Travels in the footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis

THE northern regions of Africa that border on the Mediterranean Sea would form a deeply interesting study for the historian. Perhaps no other portion of the world's surface has passed through more marked phases of civilisation, yet all of these have passed away and left but small trace behind them. Placed between a wondrously teeming offshoot of the Broad Atlantic and a markedly sterile desert, this strip of territory seemingly wanting in none of Nature's riches save flowing rivers, has been conquered successively by the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Greeks, and the Arabs. All these several possessors came and conquered and settled on these lands; but the first four civilisations died away, and the last is disappearing, in at least the large central portion of this district known as Algeria, and now under French rule. Who can tell whether this new phase will have any more vitality than the rest ?—for the native tribes seem to be as unreclaimable as their own Sahara.