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At eleven miles from Tunis is the Mohammedia, an immense ruined palace, or rather a mass of palaces, built by Ahmed Bey, who died in 1855, at an expense of many millions of piastres, and decorated with great magnificence, but which since his death has been allowed to go to ruin. It has served as an inexhaustible mine for materials with which to build and adorn other palaces; its marble columns have disappeared, its walls have been stripped of their covering of tiles, the roofs have nearly all fallen in, and it is impossible to imagine a more perfect picture of desolation than is presented by this modern ruin. Probably, when the present Bey dies, his successor will choose a new residence, and the Kasr Saeed will fall into decay as this palace has done. The aqueduct from Zaghouan passes through one of the courts of the palace, but it is here low, and by no means a striking object. We observed in one of the dependencies a cippus similar to the one before described, but without any trace of inscription. It was while excavating the foundations of one of the buildings here that the two inscriptions now preserved in the Church of the Capuchins at Tunis were found. These have been frequently reproduced; one contains the names of three bishops, but without designating their sees, the other that of a sub-deacon of the African Church.[99]
Shortly after leaving the Mohammedia the ruins of the ancient aqueduct come in sight, and at a distance of about fourteen miles from Tunis the road crosses the Oued Melian, the Catada of Ptolemy. Here is seen, in all its surpassing beauty, one of the greatest works the Romans ever executed in North Africa, the aqueduct conveying the waters of Zaghouan and Djougar to Carthage.[100]
During all the time that Carthage remained an independent State the inhabitants seem to have contented themselves with rain-water caught, and stored in reservoirs, both from the roofs of houses and from paved squares and streets. Thirty years after the destruction of this city by Scipio it was rebuilt by a colony under Caius Gracchus, but it was not till the reign of the Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117 to 138) that the inhabitants, having recovered their ancient wealth, and having suffered from several consecutive years of drought, represented their miserable condition to the Emperor, who himself visited the city and resolved to convey to it the magnificent springs of Zeugitanus Mons, the modern Zaghouan. This, however, was not sufficient for the supply of the city, and after the death of Hadrian another fine spring at Mons Zuccharus, the present Djebel Djougar, was led into the original aqueduct—probably in the reign of Septimius Severus, as a medal was found at Carthage with his figure on the reverse, and on the obverse, Astarte seated on a lion beside a spring issuing from a rock.
It was certainly destroyed by Gilimer, the last of the Vandal kings, when endeavouring to reconquer Carthage, and again restored by Belisarius, the lieutenant of Justinian. On the expulsion of the Byzantines it was once more cut off, and restored by their Arab conquerors, and finally destroyed by the Spaniards during their siege of Tunis. It was reserved for the present Bey, Sidi Saduk, once more to restore this ancient work, and to bring the pure and abundant springs which formerly supplied Carthage into the modern city of Tunis.
M. Collin, a French engineer, planned and executed this work. Of course, the advanced state of hydraulic science at the present day rendered it unnecessary to make use of the ancient arches. The aqueduct originally consisted, for a great part of its course, of a covered masonry channel, running sometimes quite underground, sometimes on the surface. This was comparatively uninjured by time, and served, with little repair, for the modern work. Where the old aqueduct passed high over the surface of the country, iron pipes and syphons have been substituted.