Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838/Tunis
30
TUNIS, FROM THE SANEEAH EFTOOR.
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TUNIS.
No more that city’s pirate barks
Molest the distant waves;
No more the Moslem idler marks
The sale of Christian slaves.
And yet how much is left undone
These city walls within!
What though the victory may be won,
Its fruit is yet to win.
What should the fruit of victory be?
What spoil should it command?—
Commerce upon the sweeping sea,
And peace upon the land.
As when the crimson sunset ends,
In twilight’s quiet hours,
The fertilizing dew ascends,
That feeds the fruits and flowers.
A quiet time hath Europe now,
And she should use that time,
The seed of general good to sow,
Eternal and sublime!
Mighty is now the general scope
To mortal views assigned;
Direct from heaven is the hope
That worketh for mankind.
Too many objects worth its care
The mind has left unwon;
But who is there that shall despair
Knowing what has been done?
The Press, that on the moral world
Has risen, like a star,
The leaves of light in darkness furled
Spread with its aid afar.
Far may it spread!—its influence
Is giant in its might:
The moral world’s intelligence
Lives on its guiding light.
To teach, to liberate, to save,
Is empire’s noblest worth.
Such be our hope across the wave,
Our triumph o’er the earth!
Tunis, one of the Barbary states, presenting an extended littorale to the Mediterranean, occupies a peninsula containing 72,000 square miles, and about 200,000 inhabitants. Its eastern parts are fertile, of great natural beauty, and highly cultivated. The articles of commerce here are various, and include gold dust, orchilla weed, ostrich feathers, sponge, and ivory, the greater proportion being conveyed hither by caravan from Timbuctoo. Tunis, the capital, is situated at the head of a noble bay, about ten miles S. W. from the site of the ancient Carthago, contra Italiam, on a plain, overhung on all sides, except the east, by considerable heights, and encircled by lakes and marshes. The streets are irregular and narrow, but the palace of the bey, the chief mosque, and piazza of 3,000 shops, are on a scale of much magnificence. The dwellings of the Europeans are all insulated, and built in a defensive style; the Moorish houses are of only one story, with flat roofs, and cisterns to receive and collect rain water. The citadel, El Gassa, which frowns over the view, is now much neglected, and fallen to decay, but the Goletta, the harbour and citadel, six miles to the west, strongly fortified. After the destruction of Carthage, the Romans built a new city, near the site of modern Tunis; it was colonized by the conquerors, and soon became one of the most important commercial cities of the ancient world.