the mail we knew was coming tumbling along
over them hills from Portatorres. 'Twould
have been in, in two hours, but, bless you!
we was in a hurry—WE was! There's ten
pigs and the Neapolitan consul on board—
and off we goes!"

The Sardinian overland mail for Tunis is,
it must be owned, not so extensive as, on
that account, to warrant much delay. We
saw it once. On that occasion it had been
waited for, by express order, and came off, at
last, in great state, under the Sardinian flag,
in a twelve-oared barge. We crowded to
the side to see the process of lifting it on
board. Up it came, a packet blunt and
brown, like a middle-sized tea-cake. The
captain slipped it in his pocket, and said:
"Go on a-'ed!"

If anybody imagines for a moment that
the Latteen fulfilled her printed troth of conveying
us to Tunis Proper, it is only fair to
dispel that illusion at once. Tunis city is,
from the anchorage, twelve miles by land and
seven by water; the latter route being
impracticable for anything drawing more than
three feet water, by reason of the ruins of
Lower Carthage which repose beneath.

We were accordingly sold into the hands
of a party of savage banditti, calling themselves
boatmen, at five francs a-head, and by
them delivered at the fortress and harbour
of Goletta. Hence, after a brief interview
with the custom-house authorities, we were
allowed to make our way to Tunis in the
best manner we could. To do so at all, however,
proved to be no easy matter, there
being only some half-dozen vehicles in the
place, and those apparently bespoken. Pending
the inquiry, we looked about us.

Goletta is composed of a couple of dirty
streets, a squalid square, and a
prison-fortress. The latter probably has been but
little strengthened since, in the days of Cromwell,
the gallant Blake, in reply to a challenge
from the Tunisians to "do his worst,"
knocked it about their ears. In the harbour
lie rotting the magnificent remains of a fine
two-decker, which hath never known the
wave, having arrived at completion before it
dashed upon the memory of the naval architect
that six feet of water would be insufficient
to float her out. But let us get on to Tunis.

The scouts of our party have discovered an
individual who, with seeming reluctance,
confesses himself the proprietor of a carriage
and four. The equipage, it appears, is ready,
round the corner, waiting for prey. The
owner's intention was to have kept it concealed,
until our increasing eagerness to
arrive at Tunis before the closing of the
gates, at sunset, should induce the offer of
some absurd reward. But the indiscretion
of a youthful accomplice has betrayed the
game: hence the air of injured innocence
assumed by the elder rogue, as he sulkily
names thirty-five francs as the price of the
journey—the usual terms being fourteen.

Anxious as we are to get on, human, and
especially English, nature recoils from a
bold-faced swindle. We offer twenty; and,
as the negotiation proceeds, the whole
disengaged population of Goletta assemble to
witness it. In the squalid square before
mentioned, there is always a certain number
of idlers prepared to bestow their undivided
attention upon anybody else's business,
however unimportant in detail. But the arrival
of a band of strangers from Europe is an
event sufficiently rare to move Goletta to its
dirtiest hovel, and we find ourselves the
centre of a circle of nearly a hundred deeply
interested spectators. In the crowd are
some imposing turbans, crowning faces whose
noble features and grave, anxious, curious
expression would do honour to a deeper
subject of debate.

With every moment our audience
increases. The passers-by join it as a matter
of course. The sentinel on the drawbridge—
who looks like a very dirty old woman with
red trousers under her petticoats—can resist
no longer; but, swinging his musket
carelessly over his shoulder, becomes harmlessly
absorbed in the multitude. A couple of
prisoners, manacled together, and clanking
about with scavengers' baskets on their
backs, forget for a moment their miserable
chains, till an almost imperceptible signal
from an officer near reminds them that their
interest in defrauding mankind is, for the
present, suspended. But the bargain is at
last concluded—twenty-eight francs. Up
comes our quadriga (four horses abreast),
and we start through the gates at full
gallop.

After all, we reach Tunis with half an
hour to spare, and, staggering and tumbling
through the unpaved streets, arrive at the
European quarter. It is raining heavily, the
town is more than ancle-deep in mud, and
the entire population, male and female (such,
at least, as are shod at all), are clinking
about in pattens. There are but two hotels—
the one dirty, the other dirtier. One is kept
by the Bey's chief cook, who passes every
alternate fortnight at the palace. At the
other, an amiable French hostess does her
best to make her guests forget that they are
in the land of garlic and sour bread. We
decide for the lady; and, turning our backs
to the splendid British consulate—the most
imposing house in the town—move up a
filthy lane which, already too narrow, is half
filled up with heaps of manure and débris of
every kind, and descend at the portals of the
Hôtel de Fricandeau.

We dress and dine. Attendance at the
table d'hôte noisy and various. As we enter,
a gentleman at the top, who wears a ribbon
on his breast, nods familiarly to us—and
swallows a carving-knife! We look aghast.
The company only smile in a congratulatory
manner, and mutter something that may,
perhaps, be equivalent to the common eastern