ROUND MESRA MATRUH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 223, 9 October 1940, Page 2

ROUND MESRA MATRUH

A ONCE-IMPORTANT ROMAN TOWN As they wait near the sun-baked little town of Mersa Matruh for the Italians to continue their advance into Egypt, British forces are moving in parts the Romans knew. After nearly 2000 years of oblivion, says C S. Jarvis in the Sphere, the Mttlc Egyptian port—once a thriving Roman city and then merely a mark on the map—-lias come into tho limelight once again, for it is being used as the advance basu of the British forces stationed west of Alexandria. ! When the Anglo-Egyptian treaty was signed in 11)36, Mersa Matruh was chosen as' a desert military station where British and Egyptian forces might train together and learn something of the areas over which they might have to fight. Situated some 200 miles west of Alexandria, Mersa Matruh has proved a happy choice, because, though it is in the desert, it has an ideal climate, and, in the days of the Roman Empire, when this now desert-cover-ed part of the world was the granary of Rome, many wealthy Italian citizens had seaside villas along the lagoon or the neighbouring coast. In the summer months these shores are far cooler and more bracing than those of Italy.

The lagoon 'itself, where the British soldiers are revelling in the jnost ideal bathing, is chiefly remarkable for the extraordinary range of colours caused by the presence of rocks, white sand patches, and great depths. In Roman days, Praetonium, as it was called, was "the capital of the Libyan district, and was a harbour of some importance, as the small land-locked l'agoon, which will take

vessels up to 3000. lons, was admirably suited to the shipping of those days, There was much trade with Rome, for this part was then a proj lific corn-growing area and from its ' vineyards came the Mariut wine ! which was famous all over the cra- , pi^c. For 1600 years the nomad Bedouin have had their way and Mersa Matruh is now only a tiny village where a few merchants have shops and the inevitable Greek community does business among the Bedouin and the local sponge fishers. Amid the ruins of old Praetonium there are extensive fig and melori gardens, but a few miles inland the cultivation ceases except for scattered barley crops in the dry water-courses, and some 30 miles inland the scrub ends and there begins the real desert, where the sand goes its own sweet way. It forms big seas of gently undulating dunes, and it fills depressions, packs up on the Ice side of jutting hills and rides up the faces of cliffs in long writing tongues of gold.