DEEP-SEA RESEARCHES. 99 



impressed all of us with the feeling of its being very like a scene 

 in a theatre, the marching and costumes of the men being very- 

 like that of the supers on the stage. The music was simply 

 hideous, the different instruments playing in unison or octave 

 without the slightest idea of harmony, and leaving off on the most 

 unexpected notes. Two or three times we were told that the Bey 

 was coming ; but, after waiting an hour, we found that he had 

 gone over to another place. We followed thither, and learned 

 to our mortification that he had just finished his sitting. We 

 were shown the hall in which it had taken place, which was 

 more like a long corridor ; and we were told that the suitor has 

 to stand at one end of this, and to ' make his statement ' * to 

 an officer near him, who repeats it to another a litde way off, 

 and at last it reaches the Bey, with such modifications and vari- 

 ations as it may have sustained in its transit. Of course, any 

 questions from the Bey's end have to go through the reverse 

 process ; while the replies will again find their way to him as at 

 first. Fancy the proceedings of an English court of justice being 

 carried on on such a system ! 



The new palace has, built into it, several relics from the 

 remains of Carthage ; entirely, as I should judge, of the Chris- 

 tian times, when Carthage was an important Roman city and a 

 bishop's see \ among these was a pair of columns, ten or twelve 

 feet high, of brass. 



We then returned to town and went to the bazaar, which is 

 the place of all buying and selling, except what is carried on in 

 some little shops of the meanest kind elsewhere. This is a most 

 curious place. It is a series of narrow and tortuous arcades, 

 completely arched over, except in one central spot, where they 

 all meet Tliis, at the frequented time (eleven a.m.) at which 

 we chanced to be there, was full of people, some buyers, but 

 many sellers : people who have got no shops, but carry their 

 goods on their heads, screaming and shouting what they have 

 to announce. In these arcades the only light is from a hole 

 left here and there in the arched roof; yet this is sufficient in 

 the middle of the day to give as much as is needful. The shops 



* Another home phrase, derived from the habit of certain members of the 

 family, whose conversation on subjects in which they were interested, was apt 

 to become monologue. 



