The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

RUINS OF CARTHAGE.

The remains of the grandeur and magnificence of Carthage, the rival of Rome, and one of the most commercial cities of the ancient world, are not so striking as might be expected; and, at a little distance, can scarcely be distinguished from the ground on which they lie. The vestiges of triumphal arches, of superb specimens of Grecian architecture, of columns of porphyry or granite, or of curious entablatures, are no longer discernible: all are vanished; and thus will it be in future ages with the most renowned cities now on earth!

To discover these ruins requires some method. Leaving Tunis, the traveler rides along the shore in an east-north-east direction, and reaches, in about half an hour, the salt-pits, which extend toward the west, as far as a fragment of wall, very near to the “great reservoirs.” Passing between these salt-pits and the sea, jetties are seen running out to a considerable distance under water. The sea and the jetties are on his right; on his left he perceives a great quantity of ruins, upon eminences of unequal hight; and below these ruins a basin of a circular form, and of considerable depth, which formerly communicated with the sea by means of a canal, traces of which are still to be seen. This basin appears to have been the “Cothon,” or inner port of Carthage. The remains of the immense works discernible in the sea, in this case indicate the site of the outer mole. Some piles of the dam said to have been constructed by Scipio, for the purpose of blocking up the port, may be still distinguished. A second inner canal is conjectured to have been the cut made by the Carthaginians, when they opened a new passage for their fleet.

The greater part of Carthage was built on three hills. On a spot which overlooks the eastern shore is the area of a spacious room, with several smaller ones adjoining: some of them have tesselated pavements; and in all are found broken pieces of columns of fine marble and porphyry. They are conjectured to have been summer apartments beneath one of the palaces, such as the intense heat of the climate must have required. In rowing along the shore, the common sewers are still visible, and are but little impaired by time. With the exception of these, the cisterns have suffered the least. Besides such as belong to private houses, there are two sets for the public use of the Tunisians. The largest of these was the grand reservoir, and received the water of the aqueduct. It lay near the western wall of the city, and consisted of upward of twenty contiguous cisterns, each about one hundred feet in length, and thirty in breadth. They form a series of vaults, communicating with each other, and are bordered throughout their whole length by a corridor. The smaller reservoir has a greater elevation, and lies near the Cothon or inner port.

The ruins of the noble aqueduct which conveyed the water into the larger cisterns, may be traced as far as Zawan and Zungar, at least fifty miles distant. This must have been a truly magnificent, and at the same time, a very expensive work. That part of it which extends along the peninsula was beautifully faced with stone. At Arriana, a village to the north of Tunis, are several entire arches each seventy feet high, and supported by piers sixteen feet square. The water-channel is vaulted over, and plastered with a strong cement. A person of an ordinary hight may walk upright in it; and at intervals are apertures, left open, as well for the admission of fresh air, as for the convenience of cleansing it. The water-mark is nearly three feet high; but it is impossible to determine the quantity daily conveyed to Carthage by this channel, without knowing the angle of descent, which, in its present imperfect state, can not be ascertained.

Temples were erected at Zawan and Zungar, over the fountains by which this aqueduct was supplied. That at Zungar appears to have been of the Corinthian order, and terminates very beautifully in a dome with three niches, probably intended for the statues of the divinity of the spring.

THE PLAIN OF TROY.

According to Homer’s description of the Trojan territory, it combined certain prominent and remarkable features, not likely to be affected by any lapse of time. Of this nature was the Hellespont; the island of Tenedos; the plain itself; the river by whose inundations it was occasionally overflowed; and the mountain whence that river issued. The following is an abstract of Dr. Clarke’s accurate account of the vestiges of high antiquity contained in this truly classic spot.

“We entered an immense plain, in which some Turks were engaged in hunting wild-boars. Peasants were also employed in plowing a deep and rich soil of vegetable earth. Proceeding toward the east, and round the bay distinctly pointed out by Strabo as the harbor in which the Grecian fleet was stationed, we arrived at the sepulcher of Ajax, upon the ancient Rhœtean promontory. The view here afforded of the Hellespont and the plain of Troy is one of the finest the country affords. From the Aianteum we passed over a heathy country to Halil Elly, a village near the Thymbrius, in whose vicinity we had been instructed to seek the remains of a temple once sacred to the Thymbrean Apollo. The ruins we found were rather the remains of ten temples than of one. The earth to a very considerable extent was covered by subverted and broken columns of marble, granite, and of every order in architecture. Doric, Ionic and Corinthian capitals lay dispersed in all directions, and some of these were of great beauty. We observed a bass-relief representing a person on horseback pursued by a winged figure; also a beautiful representation, sculptured after the same manner, of Ceres in her car drawn by two scaly serpents.

“At the town or village of Tchiblack, we noticed very considerable remains of ancient sculpture, but in such a state of disorder and ruin, that no precise description of them can be given. The most remarkable are upon the top of a hill called Beyan Mezaley, near the town, in the midst of a beautiful grove of oak-trees, toward the village of Callifat. Here the ruins of a Doric temple of white marble lay heaped in the most striking manner, mixed with broken stelæ, cippi, sarcophagi, cornices and capitals of very enormous size, entablatures and pillars. All of these have reference to some peculiar sanctity by which this hill was anciently characterized. We proceeded hence toward the plain; and no sooner reached it, than a tumulus of very remarkable size and situation drew our attention, for a short time, from the main object of our pursuit. This tumulus, of a high conical form and very regular structure, stands altogether insulated. Of its great antiquity no doubt can be entertained by persons accustomed to view the everlasting sepulchers of the ancients. On the southern side of its base is a long natural mound of limestone: this, beginning to rise close to the artificial tumulus, extends toward the village of Callifat, in a direction nearly from north to south across the middle of the plain. It is of such hight that an army encamped on the eastern side of it, would be concealed from all observation of persons stationed on the coast, by the mouth of the Mender. If the poems of Homer, with reference to the plain of Troy, have similarly associated an artificial tumulus and a natural mound, a conclusion seems warranted, that these are the objects to which he alludes. This appears to be the case in the account he has given of the tomb of Ilus and the mound of the plain. From this tomb we descended into the plain, when our guides brought us to the western side of it, near its southern termination, to notice a tumulus, less considerable than the last described, about three hundred paces from the mound, almost concealed from observation by being continually overflowed, upon whose top two small oak-trees were then growing.