Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/346

 peristyle of sixty columns, and surrounded by a graded cone over 100 feet high, which was probably surmounted by a statue. This monument has been identified with that mentioned by Pomponius Mela as the common mausoleum of a royal family, probably that of Scylax.

At the western extremity of the Mitija stands the picturesque village of Marengo, one of the chief agricultural centres of the whole district. Its fertile fields and gardens are irrigated by an artificial lake on the Wed Meurad, formed by a dam which retains about 70,000,000 cubic feet, with a discharge of nearly 100 gallons per second. Below Marengo the Wed Meurad, after its junction with the Wed Burkika, is known as the Nador, which penetrates a gorge overlooked by the escarpments of the Shenwa, and reaches the coast near the little port of Tipaza.

This place has succeeded an ancient Roman city, which has been partly submerged either by subsidence of the ground, or by some phenomenon of local erosion. Burkika itself is a name of fatal memory, this district having proved the grave of many unhappy exiles banished during the first years of the Second Empire. The true name of the river, written Wed Meurad in the French official nomenclature, would appear to be Wed-el-Merdh, or the "River of Maladies."

The almost isolated Dahra uplands, skirted on the south by the valley of the Shelif, and connected with the rest of the northern highlands by the low sill under