Broad inland lakes dotted the plain; while to the north of Byrsa,
stretching down to the sea and extending as far as Cape Quamart,
lay Megara, the aristocratic suburb of Carthage.

Here, standing in gardens and parks, were the mansions of the
wealthy merchants and traders, the suburb presenting to the eye
a mass of green foliage dotted thickly with white houses. Megara
was divided from the lower town by a strong and lofty wall, but
lay within the outer wall which inclosed Byrsa and the whole of
Carthage and stretched from sea to sea.

The circumference of the inclosed space was fully twenty miles;
the population contained within it amounted to over eight hundred
thousand. On the north side near the sea, within the line of the
outer fortifications, rose a low hill, and here on the face which
sloped gently down to the sea was the great necropolis -- the
cemetery of Carthage, shaded by broad spreading trees, dotted with
the gorgeous mausoleums of the wealthy and the innumerable tombs
of the poorer families, and undermined by thousands of great
sepulchral chambers, which still remain to testify to the vastness
of the necropolis of Carthage, and to the pains which her people
bestowed upon the burying places of their dead.

Beyond all, from the point at which the travellers viewed it,
stretched the deep blue background of the Mediterranean, its line
broken only in the foreground by the lofty citadel of Byrsa, and
far out at sea by the faint outline of the Isle of Zinbre.

For some minutes the party sat immovable on their horses, then
Hamilcar broke the silence: