ii8 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY and the Western seas, the average tonnage of the vessels which composed the Spanish force was 500 tons, and that of the English ships much less. The largest ship which Queen Elizabeth had in her navy, the Great Harry, was 1000 tons, but it was considered an exception and marvel of the age.

The western half of the desert was no less active in trade with Melle than the eastern. All the desert towns, we are told, from Twat westward, were halting-places for caravans passing between Morocco, the Barbary coast, and Melle. Tementit, a community of about 200 villages, lying to the west of Twat, was a great centre of this passing trade. These desert towns of the back country of Algiers possessed the inestimable boon of artesian water. The method of obtaining it was to sink a deep well, of which the sides were carefully built up. This was carried down to the rock under which water was expected to be found. The rock was cut away with picks and axes until nothing but the thinnest layer was left. The workmen were then taken out of the well, and a great mass of iron was dropped upon the rock, which, giving way, the water leaped up, ''sometimes with such force as to carry everything before it," into the receptacle which had been prepared, whence, overflowing, it formed a little stream upon the ground. Not only the artesian water of Twat, but also the great salt-mines of Tegazza, lay within the limits of the Mellestine.

The first sovereign of Melle to accept Islam was Bermandana, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca — a custom afterwards adopted by his successors. The date of this pilgrimage does not appear to have been preserved, but it may be gathered from a list of ten kings descending from one of his successors, Mari Djata, to the famous Mansa Musa, who made the pilgrimage in 1324, that his conversion must have been rather before than after the Morabite invasion of Negroland at the end of the eleventh century.

Leo Africanus, whose history, however, is not usually