placed by a new one, and so on till the end of the year and every year.... a A favorite means of catching the larger kind is for a man to station himself at the prow of a boat under one of the arches of the bridge, with a ten-pronged grane in his hand and vessel of oil beside him. From time to time he sprinkles a few drops of oil on the surface to calm its ripples and enable him to see the larger fish passing, and these he spears with great dexterity. Wild fowls of all kinds are numerous on the lake, and for quails and snipe its banks are a sportsman's paradise. To the south-west of this lake is another, nearly as large, but with a depth of from two to eight feet only. . . . The water is almost sweet in winter, when a considerable body is poured into it by the Oued Djoumin, or river of Mater; but in summer, when the level sinks, the overflow from the salt lake pours into it by the Oued Tinga, a tortuous canal which connects the two, and then its waters are not potable. This lake also abounds in fish, principally barbel and alose (clupea finta), which are held in no esteem by the natives. (Playfair's Bruce, p. 143.). The alternating flow between the two lakes above described is mentioned by Edrisi, with the additional circumstance that the waters in no degree change their quality by the interchange-the salt lake losing none of its saltness, and the fresh lake none of its freshness, in whichever direction the current sets. "Ceci est encore," he remarks quaintly, "l'une des particularités de ce pays." It is curious to find Bizerta figuring in the old romances as the capital and representative town of Africa. It was here that the English paladin Astolfo besieged the Saracen king Branzardo after the destruction of the fleet of Agramante; it was here that took ship the formidable host by the position of this town have not es. caped notice from the French authorities. They have recognized that Bizerta is the key to the valley of the Medjerda, and that the valley of the Medjerda commands the Regency. Accordingly, whatever should be the policy eventually adopted elsewhere, the purpose inflexibly held with regard to the designated maritime capital of north Africa might be expressed in the phrase, J'y suis, et j'y reste. The unfurling of the tricolor above the rusty and dismounted guns of the kasbah on May 1, 1881, may thus be expected to mark a singular change in the condition and prospects of this degenerate colony of Tyre and Rome. The operations of dredging and embankment necessary to convert a mud-choked estuary into a profound and capacious harbor may indeed prove far more costly than was anticipated in the vague and sanguine estimate of a "few hundreds of thousands of francs;" but financial difficulties will not be allowed to stand in the way of an enterprise assuming the seductive aspects of national aggrandizement, and physical obstacles will doubtless be successfully disposed of by the skill and perseverance of French engineers. The design of deepening the lake of Tunis so as to render the city accessible to ships of heavy draught has, it may be presumed, been abandoned † in favor of the newer schemes of improvement at Bizerta. The two places are distant from each other only thirty-six miles, and a railway is already projected to unite them, which can hardly fail, when constructed, to divert to the rising emporium much of the traffic which now animates the port of Goletta. The present capital will thus in all probability receive no increment of prosperity from the French "protector ate." The flood-tide of European improvement will sweep in another direction. Tunis will remain very much what it is, dirty, Oriental, and picturesque. The "Rose of Africa," (hyperbolically so called) is not always the most fragrant of flowers. But the Tunisian contempt for hygienic laws has not entailed the evil consequences which sanitary congresses teach us that it ought. On the contrary, Tunis is an exceptionally healthy city, and has since 1819 remained unvisited by the plague. It lies spread out to use the See M. de la Berge's volume d'occasion, cited at the head of this article, pp. 76, 178. † A project is, however, on foot for the construction of a port at Rades, on the southern shore of the lake of Tunis. Arab comparison in the shape of a held exclusively by Jews. The trade in burnous, of which the Kasbah or citadel gems, which has a peculiar importance in represents the hood, on some rising a country where other modes of investground forming an isthmus between two ment can scarcely be found, is entirely in salt lakes. The creamy radiance of their hands. Communication between its buildings still deserves the epithet foreigners and natives is carried on in "White" bestowed upon it by Diodorus Italian, which is also the language of the nineteen centuries ago; but the verdure club and of diplomacy. This is doubtof its background is probably less con- less due to the fact that