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Keewatin

town, roman, south and kef

KEEWATIN, the name now given to the most easterly dis trict of the three divisions of the North-West Territories of Canada. It is bounded on the east by Hudson bay and Foxe channel, on the west by 102° W. long. and on the south by Lat. 6o° N.

The district, as at present defined, is wholly within the Lauren tian Shield physiographic division, and only the extreme south west of it is forested, and that sparsely. The remainder is a tundra area, with frequent rock outcrops and many lakes and marshes. It lies well to the north of any present area of development.

Before the present boundaries of the three prairie provinces were established the 'name was applied to a more extensive region.

KEF,

more correctly El-Kef (the Rock), a town of Tunisia, 125 m. by rail south—south-west of the capital, and 75 m. south east of Bona in Algeria. It occupies the site of the Roman colony of Sicca Veneria, and is built on the steep slope of a rock in a mountainous region through which flows the Mellegue, an affluent of the Mejerda. Situated at the intersection of main routes from the west and south, Kef occupies a position of strategic impor tance. The town with its half-dozen mosques and tortuous, dirty streets, is still partly walled. The kasbah, or citadel, occupies a

rocky eminence on the west side of the town. It was built, or rebuilt, by the Turks, the material being Roman. It has been restored by the French, who maintain a garrison here.

The Roman remains include fragments of a large temple and of the baths. The ancient cisterns remain, but are empty, being used as part of the barracks. The town is, however, supplied by water from the same spring which filled the cisterns. The Christian cemetery is on the site of a basilica. There are ruins of another Christian basilica, excavated by the French, the apse being intact and the narthex serving as a church. Many stones with Roman inscriptions are built into the walls of Arab houses. The modern town is much smaller than the Roman colony. Kef, chief town of a controle civil, has 7,362 inhabitants, of whom 1,163 are Europeans. Kef in ancient times bore the name of Sicca Veneria, derived from a famous temple dedicated to an oriental goddess whom the Romans identified with Venus. Augustus made of it a colony which was a very prosperous town in the first centuries of our era.