gifts of the sea.  In many places similar Negro tribes occupy thick forests in the hollows beneath high chains of mountains, the summits of which are inhabited by Abyssinian or Ethiopian races.  The high table-lands of Africa are chiefly, as far as they are known, the abode or the wandering places of tribes of this character, or of nations who, like the Kafirs, recede very considerably from the Negro type.  The Mandingos are, indeed, a Negro race inhabiting a high region; but they have neither the depressed forehead nor the projecting features considered as characteristic of the Negro race.[644]

FOOTNOTES: 

[643] Peschel, The Races of Man, pp. 462-464.

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CHAPTER VII.

CITIES OF AFRICA.

Carthage.  The foundation of this celebrated city is ascribed to Elissa, a Tyrian princess, better known as Dido; it may therefore be fixed at the year of the world 3158; when Joash was king of Judah; 98 years before the building of Rome, and 846 years before Christ.  The king of Tyre, father of the famous Jezebel, called in Scripture Ethbaal, was her great grandfather.  She married her near relation Acerbas, also called Sicharbas, or Sichaeus, an extremely rich prince, Pygmalion, king of Tyre, was her brother.  Pygmalion put Sichaeus to death in order that he might have an opportunity to seize his immense treasures, but Dido eluded her brother’s cruel avarice, by secretly conveying away her deceased husband’s possessions.  With a large train of followers she left her country, and after wandering some time, landed on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Africa, and located her settlement at the bottom of the gulf, on a peninsula, near the spot where Tunis now stands.  Many of the neighboring people, allured by the prospect of gain, repaired thither to sell to those foreigners the necessities of life, and soon became incorporated with them.  The people thus gathered from different places soon grew very numerous.  And the citizens of Utica, an African city about fifteen miles distant, considering them as their countrymen, as descended from the same common stock, advised them to build a city where they had settled.  The other natives of the country, from their natural esteem and respect for strangers, likewise encouraged them to the same object.  Thus all things conspiring with Dido’s views, she built her city, which was appointed to pay in annual tribute to the Africans for the ground it stood upon, and called it Carthage—­a name that in the Phoenician and Hebrew languages, [which have a great affinity,] signifies the “New City.”  It is said that in digging the foundation, a horse’s head was found, which was thought to be a good omen, and a presage of the future warlike genius of that people.  Carthage had the same language and national character as its parent state—­Tyre.