two-thirds of the spicuous now than when it earned for it Christian inhabitants of this city are Malthe appellation of the "Green" city. The tese artisans, who, according to Colonel population of Tunis may be, with much Playfair, constitute here, as elsewhere in uncertainty, estimated at one hundred the Regency, an industrious and well-conthousand; and it is said, with still greater ducted section of the community. In the uncertainty, to have doubled that number country they have obtained, with their in the last century. Contingents from karatonis, or light, two-wheeled carts, a many races and countries go to make up monopoly of the carrying trade; but in the motley crowd. There is a Turkish Tunis all merchandise is conveyed on the aristocracy, an Arab petite noblesse, and a backs of camels, asses, or mules, whose Moorish bourgeoisie. The designation long files of a hundred or more wind end"Moorish" is a very wide one, including, lessly through the tortuous and unpaved like the convenient philological term "Al- streets, deep with mud and ruts in the lophylian," a multitude of races having no rainy reason, and scarcely less intolerable quality in common except their refusal to from dust in the dry. fit into any of the established categories of classification. All possible remnants and survivals of ancient settlements Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine-are covered by it; but it chiefly indicates the descendants of Arabs fugitive from their attempted conquest of Europe; above all, of Moors expelled from Spain in the beginning of the seventeenth century. As late as 1864 a lineal descendant of Boab-divisions crossed into Africa, allied themdil, king of Granada, exercised the trade of a perfumer in one of the bazaars of Tunis; close to the gate of Carthage may be seen the tomb of the last of the Abencerrages; and many families transmit sacredly from generation to generation the house-keys some of delicately chiselled steel, some of rudely perforated box-wood- brought with them in their exodus, firmly believing that when the Prophet shall raise up to them a champion to redress all the wrongs of their race, they will by their means find admission to the Andalusian homes, of which they still, after two hundred and seventytwo years of exile, cherish the memory. A large element in the population of Tunis is formed of Jews. Their first coming dates from the great calamity of their race under Titus; but European persecutions added largely to their numbers. Here, as elsewhere, they have thriven in spite of the restrictions with which they were handicapped. The most lucrative share in the traffic of Tunis is theirs. The booths in the silk bazaar are * De Flaux, La Régence de Tunis, p. 50. Regarding the primitive inhabitants of north Africa, our knowledge has advanced very little beyond the point where Sallust left it. He tells us that, on the death of Hercules in Spain, the heterogeneous army which had accompanied his conquering expedition lost its cohesion and separated into innumerable fragments. Of these the Persian, Mede, and Armenian selves with the aboriginal Libyans and Gætulians, and gained possession of the country. The Persians, adopting, in sig. nification of their roving habits, the name of Nomads or Numidians, settled in the district round Carthage, where the mapalia, or long, keel-shaped huts of the natives, still recall the ships which transported their ancestors across the Straits, and, reversed, formed their first shelter on African soil. It was to the people thus formed, according to a tradition beyond the reach of criticisin, that the Arabs gave the name of Berber*. a term implying, like barbarian in its original sense, the use of a rude and unintelligible mode of speech. The "Berber" tongue can, in fact, be assigned to no known family of language; but the features and manners of the tribes employing it are believed to indicate Semitic affinities, while the fair complexions occasionally found amongst them are accounted for by a supposed admixture of Aryan blood. In the Regency of Tunis, It was probably suggested by the Roman "Mauri Barbari," modified so as to convey a meaning in Arabic. Berber and Bedouin have become so of helplessness and humiliation. The completely fused as to defy separation or days were gone beyond recall when analysis; but it may be said generally Charlemagne sent an embassy to the that the race of the invaders prevails in the north and east, that of the primitive inhabitants in the districts verging towards the desert. The Arabs who now rear their camels and pitch their black tents on the plains of Tunis, are not the descendants of the followers of Okba and Hassan. They are the product of a later and more destructive invasion. In 1051, the emir of Kairewân having thrown off his allegiance to the Fatimite khalif, it was resolved at Cairo to desolate a province which it was hopeless to attempt to resume. The Bedouin tribes Hilâl and Soleim were accordingly summoned from Upper Egypt; each man of them received a cloak and a dinâr, and so equipped they were let loose west of the Nile. In six years the work of ruin was accomplished. Kairewân was sacked (1057), its inhabitants driven for refuge to Sicily or Spain, and northern Africa made desolate.