“There is all that remains,” he continued, “of what was once the most famous and powerful city in the world. The horseshoe-shaped lagoon with the island in its center is a vestige of Hamilcar’s military harbor, where the war-galleys were moored. On the summit of yonder hill Dido’s palace is believed to have stood. On that narrow neck of land to the eastward the army of Regulus was annihilated by the Carthaginians under Xanthippus, and there, a century later, the victorious forces of Scipio Africanus pitched their camp. The white chapel atop the plateau marks the spot where St. Louis died while leading the Last Crusade.” It was as though he had uttered an incantation. At his words the scene seemed to change before my eyes as one stereopticon picture dissolves into another. The fog-banks which had lifted were the mists of centuries. Now I was looking down the vista of the ages. In my mind’s eye a mighty, glittering metropolis crowned that green and russet hill. A hot African sun beat down upon its massive ramparts, upon the gilded roofs of its towers and temples, upon its marble palaces and porphyry colonnades. Brazen chariots tore through its narrow, teeming streets; squadrons of horsemen maneuvered on the plain; elephants with jeweled trappings rocked and rolled along. The smoke of sacrificial fires rose from the altar before the great temple, where stood the statue of the horned god Baal. Relieving the masses of masonry here and there were patches of verdure, the sacred groves dedicated to the worship of the goddess Tanith. A vessel with billowing sails of Tyrian purple slipped along the shore. Out from the harbor-mouth shot a file of lean, long triremes, ostrich-feathers of foam curling from their bows as they leaped forward at the urge of the triple banks of oars. I was looking on the city which had been mistress of the Mediterranean for upward of half a thousand years; whose argosies had explored the unknown coasts of Africa and Gaul and Spain, venturing even beyond the Pillars of Hercules in their quest of the Hesperides; the city whose name is still synonymous with pomp and pride and power—Carthage, which had disputed the Empire of the World with Rome! But the vision faded as abruptly as it had appeared when a French destroyer, inky clouds belching from her slanting funnels, fled across our bows. A sea-plane, bands of the tricolor painted on its under wings, went booming overhead. Fishing-craft with ruddy lateen sails appeared, swarthy, red-fezzed fishermen hauling at the nets. A puffing tugboat bustled officiously alongside, and the pilot nimbly climbed the swaying ladder. Bells jangled in the engine-room. And the _Duc d’Aumale_, slowed to half-speed, swept past the thickets of bristling masts which fringe the wharves of La Goulette and entered the throat of the buoyed channel which leads through the shallow lake of El Bahira to Tunis.