Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/417

 HARBOURS. 395 traffic of the great French port for so many centuries, we may conclude that the two basins could find accommodation for about 937 vessels. But the ships of the ancients were much smaller than ours, and many of those entering the Carthaginian Cothon were nothing more than decked boats, so that we may take a much higher figure than 937 as representing the real capacity of the port. We only make these comparisons to help our readers to a true idea of what the harbours in which the war and merchant fleets of Carthage found shelter really were. The word cothon was used, we think, of the two great harbours taken together. But those closed basins cannot have sufficed for the whole mari- time trade of Carthage ; many vessels must have found moorings in the Lake of Tunis, which was then much deeper than it is now ; others would lie on the beach below the southern wall, in the neighbourhood of the bazaar and the populous quarter which stretched away to the west of the two great harbours. During the fine season some would unload their cargoes on the quays which lay along the sea to the east of the quarter commanded by Byrsa. 1 Farther to the north, between the two capes now called Sidi-bou-Sdid and Kamart there was a fair anchorage opposite to a sandy beach ; the name of La Marsa or " the harbour," which still clings to the village in the neighbourhood of this little bay, shows that vessels might there still be loaded and discharged. 2 Finally, on the north-west, at one extremity of the great suburb of Megalia, on the same side as the lake now known as the Sebkha of Soukhara or El-Rouan, the sea washed the very foot of the ramparts ; here must have been the harbour for the small vessels trading with Utica and the neighbouring coast, 3 so that 1 Traces of these quays have been found by every explorer. 2 This is now the watering-place of the district, the favourite spot being near the villa called Palais- Khasnadar. The appearance of the ground here seems to show that the sea has retreated ; in antiquity the bay must have been much deeper and may have offered a very good anchorage. 3 M. Tissot told me that he found traces of an anchorage on this side. We know from a passage in Appian that the Sebkha was once a wide bay with a sufficient depth of water. The new consul, Emilius Scipio, entered the harbour of Utica with rein- forcements in the evening, and during the same night sailed with his squadron to go to the help of Mancinus ; he arrived next morning, just at the very moment that his predecessor was about to succumb, and the Carthaginians beat a retreat as soon as they caught sight of his ships (APPIAN, viii. 104). If he had had to double Cape Carthage a whole day would not have been enough for the transit, so that we may conclude that it was by the bay now represented by the Sebkha that he was so