TRAVELS IN BARBARY. 
direction. For these pretensions he is said to 
have obtained full credit from his subjects, who 
believed him a descendant and peculiar favourite 
of Mahomet, and incapable of doing any thing 
amiss. His great delight consisted in building 
and throwing down ; which was carried to such 
an extent, that if all his erections had stood they 
would have reached from Fez to Mequinez. 
This course he defended, by the necessity of 
keeping his subjects in perpetual occupation, in 
order to preserve them from mischief. He com- 
pared them, by an odd metaphor, to rats in a bag, 
who, unless they were perpetually shaken about, 
would speedily eat the bag through. 
On the arrival of the embassy at Mequinez, 
the whole number of Christian captives was 1100, 
of whom about 300 were English, 400 Spaniards, 
165 Portuguese, 152 French, 69 Dutch, 25 Ge- 
noese, and 3 Greeks ; there were besides nine- 
teen English, and a few of the other nations, who 
had become Mahometan. All the English who 
still adhered to their religion were now liberated. 
About the year 1720 Dr Thomas Shaw was 
appointed chaplain to the factory at Algiers, in 
which capacity he resided there for about twelve 
years. During this period he made frequent ex- 
cursions through the interior of Algiers and Tu- 
nis, a region which the jealousy of the natives 
