Timgad is situate thirty-four miles to the east of Batna, on the fine modern road which proceeds through the Aurès range to Khenchela and Ain-Beida. You may cover the distance in a motor-car within the hour, and you will pass on the way the ruins of Lambessa. These, however, are scarcely worth the prolonged attention of anyone who is not an archæologist, and such picturesque qualities as they may possess are ruined by the proximity of a huge convict prison. The ordinary sightseer, snatching a few hours between two trains, will hasten on to Timgad. The drive itself is very interesting. The road is undulating and at one point ascends to a considerable altitude, and in its way the scenery is impressive. We traverse a great rolling plain which from end to end is one vast cornfield. There is a bare range of hills to the north, and to the south the Aurès mountains, guardians of the desert, with the snow still, in March, lying among their topmost cedars. At the highest point of the road we meet a driving storm of sleet. We are inclined to resent the general treelessness of the landscape, but much may be forgiven to a corn-growing country, and imagination revels in what must be its glory when the crop is ripe for harvesting. But for its fertility the general contour of the country has a very South African appearance. The soil appears to be “rather light,” and, no doubt, nothing but the copious rainfall which the Aurès mountains bring redeems it from the miserable barrenness of the high plateaux to the south of Algiers. At last you come to Timgad, and you see at a glance that you are face to face with what the Americans call “a big proposition.” A whole hill-side is covered with the dry bones of a town—a town of which the top seems to have been sliced off, with here and there groups of columns or an arch or two rising from the dismantled mass. It has been given to few great towns to spring into being at one leap. The growth of towns is usually that of mundane things in general, a gradual process liable to interference from many exterior influences. But Timgad rose full armed from the fiat of the Emperor, as Athene from the brain of Zeus. Trajan said, “Let there be a city,” and there was a city. It was no mushroom growth to serve a temporary purpose. It lasted more or less intact for six hundred years, and but for the hand of destroying man it might have lasted six thousand. This is its dominating note,—its huge, its almost unnecessary solidity. And from the circumstances of its birth it presents a fine example of Roman town-planning. British municipal corporations which are concerned in putting into practice our newborn aspirations in such matters should not omit to send a deputation to study Timgad on the spot. [Illustration: TIMGAD: ARCH OF TRAJAN]