Note AJ — TRAVELS, ADVENTURES, AND IMPRISONMENTS OF JOSEPH BALSAMO.

In the Memoir written by Joseph Balsamo during his imprisonment in the Bastille, he surrounds his origin and infancy with romantic and glamorous mystery. “I am ignorant,” he asserts, “not only of my birthplace, but even of the parents who bore me. All my researches on these points have afforded me nothing but vague and uncertain, though, in truth, exalted, notions. My earliest infancy was passed in the town of Medina, in Arabia, where I was brought up under the name of Acharat—a name which I afterwards used during my Asiatic and African travels—and was lodged in the palace of the muphti. I distinctly recollect having four persons continually about me—a tutor, between fifty-five and sixty years of age, named Altotas, and three slaves, one of whom was white, while the others were black. My tutor invariably told me that I had been left an orphan at the age of three months, and that my parents were noble, and Christians as well, but he preserved the most absolute silence as to their name and as to the place where I was born, though certain chance words led me to suspect that I first saw the light at Malta. Altotas took pleasure in cultivating my natural taste for the sciences; he himself was proficient in all, from the most profound even to the most trivial. It was in botany and physics that I made most progress. Like my instructor I wore the dress of a Mussulman, and outwardly we professed the Mohammedan law. The principles of the true religion were, however, engraven in our hearts. I was frequently visited by the muphti, who treated me with much kindness and had great respect for my instructor, through whom I became early proficient in most oriental languages.”