10 



DRY-LAND OLIVE CULTURE IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 



Tunis, of which it formed about one-third, had a population of at 

 least 1,500,000, or about the present population of the whole of Tunis. 



The flourishing state of this part of Africa in former times is 

 abundantly attested, not only by the statements of Arab writers who 

 saw the country before it had complete^ relapsed into its present 

 desolation, but by the ruins that are strewn over it in such numbers 

 that one can hardly ride for half a mile without encountering some 

 fragment of an ancient building, or cistern, or reservoir. The pub- 

 lic buildings of the cities had a degree of architectural merit which 

 shows that the ancient inhabitants enjoyed not merely prosperity, 

 but wealth and luxury. The inscriptions prove that some of the 

 finest of these structures were built not by the government or the 

 municipality but by private citizens inspired by local pride, which 

 was kept alive by the keen rivalry that existed among the towns of 

 Roman Africa. 



We need mention only two examples of the splendid development 

 of this country in Roman times. In an area of 100 square miles 

 around the ancient city of Suffetula (fig. 1) there have been found 

 the remains of 3 cities, 15 towns, and 45 small villages, besides almost 

 innumerable scattered farm buildings. Near the seacoast, on the 

 site of the ancient city of Thysdrus (fig. 1), stands a great amphi- 

 theater which is second in size only to the Colosseum at Rome and is 

 estimated to have seated 60,000 people. But the Roman city which 

 it adorned has given place to a squalid Arab village huddled under 

 the Avails of the amphitheater, while around it in every direction 

 stretches a bare, uncultivated plain. How can we account for the 

 existence of the 60,000 souls that crowded the amphitheater of Thys- 

 drus on festival days to view the sports of the arena ? How did the 

 teeming population of Suffetula support itself and accumulate wealth 

 sufficient to build the beautiful marble temples and baths and theaters 

 that adorned the city in the early centuries of the Christian era? 



All the evidence goes to show that the climate has not changed 

 materially and that the rainfall has not diminished since Roman 

 times. We have no reason to believe that the country was formerly 

 better watered or that agriculture based upon irrigation could ever 

 have reached a high development in that part of Africa. The re- 

 mains of innumerable cisterns lined with masonry or concrete — more 

 than 400 have been counted in one small district near Sfax alone — 

 prove that the inhabitants had to depend for domestic purposes upon 

 stored rain water. Some of the larger cities had public cisterns of 

 gigantic size. Even near the mountains it was necessary to utilize 

 every spring and to build long aqueducts to carry water to the cities 

 and towns. There could have been little to spare for agricultural 

 purposes, except, perhaps, to irrigate the gardens immediately around 

 the towns. 



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