130 NOETH-WEST AFRICA. bay of Tabarka westwards along tbe Algerian coast; altbougb no'.v somewhat iinpovcrislutl, these bunks were till recently visited by hundreds of vessels from Torre del Greco. The fishing for those shell-fish (the murex) which supplied a purple dye, has been abandoned since the time of the Romans. The enormous heaps of mmrx and jmrpura, similar to those on the beaches of Sidon, still seen on the shores of Jerbu and Lake Biban, are a proof of the great importance of this industry to the old rhocnician colonies along the African seaboard. Inhabitants of Tunisia. Beyond the territories of Tripoli, which are mainly deserts, and offer along the coast but few ports, a narrow cultivated zone, and oases few and far between, Tunis must naturally have proved pre-eminently a land of promise to invaders coming either from the sea or from inland. Its fluvial basin, the first occurring in Africa west of the Egyptian Nile, from which it is separated by such vast wastes, its fertile plains, its lakes and gulfs teeming with fish, its ports so excellently situated both for commerce and for the military command of the Mediterranean basin, were advantages calculated to attract warlike nations, and convert this region into a battlefield for rival states. Stations covered with the scattered remains of stone implements and weapons, besides megaliths, menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, rare in certain re o-ions of Tunis but very common in others, still recall the presence of peoples having either the same origin or the same religion as the primitive inhabi- tants of Brittany and Andalusia. In the very beginning of written history, the Phanicians had already estab- lished themselves at the very angle of the continent, whence they could command the waters of Sardinia on one side and those of Crete on the other. Then the Itomans, become powerful, desired in their turn to conquer this African foreland, without which none of their Mediterranean possessions, Sicily, Sardinia, or Italy itself, would have been free from attack. Thus for more than a century the known world was shaken by the struggles of these two powerful rivals, until the Phanician city was levelled with the ground, and succeeded by a flourishing Iloman settle- ment. The Vandals and the JJyzantines afterwards contended for the possession of Tunis, which many successive invasions of the Arabs brought at last within the circle of the jNIohammedan world. The Turks merely succeeded in giving governors to the country, and the invasions of the European Christians, under Ijouis IX. and Charles V., did not last long enough to produce the slightest per- ceptible change in the civilisation of Tunis. But, on the other hand, piracy, by introflucing a constant stream of slaves into the country, led undoubtedly to a con- siderable modification of type amongst the urban populations. The Berbers and Arabs. The ancient Carthaginian and Roman masters of this region, both of whom ruled over it for many centuries and covered it with towns, fortresses, and monu-
