Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/192

 probably of Phœnician origin. They recently served as places of shelter to the tunny-fishers, and have occasionally been used as places for keeping sailors and travellers in quarantine. Farther east, the group of Kuriateïn Islands which is connected with Cape Dimas by a submarine bank, is, according to Tissot the remnant of a considerable tract of land, which was still in existence at the Punic period; however, the documents on which this hypothesis is founded are not definit enough to lend much value to the statement.

Sûsa, the principal city of the Tunisian Sahel, is considered to be the second Ħtown of Tunis, if not for the number of its inhabitants, being in this respect surpassed

by Sfakes, at least for its strategical importance. A large part of the surrounding territory is under cultivation, and nearly all the natives dwell in fixed, abodes. Sûsa, which is of Phœnician origin, is the port of Kairwan, the principal city and military centre of the interior, and was itself, at one time, also a capital city. Under the name of Hadrumetum, it was in the time of the Romans the chief town of the province of Byzacenæ, and its wealth and military position exposed it