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THIS curious and learned traveller was the son of Mr. Gabriel Shaw, of Kendal, in Westmoreland, where he was born in the year 1692. The first rudiments of his education, which appears to have been carefully conducted, he received at the grammar-school of his native town, from whence, in 1711, he removed to Queen’s College, Oxford. Here he took the degree of B.A. in 1716, and that of M.A. three years after. In the course of the same year he went into orders, and was appointed chaplain to the English factory at Algiers. As he has left no account of the mode in which he reached the point of destination, it is uncertain whether he proceeded to Africa wholly by sea, or performed a portion of the journey by land; but as it is certain that he was in Italy, where, among other places, he visited Rome, it is probable that it was upon this occasion that he traversed the continent of Europe, taking ship at some port of Italy for Algiers, where he arrived about the end of 1719, or early in the beginning of the year following. This city, which has long been an object of considerable curiosity to Europeans, I have already described, at least as it existed in the sixteenth century, in the life of Leo Africanus; and therefore shall merely observe upon the present occasion, that at the period of Shaw’s residence it was a small though populous city, not exceeding a mile and a half in circumference, but computed to contain little less than one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants. Of antiquities, the peculiar objects of our traveller’s researches, it could boast but few specimens, though his practised eye discerned upon the tower of the great mosque several broken inscriptions, the letters of which, however, were either so inverted or filled up with lime and whitewash, that nothing could be made of them.
The environs are remarkable for their beauty, consisting of a rapid succession of hills and valleys, sprinkled with gardens and villas, to which the more wealthy among the citizens retire during the heats of summer. From these little white houses, perched in picturesque situations among evergreen woods and groves of fruit-trees, the inhabitants enjoy a gay and delightful prospect of the sea; while to those who sail along the shore these woods, villas, and gardens present a no less cheerful and animated scene. The springs which rise in these hills, and confer beauty and fertility upon the whole landscape, likewise furnish the city with an abundance of excellent water, which is conveyed to the public fountains through a long course of pipes and conduits.