287 M. Sidi-Mabrouk, a villa-suburb of Constantine. To the left, on the Batna road, are five arches of the *Roman Aqueduct, once extending from Ras el-Aïn Bou Merzoug (near Ouled-Rahmoun, p. [272]) to the Coudiat-Aty (p. [297]), a distance of 23 M.
At the foot of the Plateau de Mansoura (2303 ft.) the train enters the Rhumel Valley. On the left are the blue-washed houses of the native quarter of (288½ M.) Constantine (p. [297]).
44. From Constantine to Biskra viâ El-Guerrah and Batna.
149 M. Railway. Through-train, including a 1st class saloon carriage (10 fr. extra) with ‘wagon-restaurant’ in winter, in 7 hrs.; ordinary train in 8¾ hrs. (fares 26 fr. 85, 19 fr. 20, 14 fr. 40 c.). Views to the right as far as Fontaine des Gazelles. Railway Restaurants at El-Guerrah, Batna, and El-Kantara.
Among the intermediate stations Batna is important only as the starting-point for Lambèse and Timgad (R. 45). El-Kantara deserves a stay of some days for the sake of its own scenery and as a base for excursions to Tilatou, the Maâfa valley, etc.
From Constantine to (23 M.) El-Guerrah, see above and pp. [273], 272. Passing (31 M.) Aïn-M’Lila (2527 ft.), we reach the Plateau des Sbakh, the great steppe of E. Algeria, with its numerous salt-lakes, ‘dreary in the extreme, yet grand in its motionless repose, with tufts of grey-green alfa growing here and there on the salt soil, backed by the bold precipices and pinnacles of bare rocky mountains’. Appropriate accessories are, however, furnished now and then by the huts or tents of nomadic tribes with their herds.
On the right rises the bare Jebel Nif-Ensser. Farther on we obtain, especially by morning light, a fine view of the salt-lake of Tinsilt, backed by the spurs of the Sahara Atlas (p. [170]).
42½ M. Les Lacs (2592 ft.), on the neck of land between Lake Tinsilt and (on the left) Chott Mzouri. We now traverse a long embankment crossing Lake Tinsilt, which is often enlivened by flamingoes and wild-duck. 53 M. Aïn-Yagout (2891 ft.).
58 M. Fontaine-Chaude (about 2790 ft.), with a few tents of nomads, near the small Oued Mader.
Just before the station we observe on the left the Medracen (Arabic Madghasen), a pre-Roman royal tomb (of Masinissa?), the finest of the kind in Algeria after the Tombeau de la Chrétienne (p. [238]). The huge monument (reached by a field-road from the station in 1¼ hr.) stands in an ancient Berber burial-ground on the flat saddle between two low, bare ranges of hills, about halfway between Fontaine-Chaude and the (6 M.) Sebkha Djendeli, the ancient Lacus Regius. The Medracen, one of the few existing tumulus-tombs in the Græco-Punic style, consists of a massive cylindrical basement, 64 yds. in diameter and only 14½ ft. high, on which rises a conical pyramid in twenty-four steps, crowned with a platform of 12½ yds. in diameter (the total height being 60 ft.). The sixty unfluted Doric half-columns recall the oldest Greek temples of Sicily, while the concave moulding above the architrave is Egyptian in character. The rude engravings on the basement, as well as the Libyan and late-Punic inscriptions, are ancient. Of the vestibule, 26 by 16 yds., but few vestiges are left. The straight passage leading to the two small tomb-chambers in the centre of the building collapsed in 1865. The two other shafts were bored by treasure-hunting natives.