Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/147

 THE TUNISIAN COAST AND ISLANDS. 11» nnd the Buliirct-cl-Bibun, or " Lake of the Gutes." This latter coasthind swamp, perfectly similar in formation to those found in Languedoc, is separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land known as " The Dog's Nose." In the narrowest portion of this strip of land are two inlets, one of which is so deep that horses are obliged to swim through it. An islet at this point of the coast, lying between the two channels, is occupied by the fortress of Bibtln, or " the Gates," so called on account of the marine passages which it protects, and also because it guards the approach to Tunis from the Trijiolitan frontier. This ixjrtion of the coast seems to have been greatly modified within historic times. Edrisi places at about a mile fcom the beach of the Bib&n fortress an island called Ziru, which is no longer in existence, unless, as many writers believe, it has become merged in the strip of land between the sea and the lake. But in this case it would have changed its shape, and the sea would have gradually eaten it away, for in the time of Edrisi, in the twelfth century, it was covered with villages surrounded by vines and palm groves. Forty miles long by half a mile broad, this island must in any case have been a sandy tongue of land which has effected a junction with the coast. The site of this vanished land is probably marked by the reefs and sandbank of Zcra. At this point a piece of land still stood high and dry in the sixteenth century, and here was assembled the fleet of the Duke of Medina-Coclis, when on an expedition against Jerba island in the year 1560. The islands of Southern Tunis are not of independent origin, like the volcanic cliff of Pantellaria, off Cape Bon, but are merely fragments detached from the neighbouring coast by the erosive action of the water or by the subsidence of the land. The Kerkennah islands, the Cercina and Cercinitis of Strabo, which form off Sfakes the northern limit of the Syrtis Minor, or Gulf of Cabes, present the appearance of a mass of soil incessantly eroded by the waves. It is even very probable that the archipelago of the two islands and the adjacent reefs has been gradually diminished within historic times. Scylax si)eaks of but one island, of which the two present islands are probably no more than a mere fragment ; and the measurements which Pliny and Herodotus assign to Cercina (Cyraunis) and Cercinitis are no longer correct. They have diminished, and the northern portion has been partially demolished by the waves, although the strait which separates the two islands has scarcely changed for the last two thousand years. There are still to be seen the ruins of a causeway, some 4,000 ft^t long, which connected the two banks, and which might be easily rebuilt. At the southern extremity of the Gulf of Cabes, the large island of Jerba, the Meninx of the ancients, which tradition jwints out us " the land of the Lotophagi," has apparently better preserved the shaiKJ it had at the beginning of historical times. However, it is scarcely separated from the mainland, from which it can be easily reached by fording the intervening channel. The island terminates south- wards in two points towards which are directed two promontories from the mainland, and on both sides the coast has been eroded between these capes in such