Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/173

 TOPOGRAPHY OF TUNISU. 14« those hulf-ruined borj or old strongholds, which are dotted round tho whole island. The only humt on the southern shore which merits the name of town, is the Humt Ajim, standing close to the western strait, which is practicable to ships. The present capital of Jerba stands on the northern side, in a ))osition very unfavourable to trade, for large vessels are obliged to anchor some miles from the shore. This town, or rather this collection of scattered houses, is merely known by the name of the " market ; " it is, in fact, the Humt Suk, or Suk-el-Kebir, the rendezvous of all the Jeraba merchants. The Jews, who are very numerous, and are the only persons grouped together in a compact community, inhabit dirty, unsavoury, and dilapidated houses. They claim to have arrived in the island at the time of the Babylonian captivity. In thecenire of the Catholic cemetery, a column perpetuates the memory of the ancient liorj Bins, or " Cuslle of the Heads," a pyramid of bones which the Turks erected in 1560, by heaping up the skulls of the vanquished Spaniards. About the year 1850, the Tunisian Government caused this ghastly monument to be demolished, as a mark of international courtesy. On the side of the Syrtis Minor facing the continent, the largest group of houses is that to which the name of Cabes has been given. It is not a town, but a collection of villages and hamlets scattered in the midst of the palm-trees. Viewed from the sea, the oasis looks like an island of verdure through which glare the white walls of the buildings here and there ; a streamlet, whose up|)er Ix'd is occasionally dry and nearly always blocked by sands at low tide, winds between the villages, ramifying in all directions like canals of irrigation. Near the mouth of the wed stands the Boty Jedid, or " New Castle," surrounded by the wooden huts of a village of " Mercanti," to which the soldiers have given the name of " Coquinville." Many a great city has, nevertheless, sprung from a much humbler beginning than this. Farther up, both banks are covered by the houses of Java, the principal town of the oasis. By the very course of the irrigating trenches, disposed in broken lines, like the ramparts of a citadel, it is at once evident that this was foimerly the site of a fortified city. It was doubtless the citadel of tl.^ ancient Carthaginian town of Ta-Capa, which was successively occupied by the Romans, Byzantines and Arabs, and whose name may still be traced in its present form of CabcM, Gahes^ or Gabs. The ruins of Roman buildings have been employed in constructing the villages of Jara and Meitzel, the latter situated over half a mile farther south, on the right bank of the wed, in the central part of the oasia, where the market is held. Still farther west are many other villages dispersed amongst the palm groves. Altogether the various villages of tho oasis have a collective population of about ten thousand souls, amongst whom are included a few hundrwl Jews. The small European colony has been recently increased by a French garrison, Cabes haing been selected as the capital of a military circle ; a Franco-Arab school has also been opened here. Before the arrival of the French, feuds were of constant