- ing his own wives and female slaves, all of whom
were superbly dressed, amounted to at least five hundred persons. This man was held in the highest estimation, as well by the Arab tribes in the neighbourhood, as by the King of Telemsan; and it was the reports which were everywhere spread concerning his virtues and his piety that induced Leo to pay him a visit. The behaviour of the chieftain towards his guest, who remained with him three days, and in all probability might have staid as many months had he thought proper, was not such as to detract from the idea which the voice of fame had everywhere circulated of him. However, his learning was deeply tinctured with the superstitions of the times, consisting for the most part of an acquaintance with that crabbed and abstruse jargon in which the mysteries of magic and alchymy were wrapped up from the vulgar, whose chief merit lying in its extreme difficulty, deluded men into the pursuit of it, as the meteors of a marsh lead the night-wanderer over fens and morasses.
Leaving the camp of the alchymist, our traveller proceeded to Algiers, where the famous Barbarossa then exercised sovereign power. This city, originally built by the native Africans, was at first called Mesgana, from the name of its founder; but afterward, for some reason not now discoverable, it obtained the appellation of Geseir, or the "island," which European nations have corrupted into Algiers. Its population in the time of Leo was four thousand families, which, considering how families are composed in Mohammedan countries, would at least amount to sixty thousand souls. The public edifices were large and sumptuous, particularly the baths, khans, and mosques, which were built in the most tasteful and striking manner. The northern wall of the city was washed by the sea, and along the top of it ran a fine terrace or public promenade, whence the inhabitants might enjoy the prospect of
