fended the eye of the populace.

Extending into the bay lay the isthmus, known as the Tana, some three
miles in length, communicating with the mainland by a tongue of land a
hundred yards wide.

This was the maritime quarter of Carthage; here were the extensive docks
in which the vessels which bore the commerce of the city to and from the
uttermost parts of the known world loaded and unloaded. Here were the
state dockyards where the great ships of war, which had so long made
Carthage the mistress of the sea, were constructed and fitted out. The
whole line of the coast was deeply indented with bays, where rode at
anchor the ships of the mercantile navy. Broad inland lakes dotted
the plain; while to the north of Byrsa, stretching down to the sea and
extending as far as Cape Quamart, lay Megara, the aristocratic suburb of
Carthage.

Here, standing in gardens and parks, were the mansions of the wealthy
merchants and traders, the suburb presenting to the eye a mass of green
foliage dotted thickly with white houses. Megara was divided from the
lower town by a strong and lofty wall, but lay within the outer wall
which inclosed Byrsa and the whole of Carthage and stretched from sea to
sea.

The circumference of the inclosed space was fully twenty miles; the
population contained within it amounted to over eight hundred
thousand. On the north side near the sea, within the line of the outer
fortifications, rose a low hill, and here on the face which sloped
gently down to the sea was the great necropolis--the cemetery of
Carthage, shaded by broad spreading trees, dotted with the gorgeous
mausoleums of the wealthy and the innumerable tombs of the poorer
families, and undermined by thousands of great sepulchral chambers,
which still remain to testify to the vastness of the necropolis of
Carthage, and to the pains which her people bestowed upon the burying
places of their dead.

Beyond all, from the point at which the travellers viewed it, stretched
the deep blue background of the Mediterranean, its line broken only in
the foreground by the lofty citadel of Byrsa, and far out at sea by the
faint outline of the Isle of Zinbre.

For some minutes the party sat immovable on their horses, then Hamilcar
broke the silence:

"`Tis a glorious view," he said; "the world does not contain a site
better fitted for the seat of a mighty city. Nature seems to have marked
it out. With the great rock fortress, the splendid bays and harbours,