exigencies compelled the conquerors to form here a permanent camp. For twelve years the annual mortality from fever was over 20 per cent. of the population, but the government persevered, using political déportés and condemned regiments to reclaim the soil, and Bouffarick is now another proof that persevering cultivation will, in time, overcome the most pestilential malaria. Fever has disappeared, and, although in the midst of the plain of the Metidjeh, there is not a more salubrious spot in the whole colony. From Bouffarick the route continues in a long unvarying line to Blidah, its monotony only broken by the obelisk of Beni Mered, seen in the centre of the road at a distance of several miles. Here on April 18, 1842, twenty-two soldiers commanded by a sergeant resisted the onslaught of 300 Arabs, and after a desperate resistance were all left for dead. A surgeon who accidentally was with the party recovered sufficiently from his wounds to give a relation of the gallant affair, which has been commemorated by this lofty obelisk surmounting a fountain, and bearing an account of the skirmish in French and Arabic, with the names of the twenty-two heroes. Soon we obtained a view of the celebrated Mauritanian monument behind us, called by the Arabs "Koubber Roumeah," i.e. the tomb of the Christian woman. Just beyond it rose, partially concealed by fleecy clouds, the rugged Mount Chenoua, behind the shelter of which is the port of Cherchell, the Julia Cæsarea of the Latins, and the Roman capital of Mauritania Cæsariensis. Before its conquest it had been, under the name of Jol, the royal city of the Mauritanians, whose mausoleum was the Koubber Roumeah just mentioned. There are the remains of an aqueduct, which can be seen from the ary engineer ). Before its *ween Algiers epting by the road, in most accommodate flows some 'yrenean, but the pass are ain breaking progress, now s. Evergreen ith-arbutus, a, and, conqular-looking sides of every ts trickle are their tender ir frequently a vestige of y interesting yle rupestris) ices; falcons, g overhead; stone as the e inhabitants w disporting D 333 |