WE passed Trinacria without hearing any of the syrens that Homer describes; and, being thrown on neither Scylla nor Charybdis, came safe to Malta, first called Melita, from the abundance of honey.  It is a whole rock covered with very little earth.  The grand master lives here in the state of a sovereign prince; but his strength at sea now is very small.  The fortifications are reckoned the best in the world, all cut in the solid rock with infinite expence and labour.—­Off this island we were tossed by a severe storm, and were very glad, after eight days, to be able to put into Porta Farine on the African shore, where our ship now rides.  At Tunis we were met by the English consul who resides here.  I readily accepted of the offer of his house there for some days, being very curious to see this part of the world, and particularly the ruins of Carthage.  I set out in his chaise at nine at night, the moon being at full.  I saw the prospect of the country almost as well as I could have done by day-light; and the heat of the sun is now so intolerable, ’tis impossible to travel at any other time.  The soil is, for the most part, sandy, but every where fruitful of date, olive, and fig-trees, which grow without art, yet afford the most delicious fruit in the world.  There vineyards and melon-fields are inclos’d by hedges of that plant we call Indian-fig, which is an admirable fence, no wild beast being able to pass it.  It grows a great height, very thick, and the spikes or thorns are as long and sharp as bodkins; it bears a fruit much eaten by the peasants, and which has no ill 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