The principal commerce of Tripoli is in silk produced upon the mountain, of which it exports yearly about 800 quintals or cwt., at about £80. sterling per quintal. Formerly the French merchants used to take silk in return for their goods, as it was difficult to obtain money in the Levantine trade; it is true that they sold it to a disadvantage in France; yet not so great as they would have done had they insisted on being reimbursed ready money, upon which they must have paid the discount. The silk was bought up at Marseilles by the merchants of Barbary, who thus procured it at a lower rate than they could do at Tripoli. This intercourse however has ceased in consequence of the ruin of French trade, and the Moggrebyns now visit Tripoli themselves, in search of this article, bringing with them colonial produce, indigo, and tin, which they buy at Malta. The sale of West India coffee has of late increased greatly in Syria; the Turks have universally adopted the use of it, because it is not more than half the price of Mokha coffee; a considerable market is thus opened to the West India planters, which is not likely to be interrupted, until the Hadj is regularly re- established, the principal traffic of which was in coffee. The next chief article of exportation is sponges; they are procured on the sea shore; but the best are found at a little depth in [p.168]the sea. The demand for them during the last two years has been very trifling; but I was told that fifty bales of twelve thousand sponges each might be yearly furnished; their price is from twenty-five to forty piastres per thousand. Soap is exported to Tarsous, for Anatolia and the Greek islands, as well as alkali for its manufacture, which is procured in the eastern desert. It is a curious fact, that soap should also be imported into Tripoli from Candia; the reason is that the Cretan soap contains very little alkali; here one-fourth of its weight of alkali is added to it, and in this state it is sold to advantage. The other exports are about one hundred or one hundred and twenty quintals of galls from the Anzeyry mountains: of yellow wax, from Libanus, about one hundred and twenty quintals, at about one hundred and fifty piastres per quintal; of Rubia tinctorum [Arabic], which grows in the plains of Homs and Hamah, about fourteen hundred quintals, at from twenty to twenty-four piastres per quintal; of scammony, very little; of tobacco, a few quintals, which are sent to Egypt.