The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-12-26

around a bird pecking at a flower, doubt less sums up the life of a rich Timgad patrician.
 One should go rambling haphazard along the white streets of the city. What sur- prising reneontresl What reminders of the past! From the theatre, with It's 25 tiers, to Trajan's triumphal arch, you pass before baths whose rooms are cov- cred with mosaic and before houses that were provided with every imaginable comfort-courts and gardens, pools, fish tanks, storerooms and baths.
 The street of the capitol is perhaps the most impressive. It runs from north to south between the little temple of "Ta. Genius nf the Colony whose pronaos was supported by Corinthian columns that have been re-erected, and 1'rajan's arch, which in point of size dominates all the other monuments of the city. There the street broadens out and takes the pro- portions of square in front of the ! propylaea of the capitol.
 The capitoll What remains of it? The 12 columns of the peristyle, the founda- = tons of the altar and a porch of 40 steps. surmounted by two superb columns near ly 40 feet high. The al ic and the slabs that supported 1t lie In tue dust; the gall leries are broken through, the sacred inclosure choked with stones, and the colossal statues of Juno and Minerva have vanished. But how huge these ruins are and how magnificently they proclaim the power of Rome and hfa' gratitude to the colony's tutelary d. vinities!
 Let us halt before the public market besides the street we have been follow ing. The tables on which the market people exposed their wares are still in place. In tho center of a court paved with blue stones and surrounded with a porti- co was fountain. Awnings to shelter the vendors were upheld by slender col umns. Further on we come to the house Of the gardeners. so prettily decorated with flower baskets!
 Springs in the gorges of the Ain Morris supplied the city. furnishing all the wa ter needed for the baths, fountains, mar ] kets, public ediflces and dwellings, After ! washing the streets. the water passed l through aqueducts and sewers to re- plenish the gardens of the outlying dis l tricts. It was one of the finest things about this city of the desert that its streets were always white and clean its squares cooled by plashing fountains its surrounding country gay with green. cry,
 These abundant waters were the very life of Timgad. When the first BerbeI invaders swooped down. the city of Ira. jan was sacked, but as the aqueducti were not destroyed, water still flowed in from the Morris. In the immense desert that reaches down from the noun tains of the lures toward Batna, Than ugadi remained a sort of oasis. It emer ged from It's ruins A Christon city smaller but beautiful and nourishing, tool the place of the Roman town. Then arose the basiIicas, the baptisteries and thu convents whose imposing remains hav' been discovered. A fort. built by Solo mon, successor to Belisarious, protected the city against fresh incursions. It livet in peace-for how long a time?
 of It's flnal destruction nothing definite is known. M. Albert Ballu tells us that il I the eighth century the Berbers camped ol it's ruins. This time. Timgad was no to rise again. The wrecked aqueducts n' longer furnished water. Houses and pub lio buildings were overthrown. Tn desert crept over the place where Timga' had stood. Dust-storms buried the dc bris. sandstorms completed its interment It seemed to sink into the earth. In tha awful solitude no witness was at han to mako record of its fate. Only tn entablaturs of . great triumphant arc
 was left above the surface to indicet that the plaos hAA once beea inhabitsds