240 NOETH-WEST AFEICA. century. During the wars of the Empire the English purchased this station from the natives, but restored it to France in 1816. Although the oldest French settle- ment in Algeria, La Calle is still the least French in its European population, three-fourths of whom are Italians, chiefly from Naples and Sicily. The coral fishery, the chief industry on this coast, has suffered much by the introduction of modern dredging gear, and is now largely replaced by the trade in sardines, large quantities of which are here cured and exported to Naples and the south of Italy. In rough weather the harbour of La Calle is almost inaccessible to shipping ; but works have been undertaken or projected which, when carried out, will afford complete shelter from the winds and surf. Some six miles east of La Calle, the Tunisian frontier is guarded by the fortified station of Uni-et- Tcbul, which occupies the lower slope of a mountain abounding in argentiferous lead deposits, at present worked by about three hundred miners, mostly from Piedmont. From 2,500 to 3,000 tons of ore are yearly forwarded by a small local railway to Mesida, and there shipped for Europe. In the district between La Calle and the Tunisian frontier have been found the largest dolmens and the most numerous Latin and Berber bilingual inscriptions. At the mouth of the extensive Seybouse Valley stands the famous city of Bona, and at the source of the Sherf, its chief headstream, the modern town of Ain Boida ("White Spring*'), which dates only from the year 1848. North-west of this place, which lies midway between Constantino and Tebessa, is situated the important mart of Uin-cl-Bamji, much frequented by the powerful Haracta Berber tribe. In the Zenati river valley, usually called Haradan, forming with the Sherf the muin stream of the Ssy bouse, the chief centre of population is the commune and town of Wed Zenati. The whole of this district, including Aiii-er-Regnda and Ain-el-Abid, has been conceded to a financial company, and constitutes a vast domain of sora? 250,000 acres, of which 185,000 are leased to a single tenant. On the Wed Ilamdan, a short distance above its junction with the Sherf, are the houses and railway station of Haminam-el-Meskhuthin, or " Bath of the Accursed." At this point the bed of a streamlet is occupied by a "petrified cascade," or mass of calcareous concretions over thirty feet high, formed by a number of tiny falls charged with lime, which have here deposited incrustations in diverse colours — red, violet, blue, or grey, and here and there sparkling like fresh- fallen snow. These copious springs discharge nearly four hundred gallons per second, at a mean temperature of from 220° to 230° F. The concretions, which are of a somewhat coarse texture, are so rapidly precipitated that the position of the cascade is continually advancing, and fresh rills have constantly to be formed for the service of the ponds established along its sides. The saline and ferruginous thermal waters of Hammam-el-Meskhuthin are utilised by a military and a civil hospital, the latter frequented especially by the Jews, and this station is destined sooner or later to become one of the chief therapeutic establishments in Algeria. It takes its Roman name of Aqu(t TibilitaiKc from the town of Tibili or Anmma, whose ruins lie some 6 miles to the
