Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/49

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INTRODUCTION.
xxxiii

merit of its several parts only could be collected from the fragments which lie strewed upon the ground.

From Musti[1] I proceeded north-eastward to Tubersoke, thence again to Dugga, and down the Bagrada to Tunis.

My third, or, which may be called my middle journey through Tunis, was by Zowan, a high mountain, where is a large aqueduct which formerly carried its water to Carthage. Thence I came to Jelloula, a village lying below high mountains on the west; these are the Montes Vassaleti of Ptolemy[2], as the town itself is the Oppidum Usalitanum of Pliny. I fell here again into the ancient road at Gilma; and, not satisfied with what I had seen of the beauties of Spaitla, I passed there five days more, correcting and revising what I had already committed to paper. Independent of the treasure I found in the elegance of its buildings, the town itself is situated in the most beautiful spot in Barbary, surrounded thick with juniper-trees, and watered by a pleasant stream that sinks there under the earth, and appears no more.

Here I left my former road at Cassareen, and proceeding directly S.E. came to Feriana, the road that I had abandoned before from prudential motives. Feriana, as has been before observed, is the ancient Thala, taken and destroyed by Metellus in his pursuit of Jugurtha. I had formed, I know not from what reason, sanguine expectations of ele-gant


  1. Itin. Anton. p. 2.
  2. Ptol. Geog. lib. iv. p. 110.