Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/401

 TOWNS AND HYDRAULIC WORKS. 379 all risk of muddiness from the sediment with which even its comparatively clean floor must have been covered. We see then that in this building there were two clearly defined systems of construction. In the one there were regular courses of rough stone combined with angles of dressed masonry, and a keyed vault ; in the other there was only a mass of concrete ; walls, buttresses, even mouldings, all are of that substance. Neither parts of the work can belong to the modern civilisation of the country. It is many a long century since either the Moors or the Arabs gave a thought to such an enterprise as this. They have not even taken the trouble to keep the town reservoirs in repair, so that it is in the last degree unlikely that they would build such cisterns as these in the open country. Wherever they have taken it into their heads to contrive some reserve of the refreshing element they have been content with what are called in Tunis feskias, a sort of pond surrounded by a wall, in which the water is made fetid and unhealthy by the accumulated mud. We may therefore ascribe both parts of the reservoir to the ancient civilisation ; the two circular basins to the Carthaginians, the square filter to their conquerors. The whole contrivance gives striking evidence of that genius for adapting means to ends which distinguished the Phoenician race. At Malta, where springs are few and scanty, there are some fine antique cisterns, some of which may well date from the Phoenician epoch. We should be willing to recognize oriental hands in the well-preserved structure known as the Gar-el-giganli, near the harbour of Marsa Scirocco and the Bordj-en-Nadur, in which Maltese scholars see the ruins of a temple to Melkart. It is built entirely of good masonry. The stone roof lies on long architraves of the same material, which are in turn supported by twelve piers built up of large stones. A wide flight of steps gives access to the reservoir, and the whole has an imposing look of strength and simplicity. 1 We should have liked much to know how those dwellings of the great Phoenician merchants and manufacturers, in which all the luxury of the ancient world was accumulated, were arranged and furnished ; but details are wanting. It was once believed that 1 CARUANA, Report, p. 19. We have been compelled to refrain from reproducing Mr. Caruana's illustration of this reservoir, because it contains certain incompre- hensible details for which we should have had to find a conjectural explanation.