Before the year 1790, the Pashá of the Moréa resided at Anápli, which brought the agás to Anápli and the Greek primates to Argos, and made the former town the Turkish, and the latter the Greek capital of the Peninsula; many Greeks were attracted also to Argos, as I have already said, by the privileges which the place then enjoyed. Much of the commerce of the Moréa then centered at Anápli, and there were several French mercantile houses. The moving of the seat of government to Tripolitzá in 1790, was followed in 1791 by a plague, which lasted for three years with little intermission; it prevailed in almost every part of the Moréa, but was particularly fatal in Anápli. Since that time the town has not prospered; it is now only inhabited by the agás who possess lands in the Argolis, by the soldiers of the garrison amounting to about 200, commanded by a Janissary agá, who resides in the fort of Palamídhi, and by some Greek shopkeepers and artisans. The governor is a mirmirán, or pasha of two tails, whose authority does not extend beyond the walls of the fortress; but there is also resident here a vóivoda for the vilayéti, a kadí, or judge, and a gumruktjí, or collector of the Customs, which last office is generally united with that of vóivoda. The houses are, many of them, in ruins, and falling into the streets; the French consulate, a large house like the Okkals at Alexandria, is turned into a khan. The port is filled up with mud and rubbish, and capable only of admitting small polaccas, and to complete this picture of the effects of Turkish domination, the air is rendered unhealthy on one side by the putrid mud caused by the increasing shallowness of the bay, and on the other by the uncultivated marshy lands along the head of the gulf. In the midst of these miseries, however, the fortifications and store-houses of the Venetians still exhibit a substantial grandeur never seen in a town entirely Turkish, and testify the former importance of the place.