* The effects of the devastation are thus described by Edrisi after the lapse of a century: Al-Cairawân, la métropole du pays, était la ville la plus importante du Maghrib,t soit à cause de son étendue, soit à raison de sa population et de ses richesses, de la solidité de ses édifices, des avantages que présentait son commerce, de l'abondance de ses ressources et de ses revenus, tandis que ses habitants se distinguaient par leur esprit d'indépendance, par leur fierté et par leur audace. Les hommes pieux de cette ville étaient remarquables par leur persévérance dans le bien et leur fidélité aux engagements, par l'abandon des choses vicieuses et l'éloignement des péchés, par l'étude assidue de diverses sciences estimées, enfin par la tendance à la droiture; mais Dieu, en faisant tombre cette ville au pouvoir des Arabes, a répandu sur elle toutes sortes de calamités. Actuellement il ne subsiste de son ancienne grandeur que des ruines; une partie de la ville est entourée d'un mur en terre; les Arabes y dominent, et mettent le pays à contribution; les habitants y sont peu nombreux, et leur commerce ainsi que leur industrie sont misérables. Cependant, d'après l'opinion des astrologues, cette ville ne doit pas tarder à recouvrer son ancienne prospérité. The stars, however, were mendacious, or their interpreters unskilful; for Kairewân had already passed her meridian, and was tending towards a still remote horizon • Storia dei Musulmani, ii., pp. 547-8. Maghrib or Maghreb signifies in Arabic "West," and is used to designate that very distinct region of Africa cut off from the rest of the continent by the desert and the Lesser Syrtis (Gulf of Gabes), which comprises the countries of Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco. court of Ibrahim ibn-Aghlab to sue for the relics of St. Cyprian; when caravans from the Soudan poured riches and splendor in at the gates, and the fantastic magnificence of Zirite festivities animated the solemn streets of the Holy City. Its sanctity alone survived. It was, until the 26th of last October, the virgin sanctuary of Islam in Africa. Its gates had opened, during twelve centuries, to no infidel invader. Its shrines had been profaned by no infidel footsteps. It was founded by one companion of the Prophet, it possessed the tomb of another. Hundreds of holy men had come to lay their bones in the sacred vicinity. It shared with Mecca the privilege of conferring the coveted title of hadji, seven pilgrimages thither earning for their performer the dignity of the green turban. It was even prophetically affirmed that it would one day possess the venerated remains of Mahomet himself. Mr. Rae, whose book, entitled "The Country of the Moors," stands amongst others at the head of this article, is one of the first Christians who have been allowed to enter the walls of Kairewân for many centuries. His account of his reception there is one of the most curious and amusing parts of his delightful work, to which we must refer our readers for a more complete account of these regions. We have seldom read a narrative of travels undertaken or related with greater spirit. Colonel Playfair obtained leave from the bey of Tunis to visit the sealed city a short time after Mr. Rae had visited it, and, as his work is less generally known, we shall borrow his account of its legendary story. It would seem that, as the Moors anticipated, these visits were ominous of coming evil, and laid their holy places open to the invader. Next to Mecca and Medina, no city is so sacred in the eyes of Western Mohammedans as Kerouan. The history of its foundation is given by Ibn Khaldoun. In the fiftieth year of the Hedjira (A.D. 670) Moaouia ibn-AbiSofian sent Okba ibn-Nafa to conquer Africa. The latter proposed to his troops to found a city which might serve him as a camp, and be a rallying-point for Islamism till the end of time. He conducted them to where Kerouan now is, and which was then covered with thick and impenetrable forest, the habitation of wild beasts and noxious reptiles. Having collected round him the eighteen companions of the Prophet who were in his army, he called out in a loud voice, "Serpents and savage beasts, we are the companions of the blessed Prophet. | shall count these columns, for he shall Retire! for we intend to establish ourselves here." Whereupon they all retired peaceably, and at the sight of this miracle many of the Berbers were converted to Islamism; during forty years from that date not a serpent was seen in Ifrikia. No wonder that Okba is as much venerated here as St. Patrick is in Ire land. Okba then planted his