For this reason I have said as little as possible on this city of the dead, and I leave it to the traveler to go himself and feel the atmosphere which no painter or writer can reproduce.
CHAPTER XXXIV
DJEMILA THE DESOLATE
If Roman ruins are of interest to the traveler there is a second edition of Timgad, to my mind finer and more complete than the subject of the last chapter, but unfortunately not on any main road.
I refer to the town of Cuicul, now called Djemila, situated on the barren hills to the northeast of Sétif. There are two means of access: from Algiers via Sétif, or from Constantine via the road to Djidjelli, described in the next chapter.
From Sétif the main road to Constantine is followed for thirty kilometers to Saint Arnaud, where one turns sharp left and begins climbing into a rolling country of cereals sparsely cultivated until, after some thirty more kilometers of winding roads, one reaches Djemila. The other route branches out of the Constantine-Djidjelli road at Zeraîa, sixty-five kilometers from Constantine, and soon begins climbing up into the rolling country described above, rejoining the Sétif approach some fifty kilometers farther on, and ten from Djemila.
The first aspect of the ruins is certainly more impressive than that of Timgad. The road has been winding along the side of a steep hill, high up through a country so harsh and desolate that one looks about apprehensively as if the dead themselves guarded the bare slopes, watching over the scenes of their great triumphs.
Then suddenly at a bend in this sad road the eye suddenly distinguishes, on a kind of promontory far below, something which at first looks like a great graveyard. Then gradually, as one watches, the stones detach themselves from the gray surroundings, graceful pillars rise up, triumphal arches, the massive walls of a temple. . . .
We are looking down on what was once one of the most prosperous cities of that dead empire which ruled Algeria as no one since has ruled it. The road winds down toward the miniature village outside the site of the ancient city. The Compagnie Transatlantique has, as usual, a comfortable hotel, in fact it is the only hotel, and if the traveler ventures to this lonely spot out of the tourist season he will have to carry his own food and sleep out-of-doors. This is, as a matter of fact, quite feasible, as during the summer months the heat of Djemila is intense.
The excavation of Djemila has been carried out with much more care and system than that of the other Roman cities in Algeria; this is chiefly due to the intelligent interest taken in the place by its curator, the Comtesse de Crésolles. This charming lady lives in a comfortable house overlooking the ruins, and if the visitor has the good fortune to make her acquaintance he will find in her a fund of information about the excavations, and an untiring guide.
Djemila can be seen in a morning, but a week would seem more like the period required really to study the ruins properly. The first thing that strikes one on entering the precincts of the ruins is why this town was built on a spur so far below the mountains which tower menacingly above. The reason is quite clear. At the end of the first century, when the city was founded, the main roads ran along the bottom of the valleys, and it was therefore necessary to plan the military centers at some point where they not only formed a guard over the long arteries of civilization, but also a stage for the caravans as they passed up and down from Constantine and from the coast. But quite apart from the military side of the question, Djemila under the Romans was one of the great cereal centers of the empire and within its walls the grain was brought to be despatched to the far-flung limits of the mighty empire.