‘In the year 1555 Solharraes[15] attempted to pull it down, hoping to find some treasure in it; but when they lifted up the stones there came a sort of black poisonous wasps from under them, which caused immediate death wherever they stinged, and upon that Barbarossa dropped his design.’
Many other legends and traditions are connected with it, which it would be out of place here to reproduce.
The Tombeau de la Chrétienne is built on a hill forming part of the Sahel range, 756 feet above the level of the sea, covered with a brushwood of lentisk and tree heath, situated nearly midway between Tipasa and Koleah, and to the west of Algiers.
It is a circular, or rather polygonal, building, originally about 131 feet in height; the actual height at present is 100 ft. 8 in., of which the cylindrical portion is 36 ft. 6 in., and the pyramid 64 ft. 2 in. The base is 198 feet in diameter, and forms an encircling podium, or zone, of a decorative character, presenting a vertical wall, ornamented with sixty engaged Ionic columns, 2 ft. 5 in. in diameter, surmounted by a frieze or cornice of simple form. The capitals of the columns have entirely disappeared, but they are represented in Bruce’s drawings as having very small volutes, most of the space between which is occupied by a honeysuckle flower. There are two tendrils, one on each side of the flower, but growing out of the surface of the capital, and not continuous with the flower. The necking between the capital and the shaft is composed of a succession of four small petalled flowers, flatly applied, contained between an upper and a lower fillet.
The series of the colonnade has at the cardinal points four false doors, the four panels of which, producing what may have been taken to represent a cross, probably contributed to fix the appellation of Christian to it.
Above the cornice rise a series of thirty-three steps, which gradually decrease in circular area, giving the building the appearance of a truncated cone.
The whole monument is placed on a low platform 210 feet square, the sides of which are tangents to the circular base.
During the Emperor Napoleon’s last visit to Africa he charged the well-known Algerian scholar, M. Berbrugger, and M. MacCarthy, the late and present directors of the library and museum, to explore this tomb, which had never been penetrated in modern times, spite of the attempt of Salah Rais, in 1555, and the efforts of Baba Mohammed in the end of the eighteenth century, to batter it down by means of artillery.
SKETCH SHOWING THE CROSS ON THE FALSE DOORS.