Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 1).djvu/135

This page needs to be proofread.

holy spot, had the appearance of an army bivouacking in the wood.

In the year 1513, having seen whatever he judged most worthy of notice in Morocco and Fez, and still considering his travels as only begun, he once more left home, and proceeded eastward along the shores of the Mediterranean towards Telemsan and Algiers. Upon entering the former kingdom he abandoned the seacoast, and striking off towards the right, through mountainous ridges of moderate elevation, entered the wild and desolate region called the Desert of Angad, where, amid scanty herds of antelopes, wild goats, and ostriches, the lonely Bedouin wanders, his hand being against every man, and every man's hand against him. Through this desolate tract the merchant bound from Telemsan to Fez winds his perilous way, dreading the sand-storm, the simoom, the lion, and other physical ministers of death, less than the fierce passions of its gloomy possessors, stung to madness by hunger and suffering. Leo, however, traversed this long waste without accident or adventure, and his curiosity being satisfied, returned to the inhabited part of the country, where, if there was less call for romantic and chivalrous daring, there was at all events more pleasure to be enjoyed, and more knowledge to be acquired. Passing through various small places little noticed by modern geographers, he at length arrived at Hunain, an inconsiderable but handsome city, on the Mediterranean, surrounded by a well-built wall, flanked with towers. Hither the Venetians, excluded from Oran by the Spaniards, who were then masters of that port, brought all the rich merchandise which they annually poured into Telemsan, in consequence of which chiefly the merchants of Hunain had grown rich; and taste and more elegant manners following, as usual, in the train of Plutus, the city was embellished, and the comfort of the inhabitants increased.