Up to the fourteenth century the Christians were the chief pirates of the Mediterranean, and dealt largely in stolen goods and slaves. Then the growth of large commercial fleets discouraged the profession, and very soon we begin to hear much less of European brigandage, and much more of Moorish Corsairs. The inhabitants of the coast about the Gulf of Gabes had always shown a bent towards piracy, and the port of Mahdīya, or "Africa," now became a regular resort of sea rovers. El-Bekrī, in the twelfth century, had noticed the practice of sending galleys on the cruise for prey (perhaps during war) from the harbours of Bona; and Ibn-Khaldūn, in the fourteenth, describes an organized company of pirates at Bujēya, who made a handsome profit from goods and the ransom of captives. The evil grew with the increase of the Turkish power in the Levant, and received a violent impetus upon the fall of Constantinople; while on the west, the gradual expulsion of the Moors from Spain which followed upon the Christian advance filled Africa with disaffected, ruined, and vengeful Moriscos, whose one dominant passion was to wipe out their old scores with the Spaniards. Against such influences the mild governors of North Africa were powerless. They had so long enjoyed peace and friendship with the Mediterranean States, that they were in no condition to enforce order with the strong hand. Their armies and fleets were insignificant, and their coasts were long to protect, and abounded with almost impregnable strongholds which they could not afford to garrison. Hence, when the Moors flocked over from Spain, the shores of Africa offered them a sure and accessible refuge, and the hospitable character of the Moslem's religion forbade all thought of repelling the refugees. Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came crowding to Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were open, and the creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once gained, the rest was easy. It was to this land, lying ready to his use, that Captain Urūj Barbarossa came in the beginning of the sixteenth century. FOOTNOTES: [3] Le Comte de Mas-Latrie, _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique Septentrionale avec les nations chrétiennes au moyen âge_, 1886. [4] Le Comte de Mas-Latrie, _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique Septentrionale avec les nations chrétiennes au moyen âge_, pp. 175-9. PART I. _THE CORSAIR ADMIRALS._ III. URŪJ BARBAROSSA. 1504-1515. The island of Lesbos has given many gifts to the world--Lesbian wine and Lesbian verse, the seven-stringed lyre, and the poems of Sappho; but of all its products the latest was assuredly the most questionable, for the last great Lesbians were the brothers Barbarossa.