were thrown into the Syrtes: the danger was, of course, much greater for the ancients than for us. The countries round the Syrtes are the most wretched and melancholy districts of all the inhabited parts of the earth; they are worse than the desert itself, except that water is not wanting for so long a period as in the desert. The caravans dig wells, but the water is bad. The whole of the western part of the north coast of Africa, of which Carthage is the central point, was once under the dominion of Carthage, from the Syrtes to the straits of Gibraltar, though that dominion was not the same everywhere. The modern Algiers and Morocco contain no traces of Carthaginian colonies; there existed in those parts nothing but Carthaginian forts and factories for commercial purposes; but Tunis and Tripoli, that is, the whole coast from Hippo to Leptis, was covered with Punic towns. Some of them were more ancient than Carthage (which was for this reason called “New Town”); Utica, Hippo, Leptis, and perhaps also Hadrumetum, and others whose names can no longer be ascertained, were, like Gades, direct colonies of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia, and had been founded at the time when so many Phoenician settlements were formed on the coasts of Greece, in the islands of the Archipelago, and in Cyprus. It was during that period of the greatness of Phoenicia, which lies beyond our history, that numerous colonies were established on the coast of Africa. We do not know what circumstances directed the attention to those parts, for the Libyans were a great people. The nature of the country is very different in different parts: Tripoli (which is inhabitable from the head of the lesser to the greater Syrtis), is the foreland of the desert, while Tunis is much more fertile. Here the northern chain of mount Atlas terminates; and the western part of Tunis is a mountainous, beautiful, and fertile country. One range of the mountain extends as far as the sea, forming a hilly country, with the beautiful promontory and the bay of Carthage. The territory from this promontory as far as the Syrtes is, according to all descriptions, one of the most fertile countries, though the district in which Carthage was situated was less healthy and of a less agreeable climate. _Byzacene_, or the eastern coast of Tunis, on the other hand, is very healthy, and has no overpowering heat, except in rare cases when the poisonous wind blows from the desert this wind is much more frequent at Carthage and it neighbourhood.