From Muchtar, or Tucca Terebinthina, we came to Kisser[29], which Dr Shaw conjectures to have been the Colonia Assuras of the ancients, by this it should seem he had not been there; for there is an inscription upon a triumphal arch of very good taste, now standing, and many others to be met with up and down, which confirms beyond doubt his conjecture to be a just one. There is, besides this, a small square temple, upon which are carved several instruments of sacrifice, which are very curious, but the execution of these is much inferior to the design. It stands on the declivity of a hill, above a large fertile plain, still called the Plain of Surse, which is probably a corruption of its ancient name Assuras.
From Kisser I came to Musti, where there is a triumphal arch of very good taste, but perfectly in ruins; the merit of its several parts only could be collected from the fragments which lie strewed upon the ground.
From Musti[30] I proceeded north-eastward to Tubersoke, thence again to Dugga, and down the Bagrada to Tunis.
My third, or, which may be called my middle journey through Tunis, was by Zowan, a high mountain, where is a large aqueduct which formerly carried its water to Carthage. Thence I came to Jelloula, a village lying below high mountains on the west; these are the Montes Vassaleti of Ptolemy[31], as the town itself is the Oppidum Usalitanum of Pliny. I fell here again into the ancient road at Gilma; and, not satisfied with what I had seen of the beauties of Spaitla, I passed there five days more, correcting and revising what I had already committed to paper. Independent of the treasure I found in the elegance of its buildings, the town itself is situated in the most beautiful spot in Barbary, surrounded thick with juniper-trees, and watered by a pleasant stream that sinks there under the earth, and appears no more.
Here I left my former road at Cassareen, and proceeding directly S. E. came to Feriana, the road that I had abandoned before from prudential motives, Feriana, as has been before observed, is the ancient Thala, taken and destroyed by Metellus in his pursuit of Jugurtha. I had formed, I know not from what reason, sanguine expectations of elegant remains here, but in this I was disappointed; I found nothing remarkable but the baths of very warm water[32] without the town; in these there was a number of fish, above four inches in length, not unlike gudgeons. Upon trying the heat by the thermometer, I remember to have been much surprised that they could have existed, or even not been boiled, by continuing long in the heat of this medium. As I marked the degrees with a pencil while I was myself naked in the water, the leaf was wetted accidentally, so that I missed the precise degree I meant to have recorded, and do not pretend to supply it from memory. The bath is at the head of the fountain, and the stream runs off to a considerable distance. I think there were about five or six dozen of these fish in the pool. I was told likewise, that they went down into the stream to a certain distance in the day, and returned to the pool, or warmest and deepest water, at night.