221 
and has returned, I believe, without effecting anything—without 
> taking any levels, or really having made any scientific investigation, 
as to whether the assumed depression really exists or no. 
: The presence, however, of beds of salt in the Sahara, indicate 
_ that portions of it at any rate have been submerged, and there may 
5 perhaps have been a time at the very dawn of history, when a 
; - large portion of the Northern Sahara was Sea, and when one of 
| its gulfs was separated by no great interval from the Bay of Triton. 
If such were the case, the mildness and equability of the regions 
around this Bay would be still further increased. The violent hot 
winds from the Sahara would not then have existed, but there 
“must have resulted a climate like that of th 
€ Azores or Canary 
Islands. 
That which now forms the Regency of Tunis and Algeria was 
then a peninsula, a little narrower than Italy towards the south, 
and fanned on every side by mild sea-breezes. The sea to the 
South, the Bay of Triton, was probably full of islands covered with 
verdure, with the rugged summits of the Auress Mountains 
bounding the northern horizon, the whole enjoying an unrivalled 
climate, and presenting, perchance, a scene of beauty without an 
€qual in the northern hemisphere. 
Here lived an intelligent race, who are described by Scylax as 
being, notwithstanding their yellowish colour, fine, handsome men, 
et 
an 
nd who may probably be identified with the Kabyles, still one of 
the nobler African races. Here they obtained without any hard 
Struggle, by agriculture, the necessaries of life, and had leisure and 
inclination to cultivate its refinement. 
It is in regions like these, 
and inventive has had the fort 
he soil, not spontaneously, 
where a race naturally intelligent 
une to be settled in places where 
but with some expenditure of labour, 
produces all that is necessary for life, that civilization has usually 
lad its first origin. Such was the case in India, 
vilization was to be found in the basin of the 
there existed conditions such as we ha 
fas the case with Western Asia, 
he basin of the Euphrates and t 
whose earliest 
Ganges, where 
ve described. Such, too, 
where civilization radiated from 
he Tigris. Such was notably the 
