running down either side. Hammam R’Irha to the N.E. of Miliana, noted from the time of the Romans for its thermal springs, occupies a picturesque position 1800 ft. above the sea. Being the only place within easy distance of western Europe where patients can take with safety a course of baths during the winter months, it has become a resort of invalids. Orleansville (3510), on the extensive plain of the Shelif, 130 m. S.W. by rail from Algiers, and 132 m. N.E. from Oran, is an important military station. The basilica of St Reparatus, discovered in 1843, was allowed to be used as a public stable and has been completely destroyed. There was in it a beautiful mosaic of which, fortunately, drawings exist. From this it appears that the church was built in A.D. 324, and that St Reparatus, bishop of the diocese, was buried in it in 475. Orleansville occupies the site of the Roman Castellum Tingitanum.
Ninety miles S.W. of Bougie is Aumale (2350), a town and military post established by the French in 1846 on the site of the ancient Auzia. The Roman town was founded in the reign of Augustus, and it flourished for two centuries before it disappeared from history. Out of the materials of the ancient city the Turks built a fort, which at the time of the French occupation was itself a heap of ruins. Setif (12,261), the Sitifis Colonia of the Romans, is 50 m. S.E. of Bougie and 97 m. by rail W. of Constantine. It stands 3573 ft. above the sea, and is the junction of several great lines of communication. Its market is attended by Kabyles, Arabs of the plateaus and people from the Sahara. The town has been entirely rebuilt in the French style. Most of the Roman ruins, even those existing at the time of the French occupation (1839), have disappeared. The walls of the Roman city, restored probably by the Byzantines, have been incorporated in the French walls, which are pierced by four gates. Batna (5279), a walled town 3350 ft. above the sea, 50 m. S. of Constantine by the railway to Biskra, commands the passage of the Aures mountains by which the nomads of the Sahara were wont to enter the Tell. Its importance rests on its strategic position. On the railway between Constantine and Bona and 76 m. from the latter, is Guelma (6584), the Roman Kalama, finely situated on the right bank of the Seybuse. The French occupied the place in 1836 and built their town out of the Roman ruins. Thirty miles S.E. of Guelma is Suk Ahras (7602), a station on the railway to Tunis, identified with the Roman city Tagaste, the birthplace of St Augustine.
Towns in the Sahara.—On the southern slopes of the Great Atlas, 2437 ft. above the sea, looking out on the Saharan desert, and 200 m. in a straight line S. W. of Algiers, is the ancient town of El Aghuat (erroneously written Laghouat); pop. 5660. It formerly belonged to Morocco, by whom it was ceded to the Turks towards the close of the 17th century. It was stormed on the 4th of December 1852 by the French, who almost entirely destroyed the Arab town. The modern town contains little of interest, but is an important military station. One hundred and twelve miles S. of El Aghuat, and 36 m. W.N.W. of Wargla, is Ghardaia (pop. 7868), the capital of the Mzab country, annexed by France in 1882. This country consists of seven oases, five in close proximity and two isolated. The town of Ghardaia (in the local documents Taghardeit) is situated on a mosque-crowned hill in the middle of the Wadi Mzab, 1755 ft. above the sea. Ghardaia, which is divided by walls into three quarters, is built of limestone and the houses are in terraces one above the other. The central quarter is the home of the ruling tribe, the Beni-Mzab. The eastern quarter belongs to the Jews, of whom there are about 300 families; the western is occupied by the Medabia, Arabs from the Jebel Amur. The gardens belong exclusively to the Beni-Mzab. According to native accounts the town was founded about the middle of the 16th century. Aghrem Baba Saad, a small ruined town to the west of Ghardaia, is the fortified post in which the Beni-Mzab took refuge when the Turks under Salah Rais (about 1555) attempted unsuccessfully to subjugate the country. Next to Ghardaia the most important Mzabite town is Beni-Isguen (pop. 4916), an active trading centre. Guerrara, one of the two isolated oases, 37 m. N.E. of Ghardaia, contains a flourishing commercial town with 1912 inhabitants.
