consequently reduced to rely upon what they can catch in cisterns when it rains, or upon what is brought into the city from a brackish well in the vicinity in leathern bags, and sold about the streets as a precious article of traffic. The Tunisians, our traveller observes, are the most civilized people of Barbary, agreeable in their intercourse with strangers, and coveting rather than shunning, like other Mohammedans, all occasions of coming into contact with Christians. The population of the city at this period was said to exceed three hundred thousand; no doubt an extravagant exaggeration, as the circumference of the place did not much exceed three miles.
From this city our traveller continued his journey towards the east, and passing by Rhodes, the ancient Ades, Solyman, and Masourah, arrived at the sanctuary of Sidi Daoud, situated among the ruins of the ancient Nisna. Here he was shown the tomb of the saint, which was found upon examination to be nothing but a Roman prætorium, the pavement of which was adorned with the most elegant mosaics in the world; the general design being as bold and free as that of a picture, while the various figures, which consisted of horses, birds, fishes, and trees, were executed with the most delicate symmetry, and in a variety of brilliant colours so judiciously intermingled and contrasted as to produce an admirable effect. He next fixes at Lowhareah, the site of the ancient Aquilaria, where, during the civil wars, the troops of Cairo were landed, and cut to pieces by Sabura. The remaining ruins were insignificant; but the immense quarries from whence, according to Strabo, the materials for the building of Carthage, Utica, and other neighbouring cities were obtained, still remain open, and are supposed to have furnished Virgil with the original hint of his "Nympharum Domus," &c., in the first book of the Æneid, though Addison rather supposes that the Bay
