The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Extract of a letter from Paris.

A Turk, from Algiers or Tripoli, who was going from Paris to Auxerre (forty leagues from the capital) in the coche d'eau (a barge where passengers pay 6/6 and are four days going) being provoked by several jocular remarks on his dress, some scurrilous reflections on his religion, and, as they say, by having his whiskers cut off and burnt while he was asleep, committed great outrages the beginning of last week, which ended very fatally. He stabbed furiously with his dagger four or five of those that were nearest to him, who died instantly of their wounds. He seized then a hatchet which had been brought with an intention to knock him down, and maimed the arms and faces of 14 or 15 more. The guards being called on board, fired a pistol at him, loaded with case-shot, in order to make him let go the fatal hatchet, but the pistol hit him in the lower part of the under jaw, which added to his efforts and furious blows, forcibly distributed to the barge planks and the empty air, occasioned his falling quite exhausted to the ground. He was immediately secured and conveyed to the hospital at Sens. Thus five persons owe their untimely end, and others in danger of their lives, to the folly of some unguarded expressions, wanton jests, or inhospitable insults on a peaceful stranger, because he happened to wear an African or Oriental dress, a long beard, and to deny the Pope's infallibility.