led
_Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs_, was built about a century earlier. The
Great Mosque, or Jamaa-el-Kebir, occupies the site of what was probably
an ancient pantheon. The mosque Sidi-el-Akhdar has a beautiful minaret
nearly 80 ft. high. The museum, housed in the hotel de ville, contains a
fine collection of antiquities, including a famous bronze statuette of
the winged figure of Victory, 23 in. high, discovered in the kasbah in
1858.

A religious seminary, or medressa, is maintained in connexion with the
Sidi-el-Kattani; and the French support a college and various minor
educational establishments for both Arabic and European culture. The
native industry of Constantine is chiefly confined to leather goods and
woollen fabrics. Some 100,000 burnouses are made annually, the finest
partly of wool and partly of silk. There is also an active trade in
embossing or engraving copper and brass utensils. A considerable trade
is carried on over a large area by means of railway connexion with
Algiers, Bona, Tunis and Biskra, as well as with Philippeville. The
railways, however, have taken away from the city its monopoly of the
traffic in wheat, though its share in that trade still amounts to from
L400,000 to L480,000 a year.

Constantine, or, as it was originally called, Cirta or Kirtha, from the
Phoenician word for a city, was in ancient times one of the most
important towns of Numidia, and the residence of the kings of the
Massyli. Under Micipsa (2nd century B.C.) it reached the height of its
prosperity, and was able to furnish an army of 10,000 cavalry and 20,000
infantry. Though it afterwards declined, it still continued an important
military post, and is frequently mentioned during successive wars.
Caesar having bestowed a part of its territory on his supporter Sittius,
the latter introduced a Roman settlement, and the town for a time was
known as Colonia Sittianorum. In the war of Maxentius against Alexander,
the Numidian usurper, it was laid in ruins; and on its restoration in
A.D. 313 by Constantine it received the name which it still retains. It
was not captured during the Vandal invasion of Africa, but on the
conquest by the Arabians (7th century) it shared the same fate as the
surrounding country. Successive Arab dynasties looted it, and many
monuments of antiquity suffered (to be finally swept away by "municipal
improvements" under the French regime). During the 12th century it was
still a place of considerable prospe