in the whole circuit of the port, filling each up as soon he had obtained his data, in order to avoid as much as possible the miasma exhaled from them, which had proved fatal to another zealous archæologer, the Count Camille Borgia.

The results which M. Beulé conceives himself to have established by this proceeding are, that the circular portion of the Cothon was 1021 metres in circumference, or 325 in diameter. The breadth of the rectangular port was the same, and its extreme length 436. The diameter of the circular island in the centre of the military port was 106 metres; the breadth of the quays which surrounded it 9.35 metres. The Romans had, M. Beulé thinks, obliterated the arrangement Appian describes, for housing the ships around the island, though there are still traces of it along the main quay. On the northern side of the island was a jetty connecting it with the shore, 9.6 metres in breadth. About the middle of its extent a space is left of 4.55 metres, probably to allow of the free passage of boats around the island. We may suppose the interval covered by a bridge, like one of those at Venice. Immediately opposite, on the southern side, are the remains of steps leading down into the water, probably the stairs where the port-admiral took boat when he wished to visit the mercantile harbour. But one of the most curious portions of the ports brought to light by M. Beulé is the channel by which alone the outward port could be entered from the sea. The channel that united the two ports answers to the dimensions given by Appian to the sea-entrance, which he says used to be shut by a chain. It is just 70 feet; but the inlet by which every vessel must have come into harbour is no more than 5.65 metres (about 18 feet 6 inches) in width. An inner wall runs parallel to the southern quay of the merchant port for something more than one third of its length, measured from the eastern extremity (where the entrance is), leaving a narrow channel of the dimensions just stated. An artificial pier and jetty, the foundations of which may still be seen under water in the sea, protected the mouth from the accumulation of sand under the action of the N. and N. E. winds. It is plain, however, that no vessel of which the breadth of beam was more than 5 metres and a half could enter such a harbour; and this gives us a very mean notion of the dimensions of the ancient vessels. It may be said, which, indeed, seems the opinion of M. Beulé, that this entrance does not belong to Punic Carthage, or even to the Roman city in the early days of its magnificence (for instance, in the time of the Antonines); but that it probably dates from the age of the Vandals. These sovereigns were great encouragers of piracy among their sub

jects; and, undoubtedly, such an entrance as M. Beulé describes was much more adapted for the stealthy egress and ingress of small corsairs, than for the passage of merchant vessels of the size of the corn ships of the Roman empire. Still less convenient would it have been for ships of war, which when issuing to meet an enemy's advancing squadron would have been destroyed in detail as they got clear of the passage into the open water. But M. Beulé himself precludes such an explanation, by the very facts he states himself to have observed. The shiphouses round the circular quay appear likewise to have been adapted for vessels of no greater magnitude. Each house together with the wall which separated it from the next one was, according to him, no more than 5·8 or 5·9 metres in width. The wall being ths of a metre, there remains only a clear space of 5 metres and a half, or little more, for the galley which was run in. It is extremely difficult to imagine even a trireme, carrying a complement of nearly 300 men, to have been of such scanty proportions. But, in fact, from the first Punic War the quinquereme superseded the trireme in naval warfare as completely as our eighty-gun two-deckers have superseded the old seventy-fours of Nelson's battles; and it is almost impossible to conceive that the Carthaginians,—who certainly grudged no expense, and, at least in naval matters, do not appear to have been subject to the disease of maladministration, should have allowed their chief arsenal to remain incapable of receiving these. Yet, on the other hand, it is remarkable how irresistibly the details given by Appian, combined with the dimensions certified by M. Beulé, oblige us to adopt this conclusion. One is almost disposed to conjecture that the Greek historian is confusing arrangements which existed in the Roman harbour, with those (possibly of an analogous character) which had preceded them in the Punic times; and that, consequently, ke is not in this well-known description following Polybius, as has been invariably assumed.

A further problem also suggests itself here. Was the Cothon the only port of the greatest commercial city of the ancient world? The aggregate of the two parts taken together, and the channel by which they communicated, only gives 231,617 square metres of water surface, whereas the old port of Marseilles alone contains 270,000. This is considered to be capable of containing 1100 coasting vessels. If we take the rectangular portion of the Cothon alone, the result will be 148,200 square metres, or, in round numbers, a trifle short of 37 English acres. This is indeed very scant measure for a traffic which, however short it may have fallen of the modern scale, yet was such as to

enable the commonwealth to maintain expensive wars for a long series of years. At the end of the second Punic War, when the finances of Carthage were perhaps in the very worst condition, Hannibal was able, by a merely administrative reform, to meet the ordinary expenses, pay the instalment of the indemnity due to the Romans, and leave a balance in the treasury. He was led to the steps which effected this result by observing the immense amount of the Customs (vectigalia quanta terrestria maritimaque essent). It seems impossible, therefore, considering how the making Carthage itself the market of the world entered into the mercantile policy of the age, to conceive that all the ships which repaired thither with cargoes, or indeed any but a comparatively small portion of them, could have found shelter within so small a space as the outer portion of the Cothon. The difficulty is to some extent removed by remembering the different condition of the coast to which we have adverted above. If the Cothon be regarded as a wet dock, into which ships, lying under the shelter of the Tongue,' in the northern part of the Lake of Tunis, and under that of Jebel Khawi on the other side of the isthmus, were removed for the discharge of their cargoes as opportunity offered, a more just notion will probably be formed of the activity of the commerce of antiquity, than in the common way of looking at the subject. Under this view, it seems by no means improbable that judiciously conducted researches may bring to light traces of another port on the opposite side of the isthmus to that on which the Cothon was excavated. It is remarkable that although Appian in one passage speaks of the two portions of the Cothon as two ports, in another he speaks of the Cothon (including the two portions) as one of the ports of Carthage. It may be that this is a mere inaccuracy of compilation; but the other alternative is quite conceivable to any person who has ridden over the ground between Sidi Daoud and Jebel Khawi, and remarked the peculiar lines which exhibit themselves here and there in that region. It is also strange that the name of Marsa - a word which in the Maltese dialect is still used in its Punic sense for a roadstead — should be given to a site which is now not near the sea, and, in fact, upon ground sloping away from it; unless the name be regarded as the traditional record of a time when it would have been appropriate.

