleys and plains have yielded sugar, coffee and other productions, which require regular and intense heat. Grain is raised abundantly in the west, and the olives, grapes and figs of Barbary have been celebrated at all times. Of its general fertility, the immense population which it formerly supported is a sufficient evidence, while the athletic forms of the inhabitants prove its salubrity. But few rivers flow from the interior into the sea, and the largest streams are said to proceed from the southern sides of the mountains, whence they are discharged into lakes or dispersed in the sand. The coasts, as already observed, are precipitous and dangerous, particularly in autumn, during the prevalence of northerly winds; they are however free from shoals and other hidden difficulties, and have many ports which are safe and easy of access, while others might be rendered so by art. It is likewise certain, that many of the existing obstacles to the navigation would disappear, if a proper survey were made, and lighthouses were established where requisite; for the charts now in use are very defective, and no provisions whatever are made by the governments of the country; this, however, there is reason to believe, will ere long be corrected. The superficial extent of Barbary cannot be as yet calculated; we know that it has coasts of five or six hundred miles on the Atlantic, and of about fifteen hundred on the Mediterranean; but the breadth between the sea and the desert varies considerably, and is no where correctly laid down. It is probably greatest in the vicinity of the Atlantic and in Tunis, where it may be one hundred and fifty miles; in Algiers, Shaler considers it generally to be about sixty miles; but Tripoli is merely a narrow strip of soil, on the Mediterranean, in many places traversed by rocky spurs from the mountains, and tracts of sand from the desert.