416 PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
ever fragments of sculpture, inscriptions, or mosaics, and especially — 
funeral lamps and vases and coins they might find, and sO them se-— 
eretly to travelers and strangers. 
Thus it came to pass, one day, that an old Arab sheik informed the 
British agent and consul-general, with a great show of secrecy and 
mystery, that he had discovered a wonderful mosaic floor, a portion of 
which he offered to take up and deliver for a consideration. He de-— 
sribed the floor, which, even with due allowance for the imagination of 
the Bedouin, was evidently one of the most beautiful and complete works 
of the kind that had ever been discovered at Carthage. The sheik re- 
fused to tell where it was, but promised to bring the piece he had taken 
up to Sir Richard Wood’s country seat, at Carthage, at night. He had 
recently “eaten stick’’, or received the bastinado, for having sold some 
antiquities to a tourist, and had reason to be cautious. <A few nights 
later, however, he came with some eight or ten Arabs who bore the 
mosaic on their shoulders. A bargain was made, and the precious frag- 
ment was deposited in a magazine, where it remained until shipped to 
Philadelphia in 1875. 
The floor of the temple from which it was taken has since been ex- 
amined. It is of vast extent and the designs were all life-size.. From 
the Arab’s description it appears that the center figure represented 
a female, probably the goddess Astarte, driving a chariot drawn by — 
stags, and around this central design were grouped animals of various 
kinds—lions, tigers, leopards, stags, antelopes, giraffes, boars, hares, 
even hippopotami, crocodiles, snakes, and fishes. The only part of the 
floor that the Arabs succeeded in removing besides the “ mosaic lion” 
was the principal design, representing Astarte in the chariot. This 
was on its way to Sir Richard Wood’s, when unfortunately one of the 
bearers slipped and fell, and the others fearing to be crushed under it— 
for it was even larger and more ponderous than the lion—allowed it to 
fall to the ground, where it was broken into fragments. The only por- 
tion, therefore, of this magnificent pavement that now exists is that in the 
National Museum; the rest was broken in the hasty and clumsy efforts 
of the Arabs to detach it in sections from its bed. 
The ‘‘ mosaic lion,” as it came to be named at the Philadelphia Exhi- 
bition, is the largest and most perfect ancient mosaic in America, and 
it is quite unlikely that anything equal to it will ever find its way to the 
United States hereafter. 
When the Vandals invaded Africa they destroyed all works of art, 
and to them are due the many headless, armless, and noseless statues 
found mm Barbary. In destroying the temple of Astarte their icono- 
clastic frenzy was probably more immediately directed against the 
statuary and other sculptures and in overthrowing them, together with 
the walls of the edifice. The floor was covered with débris, upon which, 
in the course of centuries, a deep layer of dust was deposited, which pro- 
tected the mosaic from the corroding effects of wind and rain, and to 
this we may attribute its perfect state of preservation. 