lance in the ground, and called out" Here is your Kerouan" (caravan, or resting-place), thus giving the name to the new city. He himself traced out the foundation of the governor's palace, and of the great mosque, the true position of the kibla, or direction of Mecca, which was miraculously communicated to him by God. In most mosques the Imam, when leading the public prayers, turns ostentatiously a little on one side or the other, as if facing Mecca with even greater exactitude than the building itself; but here he invariably stands exactly in front of the people, thus recognizing the miraculous correctness of the sacred niche or apse which indicates the direction of the great sanctuary. The sacred character [he continues] of this city has not exempted it from its full share of war and violence. Even the great mosque has more than once been almost totally destroyed by the Mohammedans themselves, but it has never actually been polluted by a Christian invader.... Until quite lately, the city was entirely sealed against all who did not profess the faith of El-Islam, and even now it is only by a special order of the bey that a Christian is admitted within its walls. A Jew dare not even approach it, and it is said that when on one occasion the heir-presumptive paid a visit to it with a Jewish retainer in his suite, he was compelled to leave the latter at a day's journey outside. The great mosque was founded by Sidi Okba; but El-Bekri states that a century later Yezid ibn-Hatem, governor of Africa, demolished it all, with the exception of the Mihrâb, and rebuilt it. Ziadat-Ullah, the first emir of the Aghlabite dynasty bearing that name, demolished it a second time, and once more reconstructed it. Exteriorly it has no architectural pretensions, but in the interior there are nearly 500 marble columns, all derived from Roman buildings in various parts of the country. Of these 256 are in the internal sanctuary itself; the remainder are in the courts of the building, disposed in fifteen naves. On each side of the Mihrab are two columns of greater beauty than the rest, and in the central aisle in front of it are three more on each side, with smaller ones between, regarding which the Arabs have a superstition that only those whose salvation is assured are able to pass between them. Any person in mortal sin, whatever be his stature, however stout or however thin, would certainly find himself unable to squeeze through. The wall of the great mosque is said to bear the inscription, "Cursed be he who lose his sight." It is characteristic of our time that the first to brave the malediction and dissipate the mystery was the correspondent of an English newspaper. Two highly interesting letters in the Times (November 15 and 18, 1881) let in the unpitying light of the nineteenth century upon the long-hidden sanctuaries of Moslem superstition. The stones which, at the word of Okba, moved of themselves into their destined places, have been numbered and measured, and one of the few been thrown open to modern curiosity. hiding places left to the unknown has The great mosque measures in its widest extent 142 yards by 85; the prayer-chamber, or Mihrâb, exactly 40 yards by 80. The vaulted roof of the great central nave is supported by a double row of enormous black marble columns with white Corinthian capitals; these are flanked on either side by nine ranges of pillars of inferior size, and various form and color, on which rest the semicircular arches of eighteen lesser aisles. In the apse of the Mihrab, which is richly decorated with mosaics, is seen, on the left, a large slab of white marble, covered with emblems and surrounded by broad bands of verd-antique. The hand of Okba himself is said to have placed it there twelve hundred years ago. The number of columns in the nave alone is forty; the prayer-chamber (with façade) contains no less than two hundred and six, and the sum-total of those in the inte rior of the edifice amounts to four hundred and twelve. The multitude of these relics of ancient splendor collected for the embellishment of a single building suggests, and the explorations of travellers certify, the strength and extent of Roman domination in regions now inaccessible to civilization, and scarcely available for habitation.