circle, and, luncheon finished, proceed to view
the sites.

Columns, mosaics, votive tablets, urns,
lachrymatories are around us,—the
fruit of the later excavations. Some rich and
beautiful mosaics are being packed in wooden
cases, ready for the government vessel which
is under orders to carry them to England.
Bands of Arabs are sleepily grubbing away
at different points, using nothing but a little
garden-hoe to loosen the earth, and a small,
shallow basket (about the size and form of a
lady's bonnet of the present day) to remove
it. Neither threat nor persuasion will induce
them to avail themselves of an English
pick or shovel—still less, a wheelbarrow.

The researches at Carthage demand both
patience and industry. As many persons are
probably aware, what remains of the queenly
city lies concealed under two superincumbent
empires—the Roman and the Saracen—
relics of the latter being discoverable at the
depth, perhaps, of ten or twelve feet; of the
former, at some feet lower; a circumstance
the self-elected Laureate of our party
endeavoured to commemorate, in the album kept
by a member of the circle at Ghamart, as
follows:

Carthage, half-buried in the dominant waves,
Looks up through Roman floors and Saracen graves:
Thus man's intelligence, that from the mould
Creates new empires—gives us back the old.

Here, arrived at the most interesting point
of our excursion, circumstantial narrative
must pause, not willing, even in this sketchy
form, to anticipate details a few months will
probably give to the world from the pen of
the excavator himself. Consequently, I do
not hint how, having exhausted Carthage,
its cisterns, coins, and catacombs, we
journeyed to Porto Ferina, eight miles distant
from the site of Cato's city, Utica, making
excursions to the latter, still under the guidance
of our kind friends of Ghamart, as
occasion warranted.

Of Utica, the second great city of Africa, so
little remains above the ground, that travellers
have been found to assert that all traces
of its site have disappeared. This, however,
is by no means the case. The sea, that once
washed the very walls, has been forced gradually
back by the vast deposits brought down the
river, Bagrada, from the surrounding hills.
An Arab village, Bou-shata, crowns the
highest portion of the site, and looks down
upon a few masses of masonry—a wall or
two, a sunken gateway, &c., which comprise
all that remains unburied by the unwearied
sexton—Time. But mounds and trenches
are left, and the position and limits of the
city may be, with little difficulty,
ascertained.

It was within a few miles of this place
that the army of Attilius Regulus was stated
by the historian to have been brought to
a stand by the big snake. I shot one of that
animal's descendants, that came swimming
across the Bagrada to reconnoitre us, but as
his skin, when measured, fell short of his
great ancestor's by one hundred and seventeen
feet, we abandoned the degenerate specimen
to the wolf and jackal!

A melancholy accident marked our stay at
Porto Ferina. The medical officer of the
Hubble, gun-boat (lent by government to the
reverend Excavator, and then lying in the
bay) had passed a night on shore. After
breakfasting with us, he sent for his boat's
crew, to return on board. The day was
rough and gusty, and the ship lying two
miles out, on account of an intervening
sand-bar on which a heavy surf was breaking.
Mrs. Excavator earnestly dissuaded him from
embarking until the wind and sea had moderated.
The doctor, however, persisted, and
we all accompanied him to the port. He
was to land again in the evening, and bring
some trifling articles from the ship. The
party were in high spirits:

"For goodness sake," said one of them,
laughing, as the doctor jumped into the boat.
"Though you're drowned yourself—take care
of the mustard!"

Away they dashed, the medico and his six
men. Scarcely had they gone half-a-mile when
a terrific black squall came hurtling down
upon the bay. The boat heeling over, the man
who held the main sheet at once let go, but
his comrade, in charge of the gaff-halyards,
unfortunately doing the same, the sail came
bodily down, and, hanging over the boat's
side, filled like a bag with water, and weighed
her gunwale under. The doctor, encumbered
with a heavy boat-cloak, clung for a few
minutes to the submerged boat, but sunk;
before we, who saw them struggling in the
water, could get off a native boat to their
assistance. His body was not found for some
days. One young sailor was picked up floating
on the surface. He had never gone down,
but had died of apoplexy, induced by the
shock and immersion. Another of the crew
had actually swam back within hail of the
Arab sentry; but thinking, as he said, that
he could be of more service among his struggling
shipmates, gallantly returned to the
scene of the accident.

The medical officer and the young sailor
were buried side by side in a little garden, on
the very brink of the beautiful bay.
Headstones were placed over the graves, and some
gentle hands planted flowers around their
place of rest, whose lives seem subject to as
uncertain a tenure.

How we subsequently travelled to
Zah-Wagh, and there, in a wild settlement, at
the foot of noble mountains, among rats and
ruins, and peaches, and panthers, neglected
by our Arab purveyors, and subsisting chiefly
upon blackbirds (four-and-twenty to a pie)
we hunted out ruined villages, of which
there are enough in the Regency to dower