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By the Arabs, however, as already suggested, it is named the Land of Dates, from the vast quantity of that fruit which grows there, and which constitutes an article of food and of commerce extremely important to the various tribes who frequent its borders. The whole region comprises the southern side of Atlas, together with the territory lying near it, extending as far as the Great Desert, between the 26th and 30th degrees of north latitude.

This country, which is fertile only in those places where water is found, loses itself by degrees in the Sahara, the desert of Herodotus. Like the hills just mentioned, this barren tract occupies the entire breadth of Africa, and even stretches through Arabia and Persia into the provinces of Northern India. The width of the sandy belt is not everywhere the same; the greatest being in the western parts, between Morocco and the Negro Country, and the least between the present states of Tripoli and Kassina, where also the oasesthose fruitful patches of well-watered ground-occur most frequently in the path of the caravans. It becomes again much broader as it approaches Egypt; and, finally, forms a junction with the wilderness of Nubia, and thence, it is probable, with the central portion of the African continent.*

The origin of the term Barbary is lost, as well in the obscurity of the original language as in the fanciful hypotheses which have been framed to illustrate its meaning and application. Leo Africanus has recorded certain opinions entertained on this subject by those who wrote before his days, adding his own reflections, of which it may not be deemed severe to remark, that they tend not in the slightest degree to remove the darkness wherewith he found the inquiry enveloped. According to his authorities, the word Ber signifies a desert; while others, on the contrary, maintain that it denotes a rich soil; the duplication of the term, Berber, conveying the happy discovery that the land along the coast appeared unusually fertile, more especially to eyes fatigued with the bare and monotonous aspect of the wilderness.†

* Heeren's Historical Researches, vol. i., p. 7. Herodotus, book ii., c. 32, and book iv., c. 81.

+ Hujus subfusci coloris incolæ appellati sunt nomine Barbar, a verbo Barbara quod eorum idiomate idem sonat quod Latinis murmuro: eò quòd Africanus sermo Arabibus non aliter sonet quam beluarum vox, quæ nullo accentu suas edunt vocifera

Little aid can be derived from the classical authors, who took more delight in gratifying their imaginations than in storing their minds with knowledge. To them Africa appeared much in the same light as India and China did to the writers of the middle ages; and while they crowded it with wonders of magnificence and splendour, they introduced into it all the monstrous and most terrific productions of nature. A tradition had reached the ears of Sallust, the historian, that a mixed horde of Asiatics, led by the fabled hero Hercules, after advar.cing to the western shores of Spain and losing their chief, sought employment for their arms in Africa; where, it was supposed, they finally incorporated with the natives, and assumed a new name. The Persians, it is said, upon landing on the desolate shore, inverted their barks and used them for dwellings; supplying, as the annalist suggests, a pattern for the Numidian cottages, even as they existed in his own days.*

Procopius has pledged his credit for the truth of a legend still more ancient than the one now quoted, and assures his readers that, in the time of the war with the Vandals, when he accompanied the great Belisarius into Africa in quality of secretary, there were yet to be seen, near a fountain at Tangier, two columns of white stone, whereon were inscribed, in the Phoenician tongue, the following words :-"We fly from the robber Joshua, the son of Nun." Whatever accuracy there may be in this statement, there is no doubt that the northern parts of the African continent must have been peopled by emigrants from Asia. If any confidence can be placed in those traditionary records which descend from father to son, and constitute the history of all barbarous nations, it must be believed that successive multitudes, armed and unarmed, sought in the less populous countries which stretch out on either side of the Mediterranean a refuge from the tyranny of Asiatic conquerors. The Moors narrate that their origin may be traced to Sabæa, a district of Arabia, whence their ancestors, under their king Ifricki, were expelled by a superior force, and reduced to the necessity of seeking a new tiones. Alii volant Barbar nomen replicatum esse, eo quod Bar lingua Arabica desertum denotet.-Africa Descrip., líb. prim., p. 12.

* Sallust. Bell. Jugurth., c. 18.-Iique alveos navium inversos pro tuguriis habuere.

home in the remote regions of the West. This inroad, which could not be accomplished without violence, drove the older mhabitants from the vicinity of the coast into the less fertile tracts that border on the Desert; where they appear to have provided for their defence by forming caves in the mountains, as well as by erecting fortresses in strong passes and ravines. Even at the present day, there are found in Southern Numidia the remains of towns and castles, which present an air of very great antiquity. The Arabs, disdaining the protection of walls and the restraint of a stationary life, carried into Africa their wonted habits; preferring the moveable tent to the "city which hath foundations," and watching their numerous flocks over unlimited pastures, rather than submitting to the drudgery of agriculture or of manufactures. The earlier inhabitants appear to have been less erratic in their mode of life, and, like the Egyptians, with whom, it is not improbable, they were connected, fond of excavating dwellings in the rocks, and of erecting lofty structures for ornament or safety. Hence the ruins, to which allusion has just been made, in the interior of Morocco, and which must owe their origin to a people different from the Sabeans, who are supposed to have expelled them from their seats.*

