captains of
galleys.

Piracy without and bloodshed and anarchy within form the staple of the
records. Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers showed very similar symptoms.
Tripoli was the least powerful, and therefore the least injurious;
Algiers dominated the Western Mediterranean and to a considerable
extent the Atlantic; Tunis, less venturesome, but still formidable,
infested the Eastern Mediterranean, and made the passage of Malta and
the Adriatic its special hunting grounds. At Tunis thirty Deys,
appointed by the Sublime Porte, succeeded one another from 1590 to
1705--giving each an average reign of less than four years. Most of
them were deposed, many murdered, and one is related on credible
authority to have been torn to pieces and devoured by the enraged
populace. In 1705 the soldiery, following the example of Algiers,
elected their own governor, and called him Bey; and the Porte was
obliged to acquiesce. Eleven Beys followed one another, up to the
French "protectorate." The external history of these three centuries
is made up of lawless piracy and the levying of blackmail from most of
the trading powers of Europe, accompanied by acts of insufferable
insolence towards the foreign representatives; all of which was
accepted submissively by kings and governments, insomuch that William
III. treated a flagrant Corsair, 'Ali Reis, who had become Dey, with
the courtesy due to a monarch, and signed himself his "loving friend."
The earliest English treaty with Tunis was dated 1662; many more
followed, and all were about equally inefficacious. Civil anarchy,
quarrels with France, and wars with Algiers, generally stopped "by
order" of the helpless Porte, fill up the details of this
uninteresting canvas.

Precisely the same picture is afforded by the modern annals of
Algiers. Take the Deys at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Hasan Ch[=a]wush was deposed in 1700, and succeeded by the Aga of the
Sip[=a]his, Mustafa, nicknamed _Bogotillos_ or "Whiskerandos," who,
though something of a coward, engaged in two successful campaigns
against Tunis and one with Morocco, until he had the misfortune to
find the bow-string round his throat in 1706. Uzeyn Kh[=o]ja followed,
and Oran fell during his one year's reign, after which he was banished
to the mountains, and died. Bekt[=a]sh Kh[=o]ja, the next Dey, was
murdered on his judgment-seat in the third year of his reign. A fifth
Dey, Ibrah[=i]m Deli, or "the Fool," made himself so hated by