A few months ago a broken stone outside the door of the mosque on the sea-shore formed a still visible link between the Mehdia of the present and the Africa of the past. About twenty years before, an enthusiastic Moslem theologian had ordered the faithful in Mehdia to thrust from its place in the Jáma Kebira the tomb of an infidel, which by some mischance had remained undisturbed in the sanctuary of the true believers for over three hundred years. The holy man’s advice was religiously acted upon, and the marble slab which once covered the remains of the good knight Giovanni Antonio Pescatore was soon half buried by the sand amongst which it had been thrown. To chip a morsel from the Roumi’s tomb became a pious pastime of the young Arabs of Mehdia, and the monument would long since have disappeared, if the care of Mr. Reade had not rescued it from its perilous position, and obtained permission from the Bey to remove it to Tunis. The Moslem town of Mehdia rose on the site of some now forgotten Roman city under the fostering care of Obeidallah “El Mehdi,” and in 1550 fell into the hands of the great corsair Dragut, who afterwards died fighting with the _Cavalieri della Religione_ on the ramparts of St. Elmo, and now sleeps at Tripoli in the West. Dragut snatched Mehdia from a small band of pirates, who bade defiance alike to Christian foes and to the Moslem rulers of Tunis and Kairwán. The success of Dragut appears to have caused equal alarm in the councils of Charles V. at Madrid, and of the Grand Master of the Order of St. John at Valetta, and a joint armament was despatched to the shores of Africa before the summer of 1550 had fairly set in. Bosio gives a detailed account of the fall of Mehdia, and Sutherland[8] states that “the knights and other officers of distinction who fell in the assault, were honoured with interment in the principal mosque, which was first purified and consecrated as a Christian temple.” He adds also “that afterwards when the place was abandoned by the imperial troops, the ashes of these warriors were transported to Sicily and deposited in the cathedral at Monreale, where a stately monument was erected, bearing an inscription commemorative of their renown.” During a hot September day I clambered up to Monreale from Palermo to search for the “stately monument.” Not a trace of it remains, and I am afraid the only existing memorials of the capture of Africa in 1550 are the scattered fragments of masonry at Mehdia, and the broken tomb of Fra Giovanni Antonio at Tunis. [Illustration: INSCRIPTION ON THE TOMB OF JOHANNES ANTONIUS DE PISCATORIBUS. Reproduction by Maclure & Macdonald.]