BENGAZI. 
291 
cessity really exists, to justify private acts of caprice and oppres- 
sion, which have themselves only resulted from the long-indulged 
habit of executing similar outrages for others. 
The Bey having been officially apprized of our arrival, and that 
we were desirous of paying our respects to him, appointed a day to 
receive us ; and when the time arrived we proceeded to the castle, 
accompanied by Signor Rossoni, the British vice-consul at Bengazi, 
and his brother, Mr. Giacomo Rossoni. We found the Bey in a 
plain whitewashed room of unimposing dimensions, but cool and 
tolerably clean, seated upon cushions spread round a niche which 
had been formed in the waU for the purpose. On each side of this 
recess, or alcove, were ranged the principal officers of the household, 
the chaouses, and several shekhs ; other parts of the room were occu- 
pied by slaves and persons of inferior condition. There was much 
less ceremony in the court of Bey Hahl than in that of the Bashaw 
at Tripoly, and the conversation appeared to have been pretty general 
before we entered the apartment in which he received us. 
The hum of voices subsided all at once as we made our appear- 
ance, and every person’s eyes seemed determined to exert them- 
selves in proportion as his tongue was laid under restraint ; for the 
steady gaze of all present was fixed upon our party as we took up 
our stations near the Bey. We found his excellency a good-looking, 
well-formed man, who, apparently from inactivity and good living, 
had attained to that state of dignified emhonpoint at which persons 
of inferior consideration in Mahometan countries are very seldom 
destined to arrive. A Georgian by birth, Bey Hahl possessed 
2 P 2 
