m 
JOURNEY FROM 
amounted to sixty feet. As the nature of the country rendered it ne- 
cessary to lay up stores of provision, a part of each fortress must have 
been set aside for that purpose, and it is probable that the greater 
number of the forts did not contain more than from fifty to two hun- 
dred men. The most perfect of those now remaining may perhaps have 
been constructed in the time of the emperor Justinian, when the vic- 
tories of Belisarius and Solomon had restored the Koman authority 
in Africa : for it would then have been advisable to secure, by means 
of forts, the advantages which arms had obtained. The privations 
which were experienced by the array of Marcus Cato, in its march 
across the regions of the Syrtis, make it appear extremely probable 
that no stations or resting-places, had at that time been erected 
within their limits ; and we may perhaps also infer that the for- 
tresses of Euphrantas and Automala were not then available as places 
of accommodation. Should this have been the case, some of the 
forts and stations now existing, in various parts of the country in 
question, may be reasonably attributed to the well-founded policy of 
the emperors Augustus and Hadrian. 
A regular and uninterrupted communication was, under these 
princes, beginning to be firmly established with all parts of the 
Roman empire ; and the intercourse which then existed between the 
eastern and western parts of Northern Africa was much greater than 
that which had obtained under the governments of the Greeks and 
Carthaginians. The numerous native tribes who inhabited the coast 
were perpetually at variance with their foreign invaders, and ever 
ready to avail themselves of the slightest opportunity of harassing 
