Tabarka

The ancient ports of Carthage and Portaferina offered more protection in the corsair's time than now, when the sand has choked the coast; and in the autumn months a vessel needed all the shelter she could get when the Cyprian wind was blowing off Cape Bona.

Close to the present Algerine frontier is Tabarka, which the Lomellini family of Genoa found a thriving situation for their trading establishments.

La Calle, once a famous nest of pirates, had then a fine harbor, as the merchants of Marseilles discovered when they superintended the coral fisheries from the neighboring Bastion de France.

Bona, just beyond, has its roads, and formerly possessed a deep harbor.

Lord Granville believed the French government when it solemnly assured him that the operations about to commence on the borderland between Algeria and Tunis are meant solely to put an end to the constant inroads of the frontier clans into Algerian territory, and that the independence of the bey and the integrity of his territory are in no way threatened.

It was Algiers over again, but with even more serious consequences to English influence, indeed to all but French influence, in the Mediterranean.

Perfide Albion wholly confided in Perfida Gallia, and it was too late to protest against the flagrant breach of faith when the French army had taken Kef and Tabarka, April 26, 1881, when the tricolor was floating over Baserta, and when General Briard, with every circumstance of insolent brutality, had forced the treaty of Kazar-es-Saïd upon the luckless bey under the muzzles of the guns of the Republic, May 12.

It is difficult to believe that the feeling of the English statesman of the day is expressed in the words, Aecolem meminisse juvabit.