246 MARTIN L. EOUSE, ESQ., ON " PROCOPIUS's AFRICAN 



hitherto from reaching my longed-for destination (although 

 om* visits to Ain Tagasa and Ain el 'Atash had been 

 negatively useful); and the exigencies of the programme 

 of my missionary friend, Mr. George B. Michell, forced me 

 when next we quitted Constantine to accompany him and 

 another missionary, Mr. James Lochhead, who had been 

 my host there, upon a tour to the south and south-oast to 

 view the tomb of Massinissa, the city of Timgad, and other 

 ruins nigh thereto. 



But on the 9th of June, with the full sanction oi 

 the Prefect of Constantine, and accompanied by Khoodhir, 

 a Christian Arab youth, I made my way to Ain Abid, 

 a market town fifteen miles north of Ain el Bordj, meaning 

 to sleep at its inn, so as to start early in the morning and 

 look round Ain el Bordj before the heat of the day. 

 At a quarter to five we were in the saddle ; and, mostly 

 walking but sometimes trotting or ambling, we crossed 

 a great plateau covered with barley and bearded wheat for a 

 little over six miles, and then pierced a range of hills and 

 wound our way down and through them for three miles 

 more, until at half-past seven we were watering our horses 

 at the French fountain of Ain el Bordj, adorned with a 

 Roman pillar at its head. 



We were standing at the mouth of a pass, and looking 

 up it to the north Ave saw on the left the heights down and 

 around which we had been coming, and on our right a steep 

 slope covered with the ruins of an ancient city, while 

 another hill was seen beyond it severed from it by a deep 

 ravine. About 200 yards up the pass was a Roman 

 fountain with a set of stone troughs feeding one another, 

 and to the left and a little behind it a solid piece of wall 

 about 4 feet high, probably Roman, covered with slabs 

 and forming a right angle that embraced a tiny pool, while 

 about 200 yards farther the first traces of the spring were to 

 be seen amid moist, rank grass. 



On the other hand, as we had crossed the upper plateau 

 from Ain Abid and descended through the hills, covering 

 9^ miles, we had not passed a single Avell, or seen one to the 

 right hand or the left, still less any stream of water; and 

 our Arab guide assured us there was not one. The only 

 house that we saw all the way — a new farmhouse upon the 

 northern slope of the hills, with a group of new buildings 

 about it, tlie property of a French settler — may have 

 possessed a new well recently bored ; but the guide declared 



