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But when in ruins as complete as Pompeii, as desolate as Timgad amongst its African hills, you see the remnant of a pack of cards lying with what remains of the stock of a draper's shop; and the front part of the shop and the snug room at the back gape side by side together in equal, misery, as though there had never been a barrier between the counter with its wares and the good mahogany table with its decanters; then in the rustling of papers that blow with dust along long-desolate floors one hears the whisper of Disaster, saying, "See; I have come."
The town grew from one of 360 to a breadth of over 800 yds. And as it expanded, it broke loose from the chess-board pattern. The builders of later Timgad did not resemble those of later Turin. Even the decumanus, the main 'east and west' street, wandered away north-west in an uncertain curve, and all that has been discovered of streets outside the walls of Trajan is irregular and complicated.
It has been said to show marks of streets laid out rectangularly, but neither the look of the town itself nor the plans of it seem to me to confirm this idea; compare Lentheric, Le Rhone, ii. 110. From this piece of half-literary evidence we pass to purely archaeological remains, and first to the province of Numidia in Roman Africa and to the town of Timgad.
Charmian had been alone for five days when another telegram came: "Starting to-morrow for Algiers by the Timgad Hurrah ALSTON." She read that telegram again and again. She even read it aloud. Then she hurried to her room to get her copy of the libretto. Two days and they would be here! Her heart danced, sang. Everything was going well, more than well. The omens were good.
Trajan's Timgad was plainly small. On any estimate of the number of houses, the original draft of veterans sent there in A.D. 100 can hardly have exceeded 400, and the first population, apart from slaves, must have been under 2,000.
And out of the glimpses, one catches from odd comers of those volumes of Time, where old centuries hide, one builds up part by guesses, part by fancy mixed with but little knowledge, a tale or theory of how men and women lived in unknown ages in the faith of forgotten gods. Such a people lived in Timgad and left it probably about the time that waning Rome began to call home her outposts.
We followed that coast all night while I lay awake, shaking to the racing of the propeller; and I blessed the unknown engineers of the North Country who took forethought of nights of that kind when doing their best for Celestine; for, though bruised, I still loved her above Algiers and Timgad.
Such was Trajan's Timgad, as revealed by excavations now about two-thirds complete. The town soon burst its narrow bounds. A Capitol, Baths, a large Meat-market, and much else sprang up outside the walls. Soon the walls themselves, like those of many mediaeval towns for example, the north and west town-walls of Oxford were built over and hidden by later structures.
"Certainly not to-night," I answered; to which he said, "No!" I took a bite of the food, and he at once continued rapidly: "Timgad is a marvel. We call it 'the marvel. I had thought of calling this house 'Timgad the Marvel, or, again, 'Timgad the " "Is this sheep?" I said. "Certainly," he answered. "What else could it be but sheep?" "Good Lord!" I said, "it might be anything.
There are far more grandiose and impressive ruins to be seen in Rome; the city of Timgad in Northern Africa is more complete as a specimen of a Roman settlement than the half-excavated town near Vesuvius; yet here, and here only, can the men of the past stretch hands, as it were, across the barrier of eighteen intervening centuries to the dweller of to-day, and the dead-and-gone spirits of a highly organized civilization can whisper into the living ears of the twentieth century.
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