The caravan route south from Ghardaia brings the traveller, after a journey of 130 m., to the oasis and town of El Golea (pop. about 2500). The town consists of three portions—the citadel on a limestone hill, the upper and the lower town—separated by irregular plantations of date trees. The place is an important station for the caravan trade between Algeria and the countries to the south. It was occupied by the French under General Gallifet in 1873. El Golea was originally a settlement of the Zenata Berbers, by whom it was known as Taorert, and there is still a considerable Berber element in its population. The full Arab name is El Golea’a el Menia’a, or the “little fortress well defended.”
Archaeology.—Algeria is rich in prehistoric memorials of man, especially in megalithic remains, of which nearly every known kind has been found in the country. Numerous flints of palaeolithic type have been discovered, notably at Tlemcen and Kolea. Near Jelfa, in the Great Atlas, and at Mechera-Sfa (“ford of the flat stones”), a peninsula in the valley of the river Mina not far from Tiaret in the department of Oran, are vast numbers of megalithic monuments. In the Kubr-er-Rumia—“grave of the Roman lady” (Roman being used by the Arabs to designate strangers of Christian origin)—the Medrassen and the Jedars, Algeria possesses a remarkable series of sepulchral monuments. The Kubr-er-Rumia—best known by its French name, Tombeau de la Chrétienne, tradition making it the burial-place of the beautiful and unfortunate daughter of Count Julian—is near Kolea, and is known to be the tomb of the Mauretanian king Juba II. and of his wife Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, and Mark Antony. It is built on a hill 756 ft. above the sea. Resting on a lower platform, 209 ft. square, is a circular stone building surmounted by a pyramid. Originally the monument was about 130 ft. in height, but it has been wantonly damaged. Its height is now 100 ft. 8 in.: the cylindrical portion 36 ft. 6 in., the pyramid 64 ft. 2 in. The base, 198 ft. in diameter, is ornamented with 60 engaged Ionic columns. The capitals of the columns have disappeared, but their design is preserved among the drawings of James Bruce, the African traveller. In the centre of the tomb are two vaulted chambers, reached by a spiral passage or gallery 612 ft. broad, about the same height and 489 ft. long. The sepulchral chambers are separated by a short passage, and are cut off from the gallery by stone doors made of a single slab which can be moved up and down by levers, like a portcullis. The larger of the two chambers is 1412 ft. long by 11 ft. broad and 11 ft. high. The other chamber is somewhat smaller. The tomb was early violated, probably in search of treasure. In 1555 Salah Rais, pasha of Algiers, set men to work to pull it down, but the records say that the attempt was given up because big black wasps came from under the stones and stung them to death. At the end of the 18th century Baba Mahommed tried in vain to batter down the tomb with artillery. In 1866 it was explored by order of the emperor Napoleon III., the work being carried out by Adrian Berbrugger and Oscar MacCarthy.
The Medrassen is a monument similar to the Kubr-er-Rumia, but older. It was built about 150 B.C. as the burial-place of the Numidian kings, and is situated 35 m. S.W. of Constantine. The form is that of a truncated cone, placed on a cylindrical base, 196 ft. in diameter. It is 60 ft. high. The columns encircling the cylindrical portion are stunted and much broader at the base than the top; the capitals are Doric. Many of the columns, 60 in number, have been much damaged. When the sepulchral chamber was opened in 1873 by Bauchetet, a French engineer officer, clear evidence was found that at some remote period the tomb had been rifled and an attempt made to destroy it by fire.
The Jedars (Arab. “walls” or “buildings”) are in the department of Oran. The name is given to a number of sepulchral monuments placed on hill-tops. A rectangular or square podium is in each case surmounted by a pyramid. The tombs date from the 5th to the 7th century of the Christian era, and lie in two distinct groups between Tiaret and Frenda, a distance of 35 m. Tiaret (pop. 5778), an ancient town modernized by the French, can be reached by railway from Mostaganem. Near
