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28 CHAPTER IV.

INTRODUCES THE READER TO THE PIRATE CITY, AND TO A FEW OF ITS PECULIARITIES AND PRACTICES.

us now, good reader, to introduce you to the top of a house in Algiers. The roofs of the houses in the Pirate City are flat—a most admirable Eastern peculiarity which cannot be too strongly recommended to Western builders. They are, therefore, available as pleasant "terraces," on which you may rise above your cares, to lounge, and smoke—if afflicted with the latter mania—and sip coffee with your wife (wives, if you be a Turk), or romp with your children—if not too dignified—or cultivate flowers, or read in a state of elevated serenity, or admire the magnificent view of the blue bay, backed by the bluer Jurjura mountains, with the snow-topped range of the Lesser Atlas beyond. How much wiser thus to utilize one's house-top than to yield it up, rent-free, to cats and sparrows!

Achmet Pasha, the Dey of Algiers at this time, or rather the pirate-king, had a thorough