Jebel Khawi is the highest of two or three elevations rising up out of the plain into which the visitor descends from the hill of Sidi Bou Said, and forms, together with the latter and the Hill of St. Louis, the three angles of the Carthaginian promontory to which we have before adverted. From its summit

to that of Sidi Bou Said may be four or five miles, and it constitutes an admirable point for examining the bearings of the surrounding country. Its soil fits it excellently for the use to which it was anciently put, that of the necropolis of Carthage in the pagan times. Under the scanty vegetable mould comes first a thin layer of hard tufo, which is succeeded by a limestone of soft texture, very easily worked. In this, on the side most distant from Carthage, the hill is completely mined with the resting-places of the dead. They have been in many parts laid open, originally, M. Beulé thinks, for the sake of plunder, by the Roman soldiers when the town was taken by Scipio. It seems to us more likely that the present traces of violence do not date from any more ancient time than the Vandal period. It is unlikely that in the golden days of the Antonines, when a new epoch of material prosperity commenced for Carthage, any marks of former misery and misfortune should have been suffered to remain in the public necropolis. At present, however, as probably for centuries before, the natives of the vicinity are in the habit of resorting to the hill for lime to burn, and as it is easier to use an entrance once made than to open a new pit, they have in many instances passed through from vault to vault, cutting away the walls which separated the two, and thus every now and then producing the catastrophe of a settlement of the surface. The researches of Dr. Davis appear to have been conducted wholly in localities which have been thus opened. M. Beulé, on the other hand, sought particularly for vaults which had been undisturbed in modern times. His method was to select a point where the surface was to a considerable extent level, and obviously untampered with. He then dug down till he reached the thin crust of tufo. If on tapping this with the pick a hollow sound was returned, he felt sure that there was a tomb, and cleared the soil away for fifteen or twenty square yards till he found the entrance. This consists of an oblong door not more than a yard in width, through which a descent is effected by steps cut out of the stone into an oblong chamber. The tomb is generally found three parts full of earth, which has been drifted or washed in by the rains; for although M. Beulé explored a large number, he seems to have found none which had been allowed to remain closed. The type of a 'family ' vault' for a person in easy circumstances was the following. Entering the narrow door, nine roughly hewn steps conduct into the chamber of the dead, the sides of the entrance being covered with a white stucco. The vault is generally about 7 yards in length, something more than 3 yards in width, and by no means lofty. On each of the two long sides are three

arcades, sunk some 15 or 16 inches in the wall, and in each of these are pierced two rectangular holes, long enough to contain a corpse. They are precisely of the same kind with those which M. de Sauley found at the so-called Tomb of the Pro'phets' on the Mount of Olives, and which he describes by the phrase fours à cercueil.' It appears that at Carthage it was the practice to put the head of the dead in first; for, in some instances, the bones of the feet showed themselves at the entrance of the orifice, while those of the skull were at the bottom of the recess. At the end of the tomb is a single arcade containing three rectangular holes, and on each side of the entrance a single one. Some vaults are smaller and some larger than others, according to the size of the family of the builder, or his forethought for his descendants; some have as few as 3 or 5 niches for corpses, some as many as 21; but the type is essentially the same for all.

In

The walls of the vault in the tombs of the wealthy were covered with a fine white stucco, which was also spread over the entrance to each niche after the corpse had been bricked in, but the interior of the niche was left bare. The limestone, says M. Beulé, is of a character extremely well adapted for absorbing the emanations from the decomposing animal tissues, and probably this end was had in view, as well as the avoidance of unnecessary expense. Sometimes instead of stucco the end of the niche was covered with a plate, probably of bronze. other cases a smaller plate was placed over it. Every one of these has been removed, but the marks of the nails by which they were attached attest their former existence. In none does any trace of colouring appear, nor of design, except that in some an open hand with the fingers extended has been rudely engraved. This device may be very recent indeed. Throughout Barbary it may be seen to this day upon the houses of the natives, where it is generally painted red, and exactly resembles the distinctive mark of a baronet in English heraldry. It is regarded as a phylactery by the Moors, just as the hand closed with the exception of the middle finger (infamis digitus) was by the old women among the Romans. The same observation may be made on another peculiarity remarked both by Dr. Davis and M. Beulé. Small holes appear outside the tombs in which, after rain, water stands for some days. They are intended to attract not (as the doctor imagines) the spirits of the dead, but the birds, the throng of which has from very early days been supposed to indicate the sanctity of a place; and they are found in the cemeteries of Constantinople and Algiers, and indeed throughout the East and North Africa.