SALMAGUNDI. No. XIV.-Saturday, Sept. 16, 1807. LETTER FROM MUSTAPHA RUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN, TO ASEM HACCHEM, PRINCIPAL SLAVE-DRIVER TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BASHAW OF TRIPOLI. Η EALTH and joy to the friend of my heart! May the angel of peace ever watch over thy dwelling, and the star of prosperity shed its benignant lustre on all thy undertakings. Far other is the lot of thy captive friend: his brightest hopes extend but to a lengthened period of weary captivity, and memory only adds to the measure of his griefs, by holding up a mirror which reflects with redoubled charms the hours of past felicity. In midnight slumbers my soul. holds sweet converse with the tender objects of its affections: it is then the exile is restored to his country; it is then the wide waste of waters that rolls between us disappears, and I clasp to my bosom the companion of my youth ; I awake and find it but a vision of the night. The sigh will rise; the tear of dejection will steal adown my cheek; I fly to my pen, and strive to forget myself and my sorrows in conversing with my friend. In such a situation, my good Asem, it cannot be expected that I should be able so wholly to abstract myself from my own feelings, as to give thee a full and systematic account of the singular people among whom my disastrous lot has been cast. I can only find leisure from my own individual sorrows to entertain thee occasionally with some of the most prominent features of their character; and now and then a solitary picture of their most preposterous eccentricities. I have before observed that among the distinguishing characteristics of the people of this logocracy is their invincible love of talking, and that I could compare the nation to nothing but a mighty windmill. Thou art doubtless at a loss to conceive how this mill is supplied with grist; or, in other words, how it is possible to furnish subjects to supply the perpetual motion of so many tongues. |