abide but Mutability."

II

PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS

Far to the south of the Anti-Atlas, in the yellow deserts that lead to
Timbuctoo, live the wild Touaregs, the Veiled Men of the south, who ride
to war with their faces covered by linen masks.

These Veiled Men are Berbers, but their alphabet is composed of Lybian
characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on
certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years
old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the
likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents,
and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many
points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade
contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and
goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the
Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast
about 1200 B.C.

Five hundred years before Christ, Carthage sent one of her admirals on a
voyage of colonization beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Hannon set out
with sixty fifty-oared galleys carrying thirty thousand people. Some of
them settled at Mehedyia, at the mouth of the Sebou, where Phenician
remains have been found, and apparently the exploration was pushed as
far south as the coast of Guinea, for the inscription recording it
relates that Hannon beheld elephants, hairy men and "savages called
gorillas." At any rate, Carthage founded stable colonies at Melilla,
Larache, Sale and Casablanca.

Then came the Romans, who carried on the business, set up one of their
easy tolerant protectorates over "Tingitanian Mauretania,"[A] and built
one important military outpost, Volubilis in the Zerhoun, which a series
of minor defenses probably connected with Sale on the west coast, thus
guarding the Roman province against the unconquered Berbers to the
south.

[Footnote A: East of the Moulouya, the African protectorate (now west
Algeria and the Sud Oranais) was called the Mauretania of Caesar.]

Tingitanian Mauretania was one of the numerous African granaries of
Rome. She also supplied the Imperial armies with their famous African
cavalry, and among minor articles of exportation were guinea-hens,
snails, honey, euphorbia, wild beasts, horses and pearls. The Roman
dominion ceased at the line drawn between Volubilis and Sale. There was
no interest in pushing farther south, since th