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* After the capture of their vessel by the Algerines, which took place before they had cleared the mediterranean, captain Belmore, with several others who were found uninjured at the termination of the contest, were carried to Tripoli for a very short interval; where having disposed of their prize, and the treasure found in her, the rude barbarians conveyed their christian captives to Alexandria, and thence to Cairo, where they were sold without distinction to the highest bidders :-the master by whom it was the lot of Belmore and his youthful attendant, together with the communicative Italian, to be purchased, proved to be a Turkish renegado, still known and dreaded by the appellation of Abukir Bey, whose ravages and cruelties were as notorious as they were detestable he was the leader of a wandering tribe of Arabs, who subsisted after the manner of their country, by plundering the caravans which are continually traversing the desert from Bassora and Egypt, to Mecca and Aleppo, and to wretches such as these the new bought slaves were to become subservient, as well as to assist in their enormities; howbeit, the youth, Edmund, and one of his companions, soon fortuitously found an opportunity to escape, but the former, he concluded his recital by saying, had magnanimously refused to quit the sterile land of his captivity, until his master should also by some fortunate stratagem, be freed from such debasing and miserable bondage."

"On learning these particulars of the:r fate, I instantly set sail for the port that was nearest to the tract of wilderness where as my director informed me, they were now lying in wait for the arrival of a wealthy, but formidable caravan; in the anticipation of deriving from the attack thereof, a considerable booty:-I landed at Oran, and immediately proceeded almost without attendants, to the spot where he had asserted I should find the horde; in defiance of a torrid suD

above my head-a scorching, and unsalubrious soil beneath my feet, and the forbidding aspect of a dreary and comfortless desert, that stretched on every side its dismal promontories and barren plains around me."

"But why should I weary you with unrequired prolixity? I discovered, ere many days had passed, the faithful and lamented Edmund, who accustomed to the intense heat of the climate (for he had previously attended his master to Hindoostan)-was subdued even by dint of watching, and the precarious subsistence he obtained: this boy had lain, sometimes half buried in the sand, and watched his master's toils and hardships, in the hope that some propitious hour would soon arrive, when his assistance might be needful to release him from his chains: that hope had been, however, a little while prior to our encounter, completely extinguished, by the defeat, and consequent sudden removal of the horde from their place of encampment, whence they had departed after an unsuccessful rencounter with the caravan, bearing with them their slaves, and leaving no trace of their retreat behind them."

"

Endeavouring to cheer as well as I could the spirits of this pattern of fidelity, who well recollected, and indeed hailed my arrival as the return of hope, I requested him to conduct me to where lay scattered the remains of their encampment; which, I found by his relation of the circumstance, on being closely pursued by the defenders of the caravan. they had in their precipitation been obliged to leave behind them; together with some camels, and a quantity of their provisions and stores, which had immediately been seized upon, and appropriated to the service of the caravan:-) know not what induced me to the adoption of this course, but whether it arose from curiosity, or possessed a more laudable

origin, the event will show that it was not ill conceived; accordingly, the youth conducted me to where I found something more than the broken vestiges of a barbarous camp, surrounded, and partly concealed, by a few barren shrubs of the desert; and watered by an adjoining spring, probably only hitherto discovered by these experienced and wandering marauders of the wilderness."

"Before me I perceived the forsaken and dilapidated tent of Abukir, which by the gaudy emblems of idolatry, and devices of superstition with which its fragments were bespattered, was easily distinguished from the rude erections, covered with coarse discoloured canvass, by which it was surrounded: the shattered outside yet glittered with all the glare of ornamental allusions, with which vanity and ignorance had loaded it, emblazoned in morocco-but of the interior adornments there only remained some shivered lances, a few forgotten or unheeded turbans, of the worst manufacture, and a bale or two of rent and worthless merchandise, probably the rejected spoil of some more fortunate enterprise."

"While busied in contemplating this novel, and singularly interesting scene, I observed lying at my feet, but partly concealed beneath the falling tapestry of the edifice, a blade which I well knew to be the sabre of my friend, and the same with which he had so manfully preserved my exist ence by its side there lay also a scimeter, which I conjec tured with reason, from the richness of its hilt, to be the weapon of Abukir, and both were stained, with blood; many were the suppositions, and surmises, to which this circumstance gave rise in my mind, and I became so deeply abstracted in my cogitations, as not to heed the progress of the minutes which I ought to have employed in the pursuit of my enslaved deliverer."

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