* of Okba comes the "Mosque of the Com Next in sanctity to the Great Mosque panion." Syed Abdullah was, if tradition says truly, one of the most devoted disciples and intimate friends of Mahomet. After his death, he came to Africa, and died at Kairewân, old and reverenced. The three hairs of the Prophet's beard which, during his lifetime, he wore constantly on his breast, were buried with him ―one under the tongue, one on his * Mr. Rae was not allowed to enter the mosque, but his calculation of the number of columns from the outside, and from the information he collected, tallies very nearly with subsequent observation. He estimated the total number of columns in the prayerchamber at 171 (perhaps omitting the façade), and the whole number at 415. right arm, and the third next his heart. nade militaire et campagne diplomatique' Hence arose amongst Europeans the (to use a phrase of M. de la Berge's) grotesque idea that he was one of the which was in contemplation when the Prophet's barbers! The cluster of build- "Galissonnière" disembarked, on the first ings, containing the tomb of "My Lord, the Companion," which lies outside the city walls, and affords several examples of elaborate and beautiful decoration, was also visited and described by the writer above alluded to. The inhabitants of Kairewân often suffer severely from drought, their sole water supply being contained in cisterns under their houses. A striking illustration of the apathy into which they have fallen is afforded by the ruined or damaged condition of the three great reservoirs constructed for their use by Saracen princes. The only well in the city [we recur, for the last time, to Colonel Playfair's observations] is one of very brackish water, called El-Barota. Tradition says that on the foundation of the city it was discovered by a sloughi, or Arab greyhound, scratching up the ground. The pious believe that there is a communication between this and the holy well of Zemzem at Mecca. A pilgrim once let his drinking-vessel fall into the latter, and on his return to Kerouan he found it in El-Barota! It is extremely difficult to form anything like an accurate estimate of the population of such a city as this. Comparing it with Mohammedan cities in Algeria, the population of which is known, I should be inclined to put it down at considerably less than 10,000. It formerly possessed a very considerable trade, and was famous for the manufacture of carpets and woollen fabrics; now its industry is almost confined to the manufacture of copper vessels, saddlery, and Arab boots and shoes. As a rule, the physique of the people is poor, and the children are unusually rude and ill-bred towards strangers. There is very little intermarriage between the inhabitants of Kerouan and the people of other towns; the result in so small a community is an inevitable tendency to degenerate. Cancer, sore eyes, and maladies depending on dirt and poverty of blood are very common. A short distance to the south of the city is Sabra, the site of Vicus Augusti, mentioned in the Itinerary of Antonine, from which has been derived a great part of the ancient materials employed in the construction of Kerouan, and of the royal residences in the neighborhood, which in their turn have disappeared. One of the sententious sayings which Sallust puts into the mouth of the conqueror of Jugurtha is that "wars are easy to begin, but most difficult to finish." The French are learning, not for the first time, the truth of this aphorism. The enterprise on which they are now engaged is a very different one from the " prome day of last May, her cargo of fusiliers at Bizerta. We seem to be witnessing a repetition of the operations conducted by Marius in the kingdom of Jugurtha. The same plan of campaign appears to have been adopted; the same line of march has been followed. The "oppidum magnum atque valens, inter ingentes solitudines nomine Capsa," surprised and burnt by the Roman consul in the year 106 B.C., gave its name and yielded its site to the town, situated in an oasis of wonderful beauty and fertility surrounded by vast desert tracts, which General Saussier's column entered on November 20. But to the difficulties encountered by Marius two fresh ones are added. The French are opposed by no conspicuous chief, whose capture or death would at once terminate the war; and they have to contend with the unmeasured forces of religious hatred and fanatical zeal. We do not doubt that they will eventually triumph, and that their triumph will be for the profit of civilization in ways and by means perhaps different from what they expect; but we believe that an expedition undertaken in defiance of public faith, and at the instigation of national jealousy, would never have left French shores, could the cost have been counted or the consequences foreseen. From The Cornhill Magazine. A BIT OF LOOT. THE word loot has now become natural ized in the English language, and needs no explanation. I went to Delhi in the month of November, 1857, on a visit to a military friend who was then quartered there. It will be remembered that we had re-captured the rebellious city, after a siege of several months, in the month of September. As we had attacked the city from one side only, most of the inhabitants had fled from it before we took it. They had got out as we came in. For a great fear was upon them. We had then expelled almost all that remained behind on military grounds. We had to occupy the whole city, and garrison it with a very small force. The city had been declared confiscated also. It was most strange to ride through the |