You may well conceive that I avoided all intercourse with these persons from Barbary. I often met parties of them in the streets, but the “Salem aleik” given and returned, was all that passed between us. The trade between Malta and Barbary, especially that with Tripoli and Tunis, acquires daily more vigour and stability. Even the English merchants begin to enter into it; hitherto the Moors and the Maltese have chiefly had it in their hands. The Tunisians, besides bartering in the Mediterranean for themselves, are also shippers for others, and enterprising smugglers with the enemy’s ports. During my passage from Gibraltar, being above six miles to the westward of Cape Toro in Sardinia, five Tunisian vessels passed in the night close to our ship, standing right over for the coast of France. Our Commodore was not near enough to see them, nor was it thought advisable to make any signals. It happens rather unfortunately, that a Swiss regiment in the English service is in garrison here, to many of the officers of which I am personally known: this has made me very cautious in going abroad, and now, after a seven weeks residence, I have the satisfaction to find that I have succeeded in passing unknown, and unnoticed. The great intercourse between the Moorish merchants and Malta, made it absolutely necessary for me to keep my travelling plans very secret. The next intelligence which the Association received from their traveller was a detailed account of his progress from Malta to Aleppo, in a letter dated from the latter place on the 2d of October, 1809. The following copious extract contains all the most interesting parts of it.