ll taste.

IT being now the season of the Turkish _ramadan_, or Lent, and all
here professing, at least the Mahometan religion, they fast till the
going down of the sun, and spend the night in feasting. We saw under
the trees, companies of the country people, eating, singing, and
dancing, to their wild music. They are not quite black, but all
mulattoes, and the most frightful creatures that can appear in a
human figure. They are almost naked, only wearing a piece of coarse
serge wrapped about them.--But the women have their arms, to their
very shoulders, and their necks and faces, adorned with flowers,
stars, and various sorts of figures impressed by gunpowder; a
considerable addition to their natural deformity; which is, however,
esteemed very ornamental amongst them; and I believe they suffer a
good deal of pain by it.

ABOUT six miles from Tunis, we saw the remains of that noble
aqueduct, which carried the water to Carthage, over several high
mountains, the length of forty miles. There are still many arches
entire. We spent two hours viewing it with great attention, and Mr
W----y assured me that of Rome is very much inferior to it. The
stones are of a prodigious size, and yet all polished, and so exactly
fitted to each other, very little cement has been made use of to join
them. Yet they may probably stand a thousand years longer, if art is
not made use of to pull them down. Soon after day-break I arrived at
Tunis, a town fairly built of very white stone, but quite without
gardens, which, they say, were all destroyed when the Turks first
took it, none having been planted since. The dry land gives a very
disagreeable prospect to the eye; and the want of shade contributing
to the natural heat of the climate, renders it so excessive, that I
have much ado to support it. 'Tis true, here is, every noon, the
refreshment of the sea-breeze, without which it would be impossible
to live; but no fresh water but what is preserved in the cisterns of
the rains that fall in the month of September. The women of the town
go veiled from head to foot under a black crape, and being mixed with
a breed of renegadoes, are said to be many of them fair and handsome.
This city was besieged in 1270, by Lewis (sic) king of France, who
died under the walls of it, of a pestilential fever. After his
death, Philip, his son, and our prince Edward, son of Henry III.
raised the siege on honourable terms. It remained under its natural
A