Follow the narrow Strada della Marina past the custom-house, where the Italian sentry peers at you suspiciously from beneath the bunch of cock's feathers which adorns his helmet; past the odorous fish-market and so into the unpaved, unlighted, foul-smelling quarter of the Jews, and your path will be blocked eventually by the sole remaining relic of Tripoli's one-time greatness, the marble arch of triumph erected by the Romans in the reign of Antoninus Pius, now half-buried in débris, its chiselled boasts of victory mutilated, and its arches ruthlessly plastered up, the shop of a dealer in dried fish. In that defaced and degraded memorial is typified the latter-day history of Tripolitania. Before the Italian occupation disrupted the commerce of the country and isolated Tripoli from the interior, by long odds the most interesting of the city's sights were the markets, which were held upon the beach on the arrival of the trans-Saharan caravans, for they afforded the foreigner fleeting but characteristic glimpses, as though on a moving-picture screen, of those strange and savage peoples—Berbers, Hausas, Tuaregs, Tubbas, and Wadaians—who are retreating farther and farther into the recesses of the continent before the white man's implacable advance. All down the ages Tripoli has been the gateway through which weapons, cutlery, and cotton have entered, and slaves, ostrich feathers, and ivory have come out of inner Africa by plodding caravan. Since the sons of Ham first found their way across the wilderness of Shur, this region has been the terminus of three historic trade routes. The first of these runs due south across the desert to Lake Tchad and the great native states of Kanem, Sokoto, Bagirmi, and Wadai; the second follows a southwesterly course across the Sahara to the Great Bend of the Niger and the storied city of Timbuktu; while the third, going south by east, long carried British cottons and German jack-knives to the natives of Darfur and the Sudan. Is it any wonder, then, that, fired by the speeches of the expansionists in the Roman senate, all Italy should dream of a day when the red-white-and-green banner should float over this gateway to Africa and endless lines of dust-coloured camels, laden with glass beads from Venice and cotton goods from Milan, should go rolling southward to those countries which lie beyond the great sands? But, lost in the fascination of their dream, the Italians forgot one thing: modern commerce cannot go on the back of a camel. No longer may Tripolitania be reckoned the front door, or even the side door, to central Africa. As the result of French and British encroachment and enterprise, not only has nearly all of the Tripolitanian hinterland been absorbed by one or the other of these powers, but, what is of far more commercial importance, they have succeeded in diverting the large and important caravan trade of which the Italians dreamed, and which for centuries has found its way to