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344 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
The Excavations " Carthage At Carthage A...
parts of this locality , but found nothing to encourage me , or to throw any light upon the mystery in "which this edifice is shrouded . It is
too massive to have been a sacred edifice , and it could not have been a fortification , since it is commanded by the hill on which the
temple of _^ 3 Esculapius stood . It may have been a general depotpublic stores—for the property of the princely merchants of
Carthage , and this supposition may be confirmed by the remains of some _' change stone ' for quays the merchants still seen in —may the sea likewise . The have place been of business here / 7 — -the
Another marked spot on the field of Carthage which I also visited in company with Dr . Davis was " what the Arabs call
Dewaames Eshaitan , the c cisterns of the Devil , ' probably on account of their magnitude , their solidity , and their number . "
They are eighteen in number . Length , 93 feet .
Width , 19 feet 6 inches . Depth 27 feet 6 inches .
, Of which depth seventeen feet are filled with water . " On each side there is an arched gallery upwards of six feet wide , which
communicate with the cisterns , and were probably intended for the convenience of the jmblic in drawing water . " It appears to be a
moot point . whether these huge cisterns were filled with rain-water , or hy means of an aqueduct . Dr . Davis _ojDines the former , but
Mr . Blakesley—who has written an admirable book on Algeria , in which he mentions a visit to Carthage—thinks they must have been
supplied by an aqueduct ; as , from the elevation of the cisterns , it is not easy to point out any considerable area of surface which
could be made to drain into them ; and none , the annual rain-fall upon which would fill them to anything like the height of seventeen
her feet . letters Lady the M brilli ary Wortley ant idea Mont that these ague , cistern I believe s had , communicates oriinall ~ b een in gy
iC stables for elephants" ! The most competent judges have pro-XLOunced them to be of Punic construction . The blocks of which
they are built are of the most gigantic size . When later I visited Home , I instantly saw the parallel between them and the inmiense
blocks of the relics of Etruscan architecture . The village of Moalkah , lying some way further back from the
shore , is literally built almost entirely within some larger cisterns , of which the original and precise number cannot now be
ascertained . When Shaw wrote his well-known book about these regions there were still twenty remaining ; at present fourteen only
can be traced ; these are four hundred feet in length and twentyeight feet wide . They are too full of earth for their depth to be
ascertainable . Anciently they received their supply of water from a distance , by means of the stupendous aqueduct , the immense ruins of
which are seen in the vicinity , and which Sir Grenville Temple likened picturesquely to the _, " bleached _vertebras of some gigantic
serpent . " It conveyed its waters to the capital from a distance of
344 Notices Of Books.
344 NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1861, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071861/page/56/
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