treated with the utmost deference. Soon Barbarossa sent messengers to her, proposing marriage.

Zaphira returned for answer that while her husband's murder remained unavenged, no other man should claim her.

The pirate, anxious to approve himself to the lady, instantly commanded a large reward to be offered for the detection of the murderers, and actually had thirty persons executed in expiation of the crime. Then he addressed himself again to the princess.

"What you required is done," he said. "There can be no further barrier to oppose between us."

"You, and you alone, are the murderer of my husband!" was the message returned by the widow.

Barbarossa, enraged at this defiance, made his way to the apartments of the Princess, to force her to listen to his suit.

Zaphira, on his approach, drank a cup of poison which she had prepared for such an emergency, and fell dead before his face, while the tyrant revenged himself for the loss of his prey, by putting to death all the women who had been her attendants.

This story is related by an old traveller and historian, Laugier de Tassy, who even gives the text of the letters which passed between the Princess and the corsair, though he is candid enough to confess, that he cannot altogether vouch for the verbal accuracy of the correspondence!

Barbarossa reigned two years amid bloodshed and rapine like the terrible old tyrant that he was, and was killed in a battle with the Spaniards on the frontier of Morocco in 1518, fighting bravely to the last.

Kheir-ed-din, his brother, was on the death of Barbarossa made King of Algiers, and he set himself seriously to the task of ousting the Spaniards from that island-fortress, which had been such a grief and mortification to the murdered Selem, and had led to his unfortunate invitation to the corsair brothers.

Kheir-ed-din sent two young Moors to the fortress, with the story that they were slaves escaped from their masters, begging protection, and desiring to be instructed in the Christian religion. Martin de Vargas, governor of the Peñon, received the youths kindly, but observing, some little time afterwards, that they were endeavouring to establish a communication with the shore, he ordered them to be hanged as spies outside the walls of the fortress that faced Algiers. The sight of this punishment raised the irritation of the Algerines to a still higher pitch. Kheir-ed-din resolved on storming the fortress, the more so as he had recently captured a Venetian vessel, which had supplied him both with guns and powder.

He summoned the garrison to surrender, and on their refusal began, very much to their surprise, to fire on the fort from the shore, for hitherto the Algerines had possessed no cannon of sufficient range, to cover the two hundred yards that separated them from the Spaniards. The Spaniards defended themselves heroically, but after a siege of seventeen days were compelled to surrender. Martin de Vargas, the governor, who was seriously wounded during the siege, was cruelly beaten to death by Kheir-ed-din in his palace of the Djenina. It was during the reign of Kheir-ed-din that the works of the harbour were begun, and from this time dates the Turkish supremacy in Northern

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Africa. The pirate Prince finding himself threatened, not only by the superior forces of the Spaniards, but by the discontent of the Algerines, placed himself under the protection of the Porte, and surrendered the sovereignty of Algiers to Selim I., Sultan of Turkey, in exchange for a force of two thousand janissaries. He was appointed Pasha, and was afterwards promoted to the rank of high admiral of the Turkish fleet. He conquered Tunis, and gained a great naval victory over the Spaniards in 1538.

In 1541 the Emperor Charles V. undertook his memorable and disastrous expedition against the Algerine pirates. The invading force consisted of three hundred and sixty vessels, commanded by Andrew Doria, and an army of twenty-four thousand men, with the Emperor himself as general. A bull of the Pope promised plenary indulgence to all those who fought against the infidel, and the ships bore each on the prow, a crucifix as a symbol of the holy cause in which the Spanish arms were embarked.

The troops were landed on the eastern side of the Bay of Algiers, and the Spaniards, marching at once to the city, invested it, and encamped themselves in a stronghold on the heights above, which completely dominated it—a stronghold still known as the "Fort de l'Empereur."

The water-supply of the city, which it is to be supposed was still furnished by the old Roman aqueducts, was cut off, and the town generally so thoroughly panic-stricken by the approach of the Spanish army, that it was on the point of capitulating.

The Pasha Assam, successor to Kheir-ed-din, had gathered his counsellors together, and all were in a terrible state of perplexity and alarm, when, it is said, a certain fanatical

dervish appeared before the divan, and, urging patience, prophesied that within a short time a great disaster would overtake the Spanish arms, and that God, not man, would be the means of their downfall.

Whether prophesied or not, the disaster took place. The following day a tremendous storm coming from the north drove the whole fleet from its insecure moorings, and washed away the entrenchments of the Spaniards, while the violent rain rendered their gunpowder useless. The Algerines now sallying out, attacked them with great fury, and completely cut them in pieces.

One hundred and fifty of their ships had been wrecked by the tempest. In those that were left the discomfited Spaniards beat a hasty retreat from the inhospitable shore, leaving one-third of the army either dead or captive in the hands of the Turks, with an enormous quantity of treasure.

After this signal victory the insolence of the Algerine pirates knew no bounds. Acknowledged masters of the Mediterranean, they carried on their trade of robbery and violence, not only upon the sea, but on the shores of all the neighbouring and even distant states, defying the united powers of Christendom to check their depredations or to punish their crimes. They proclaimed themselves, and were believed to be, invincible, and the great European nations, hopeless of conquering them, resigned themselves, one after the other, to the shameful expedient of purchasing immunity from their atrocities by the payment of a species of black-mail-an expedient which, it may be imagined, was only very partially successful, and which led to endless complications.

"The historians of Algiers, when arriving at the unknown period of Turkish domination, where the works of Haedo and Father Dan fail them, have adopted a very convenient means of concealing their ignorance. It would be useless,' they all with remarkable unanimity agree in saying at this particular point, to pursue further, these annals of horror and bloodshed;' acting on this principle, they quietly skip over a space of a century and a half at least."

We venture to follow the example so worthily set us.

Up to the beginning of the seventeenth century the kingdom continued to be governed by pashas or viceroys sent from Constantinople, who were continually being changed or murdered, and "concerning whom," says an old historian, "we find nothing very remarkable, further than that their avarice and tyranny were intolerable, both to the Algerines and to the Turks themselves."

After this period Algiers was created into a beylik, or semi-independent state, owing, indeed, allegiance to Turkey, but electing its own governor, or bey, and forming with