BRITANNICVS MAX GIRMANICVS MAX IRIB POIX VIIII COS ~IIII~ PP RIS ~III~ VII ---------- XLIX ---------- There was a time when English statesmen knew the importance of the great land-locked harbour lying behind the crumbling walls and straggling streets of Bizerta. The lakes have been surveyed and re-surveyed by English seamen, but apparently only for the purpose of pointing out the expediency of acquiring them to our neighbours. A glance at the chart of the Mediterranean shows better than pages of reasoning what the possession of Bizerta really means. After assisting in a survey of the lakes in 1845, Lieutenant Spratt contributed a valuable paper on the subject to the “Journal of the Geographical Society,” containing a complete description of the locality. “The lakes,” writes Lieutenant (now Admiral) Spratt, “have often been noticed by the Ancient and Middle Age authors under the names of Hipponitus Lacus and Sisaræ Palus. “The Hipponitus Lacus was the more northern and larger of the two lakes, and answers to that of Bizerta, taking its modern name from an important fortified town situated at its mouth. The Sisaræ Palus is now called the Lake of Gebel Ishkel, from a high and picturesque mountain rising from its southern shore, but which must have been formerly an island, as it is now separated from the plain by an extensive marsh. “The two lakes run in an east-north-east and west-south-west direction of each other, and are each about eight geographical miles long. The Lake of Bizerta is five and a half miles broad, whilst that of Gebel Ishkel is only three and a half. This latter is a remarkable turbid shallow lake of fresh water, but the former (Bizerta) is clear, and nearly as salt as the sea with which it communicates. “The greatest depth of the water in the Lake of Bizerta is eight fathoms, with an average of from five to six throughout. “The channel by which it communicates with the sea is at its north-east angle, and is about four miles in length and half-a-mile broad, except near its mouth, where it is contracted into a narrow-winding canal. In the wide channel there is a depth of from four to seven fathoms, but in the intricate part between the fishery and the bar at the mouth of the canal, which in its windings is nearly a mile in length, there is from two to ten feet only. Across one part of the channel there is a solid stone bridge of seven narrow arches, and again a little below it the channel is obstructed by rocks, said to be the foundation of another bridge.”