Whoever were the original possessors of Africa, it is confirmed by the general voice of history that the Phoenicians, about 900 years before the Christian era, founded a variety of colonies along its shores. The narrow territory on the Asiatic coast originally occupied by this enterprising people, who had already carried their trade to all parts of the known world, soon suggested the expediency of removing the superabundant population to less crowded countries. Political broils on many occasions produced the same effect; sending the disaffected from the parent state to seek an asylum in remote regions, where their opinions could not be so strictly watched, and where their impatient spirits would be freed from the control of an imperious master. But other motives, unconnected either with commerce or civil liberty, might also operate in withdrawing the inhabitants from the Phoenician monarchy. Carthage, the most powerful of their settlements, according to a tradition, the truth of which there is

Procop. de Bello Vandal., lib. ii, p. 37.-Morgan's Complete History of Algiers, p. 9.

no reason to question, owed its origin to the crime of the King of Tyre, who, urged by avarice or ambition, murdered his brother-in-law, the priest of Melcarth, their national god. Many of the citizens, offended and alarmed by this atrocity, resolved to leave their native land; and placing themselves under Elissa, the widow of the murdered prince, they put to sea, and directed their course towards Africa. They dis embarked in the bay in which Tuneta and Utica were already built; and fixing on a narrow promontory which runs out into the sea, they agreed to pay for it a price, or perhaps an an nual tribute, to the Libyans, who clained the property of the soil. Here they erected a place of defence, to which they gave the name of Betzura, the fort or stronghold, but which the Greeks, according to their usual practice, changed into Byrsa, a term referrible to their own tongue; and as this word, so interpreted, denotes the skin of a bullock, they invented the popular tale, describing how the Tyrians imposed upon the unsuspecting savages in the bargain for their first possession. Appian gravely remarks, that the Africans laughed at the folly of Dido, who begged only for so small a quantity of land as she could cover with the hide of an ox, but much admired the subtlety of her contrivance in cutting it into thongs.*

Virgil, using the privilege of a poet, has raised upon the facts now stated a beautiful fiction, which, like the Paradise Lost of the great Milton, conveys a commentary so striking as to supersede, in ardent minds, all recollection of the more scanty record which it was meant to illustrate. Regardless of dates, he connects the voyage of Æneas, after the fall of

* Appian in Lybicis.

The word Betzura, Bitzra, or Bozrah, is of Hebrew etymology, and signifies a fort or castle. It is the name of the Idumean capital, the chief town in the country of Edom.-Morgan, p. 10.

The legend of the ox-hide seems to have gone round the world. Hussun Subah, the chief of the Assassins, is said to have acquired in the same manner the hill-fort of Allahamowt. The Persians maintain that the British got Calcutta in the same way. An English tradition avers that it was by a similar trick Hengist and Horsa got a settlement in the Isle of Thanet; and it is somewhere stated, that this was the mode by which one of our colonies in America obtained their land of the Indians.-Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxvii., 213.

Troy, with the expedition of the Tyrian princess to the coast of Libya, and thereby interests his reader in the early fates of those two proud commonwealths, whose mutual strife so long agitated the shores of the Mediterranean, and died its waves with blood. The accuracy with which the bay of Carthage is described may justify a quotation, which, though not comparable to the splendid original, will communicate at least a topographical outline of the scene:

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"Within a long recess there lies a bay

An island shades it from the rolling sea,
And forms a port secure for ships to ride.
Broke by the jutting land on either side,
In double streams the briny waters glide
Betwixt two rows of rocks: a sylvan scene
Appears above, and groves for ever green:
A grot is formed beneath, with mossy seats,
To rest the Nereïds, and exclude the heats:
Down through the crannies of the living walls,
The crystal streams descend in murm'ring falls:
No halsers need to bind the vessels here,

Nor bearded anchors; for no storms they fear."*

It has been remarked, that Carthage was from the begin. ning an independent state, after the model of the trading towns which were planted along the Phoenician coast. Tyre and her colony, without claiming dominion or acknowledging subjection, observed to each other that mutual regard which, in those early times, was expected between communities sprung from the same root. The former, as Herodotus observes, constantly refused to Cambyses the use of her fleet whenever he wished to attack Carthage; and the latter granted a place of refuge to the inhabitants of Tyre when that city was besieged by Alexander the Great. She likewise continued a long time to her neighbours the pacific policy which her original condition rendered expedient. Built on the margin of an extensive continent, peopled by fierce and lawless tribes, she endeavoured to maintain a good understanding with the original nations that occupied the adjoining territory; and it is said that the rent which she consented to pay to the lords of the soil was continued till the * Dryden's translation of the Æneid, book i., line 228, &c. "Est in secessu longo locus; insula portum Efficit objectu laterum," &c.

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