This coast, then, was thickly studded with towns, the more ancient ones were Tyrian, and the more recent ones Carthaginian settlements. The inhabitants of the latter are called _Libyphoenices_, whence, from their very name, we cannot suppose that they were of pure Punic blood: they were Punians who had admitted Africans among them, and their language was a corrupt Punic. The Carthaginians were greatly inclined to mix with, and admit other tribes, which accounts for the fact of their language being so widely spread: all the civilisation adopted by the Africans was Punic. The Carthaginians had a peculiar Libyan alphabet, and when the writing of the Tuariks is once discovered, I hope the Carthaginian inscriptions also will be deciphered. Their literature, however, was Punic. The Romans gave the library of Carthage as a present to the kings of Numidia; that library contained the native historical records of Africa, from which such singular statements were extracted by Sallust in composing his Jugurtha, and the key to which must still be discovered: they did not contain real history, but we can see from them in what light those nations regarded their history. The language of the original inhabitants of northern Africa was perhaps more widely spread than any other: this is the language of the Berbers, which was once spoken from the Canary islands in the west to the cataracts of the Nile, and in some parts it is spoken even at the present day. It is singular that the nation speaking that language embraced tribes of quite different physical characters, whites as well as blacks (though not negroes); the ancients, in fact, distinguish between Gaetulians and Melanogaetulians, though they regard them as one nation. Harsh rudeness was a generally prevailing characteristic of the nation, but in proportion to the extent of country occupied by it, it was not numerous; at present their descendants occur only in the oases of the desert, while formerly they extended from the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger; on the coast they have nearly everywhere been displaced by the Arabs, who are still gaining ground, so that now they are found only in some parts of Algiers and Morocco. The Romans called them _Afri_, and the Greeks, Λίβυες; it has been supposed that the latter name is connected with that of Levante or Leguante. The name by which the nation designates itself, viz., Amazirgh, Mazirgh, or Mzirgh, is found, according to an observation of Castiglione, even in Herodotus, who speaks of Μάσυες; this is the correct form occurring in the MSS., instead of which the printed editions erroneously give Μάξυες. The name _Massaesyli_, which was given to the western Libyans between the lesser Syrtis and the Ocean, also is nothing but Mazirgh Shilha, for they also call themselves Shilhas. The eastern tribes are called _Massyli_, which is the same as Μάσυες, for the termination _yli_ seems to be the common Italian one, which we find in _Aequuli_ for _Aequi_.