m JOURNEY FROM amounted to sixty feet. As the nature of the country rendered it necessary to lay up stores of provision, a part of each fortress must have been set aside for that purpose, and it is probable that the greater number of the forts did not contain more than from fifty to two hundred men. The most perfect of those now remaining may perhaps have been constructed in the time of the emperor Justinian, when the victories of Belisarius and Solomon had restored the Koman authority in Africa : for it would then have been advisable to secure, by means of forts, the advantages which arms had obtained. The privations which were experienced by the array of Marcus Cato, in its march across the regions of the Syrtis, make it appear extremely probable that no stations or resting-places, had at that time been erected within their limits ; and we may perhaps also infer that the fortresses of Euphrantas and Automala were not then available as places of accommodation. Should this have been the case, some of the forts and stations now existing, in various parts of the country in question, may be reasonably attributed to the well-founded policy of the emperors Augustus and Hadrian.

A regular and uninterrupted communication was, under these princes, beginning to be firmly established with all parts of the Roman empire ; and the intercourse which then existed between the eastern and western parts of Northern Africa was much greater than that which had obtained under the governments of the Greeks and Carthaginians. The numerous native tribes who inhabited the coast were perpetually at variance with their foreign invaders, and ever ready to avail themselves of the slightest opportunity of harassing