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and its possessor, with inward satisfaction, left the oracular
tripod, in order to make room for a Turkish captain of a
polacca, whose literary necessities consisted in a memorial,
claiming the restitution of some goods illegally seized. In
this instance the means of exchanging ideas were not so easy
as heretofore; partly from the Turk's not knowing well the
language, but in a great measure also for want of the usual
appropriate and impressive gesticulations, which, in this
country, go half-way towards being understood, and which
are foreign to the decorous gravity of a Mussulman. How-
ever, by means of the Lingua Franca, both parties con-
trived to enter into mental communication with tolerable
success. This Lingua Franca may justly be called a non-
descript language, at home no where, yet understood all
over the Mediterranean. It is a barbarous Italian, in which
every inflexion of the verb is expressed in the infinitive, and
where the noun invariably appears in the nominative case,
notunlike the English spoken by the Negro-slaves in our
West-Indian colonies, such as Me not go yesterday, &c.
In the Levant, where it probably originated during the
prosperous period of Venetian and Genoese commerce and
dominion, this patois is indispensibly necessary, and uni-
versally familiar, to all engaged in commercial pursuits.
When the document was ready for signature, Ibrahim Reis,
who could neither read nor write, was desired to make his
cross at foot, which he refused with religious abhorrence ;
but dipping his little finger into the inkstand, imprinted on
the paper a correct fac-simile of the tortuous furrows of his
cuticle, by way of signet. To my great surprize, this state
paper was valued at no more than one carlin (5d.) although
engrossed on a folio page, and decorated with some fanci-
fully flourished initials.
The Turk had no sooner discharged his literary debt
than