well for trade and commerce, as for hunting and diversion; that enjoyed a healthful air, and took in, at one view, the sea, a spacious harbour, a diversity of mountains loaded with trees, and plains cut through with rivers, could engage the affections of the Numidian kings, Hippo had all this to recommend it. The Sei-bouse and Ma-fragg, the principal rivers betwixt Hippo and Tabraca, answer to the Armua and Rubricatus of the ancients. Thuanus, 1. vii. p. 612. seems to have been very little acquainted with the course of the latter, in conducting it, below the promontorium Apollinis, into the gulf of Carthage. Doubling Cape Rosa, five leagues from the Mafragg to the N. E. we turn into the Bastion, where there is a small creek, and the ruins of a fort, that gave occasion to the name. The factory of the French African company had formerly their settlement at this place; but the unwholesomeness of the situation, occasioned by the neighbouring ponds and marshes, obliged them to remove to La Calle, another inlet, three leagues farther to the east, where those gentlemen have a magnificent house and garden, three hundred coral fishers, a company of soldiers, several pieces of ordnance, and a place of arms. Besides the advantage of the coral fishery, and of the whole trade of the circumjacent country, they have also at Bona, Tuckush, Sgigata, and Cull, the monopoly of corn, wool, hides and wax; for which they pay yearly to the govern ment ment of Algiers, to the Kaide of Bona, and to the chiefs of the neighbouring Arabs, thirty thousand dollars, . e. about five thousand guineas of our money; a trifling sum for such great privileges. The Bastion, and La Calle, are, I presume, too near each other to be taken for the Diana and Nalpotes of the Itinerary, which however we are to look for in this situation. Among the principal inhabitants of the maritime parts of Numidia, we have along the banks of the Zeamah, the Beni-Meleet; and after them the Reramnah, Taabnah, and Beni Minnah, who, with the Hajaitah and Senhadgah, the Bedoweens of Porto Gavetto and Ras Hadeed, are the chief communities of the Sinus Numidicus, or gulf of Stora. But the mountains from Tuckush to Bona, and the plains from thence to the Mafragg, are cultivated by the citizens of Bona. The Merdass, who have continued to live in this situation from the time of J. Leo*, are the Bedoweens of the champaign country betwixt the Mafragg and the Bastion. Beyond them are the Mazoulah, who have an unwholesome district, full of ponds and marshes, quite up to the Nadies. These, a mischievous plundering tribe, like the rest who live upon the frontiers, spread themselves from the Wed el Erg, to the mountains of Ta-barka; where the river Zaine, the ancient Tusca, the * Huic oppido (Bone) spatiosissima quædam est planities, cujus longitudo quadraginta, latitudo autem viginti quinque continet milliaria: hæc frugibus serendis est felicissima, ab Arabibus quibusdam colitur, quos Merdez appellant. J. Leo, p. 211. the eastern boundary of this province, has its sources. Zaine, in the language of the neighbouring Kabyles, signifies an oak tree; a word of the same import nearly with Thabraca, or Tabraca, as the ancient city, built upon the western banks of it, was called. Leo indeed, and others upon his authority, call it Guadilbarbar, i. e. the river Barbar, and deduce it from the city Urbs, which lies a great way to the southward. But this river is known by no such name at present; neither are its fountains at any greater distance than the adjacent mountains. Tabarca, as it is now called, has a small fort to defend it, but can boast of few other remaining antiquities, besides a Cippus, with the following inscription: D. M. S. NEVIA GEMIS. The Lomellines, a noble Genoese family, have been in possession of the little island that lies before Tabarca, at the mouth of the Zaine, ever since the time of the famous Andrea Doria, to whom the Tuniseans gave it, with the solemn consent of the Grand Segnor, in ransom for one of their princes, whom Andrea had taken captive. This place is defended by a small castle, well armed, and in good order, and protected the coral fishery, which was carried on in these seas. But, A. D. 1740, that monster of princes, Ally Bashaw, the the reigning king of Tunis, took it by treachery from the Genoese; and, contrary to all justice, and the right of nations, put some of them to the sword, and the rest, to the number of three or four hundred, he carried into captivity. CHAPTER VIII. Of the most remarkable inland Places and Inhabitants of the Eastern Province, or Province of Constantina, together with the correspondent part of the Sahara. THE whole tract of this province, which lies be tween the meridians of the rivers Boo-berak and Zhoore, from the sea coast to the parallels of Seteef and Constantina, is, for the most part, a continued chain of exceedingly high mountains; few of whose inhabitants, from the ruggedness of their situation, pay any tribute to the Algerines. Near the parallels of Seteef and Constantina, it is diversified with a beautiful interchange of hills and plains, which afterwards grows less fit for tillage, till it ends, upon the Sahara, in a long range of mountains, the Buzara, as I take it to be, of the ancients. The district of Zaab lies immediately under these mountains; and be yond yond Zaab, at a great distance in the Sahara, is Wadreag, another collection of villages. This part of the eastern province, including the parallel of Zaab, answers to the Mauritania Sitifensis, or the First Mauritania*, as it was called in the middle age. The mountainous country betwixt the meridians of the rivers Zhoore and Seibouse is of no great extent, rarely spreading itself above six leagues within the continent; the inhabitants whereof, near Tuckush and Bona, are tributaries to the Algerines, but in the gulf of Stora, near Port Gavetto, Sgigata, and Tull, they bid them defiance. From the Sei-bouse to the Zaine, except in the neighbourhood of Ta-barka, where it begins again to be very mountainous, the country is mostly upon a level, though sometimes interrupted by hills and forests. The like interruptions we meet with below Tuckush, along the encampments of the Hareishah, Grarah, and other Bedoweens, as far as Constantina, where we sometimes see a small species of red deer, which are rarely, if ever, met with in other parts of this kingdom. Beyond this parallel, we have a range of high mountains, the Thambes of Ptolemy, extending themselves as far as Ta-barka; behind which, there is pasture and arable ground, ending at length upon the Sahara, as the Mauritania Sitifensis did before, in a ridge of mountains, the Mampsarus probably of the ancients. Part of * Procop. Bell. Vand. c. 30. 1. ii. p. 287. the |