Of the mighty slope which falls from the table-land of Theveste, the watershed between the Mediterranean and the desert, in successive stages of two to three hundred mètres down to the latter, this oasis is the last terrace; at its base begins, in sharp contrast towards the jagged mountains piled up behind, the sand desert of Suf, with its yellow rows of dunes similar to waves, and the sandy soil moved about by the wind, a huge wilderness, without elevation of the ground, without trees, fading away without limit into the horizon. Negrin was certainly of old, as it still is in our time, the standing rendezvous and the last place of refuge of the robber chiefs as well as of the natives defying foreign rule--a position commanding far and wide the desert and its trading routes. Even to this extreme limit reached Roman occupation and even Roman settlement in Numidia. [Sidenote: Roman civilisation in Mauretania.] Mauretania was not a heritage like Africa and Numidia. Of its earlier condition we learn nothing; there cannot have been considerable towns even on the coast here in earlier times, and neither Phoenician stimulus nor sovereigns after the type of Massinissa effectively promoted civilisation in this quarter. When his last descendants exchanged the Numidian crown for the Mauretanian, the capital, which changed its name Iol into Caesarea, became the residence of a cultivated and luxurious court, and a seat of seafaring and of traffic. But how much less this possession was esteemed by the government than that of the neighbouring province, is shown by the difference of the provincial organisation; the two Mauretanian armies were together not inferior in number to the Africano-Numidian,[283] but here governors of equestrian rank and imperial soldiers of the class of _peregrini_ sufficed. Caesarea remained a considerable commercial town; but in the province the fixed settlement was restricted to the northern mountain-range, and it was only in the eastern portion that larger inland towns were to be found. Even the fertile valley of the most considerable river of this province, the Shelîf, shows weak urban development; further to the west in the valleys of the Tafna and the Malua it almost wholly disappears, and the names of the divisions of cavalry here stationed serve partly in place of local designations. The province of Tingi (Tangier) even now embraced nothing but this town with its immediate territory and the stripe of the coast along the Atlantic Ocean as far as Sala, the modern Rebât, while in the interior Roman settlement did not even reach to Fez. No land-route connects this province with that of Caesarea; the 220 miles from Tingi to Rusaddir (Melilla) they traversed by water, along the desolate and insubordinate coast of the Riff. Consequently for this province the communication with Baetica was nearer than that with Mauretania; and if subsequently, when the empire was divided into larger administrative districts, the