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diff --git a/8185-8.txt b/8185-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b1759b --- /dev/null +++ b/8185-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5616 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fountains In The Sand, by Norman Douglas + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Fountains In The Sand + Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia + +Author: Norman Douglas + +Posting Date: June 16, 2013 [EBook #8185] +Release Date: May, 2005 +First Posted: June 27, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, S. R. Ellison and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Photo Portrait--Girl in Shawl] + + FOUNTAINS + IN THE SAND + +RAMBLES AMONG THE OASES OF TUNISIA + + _By Norman Douglas_ + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + I. EN ROUTE + + II. BY THE OUED BAIESH + + III. THE TERMID + + IV. STONES OF GAFSA + + V. SIDI AHMED ZARROUNG + + VI. AMUSEMENTS BY THE WAY + + VII. AT THE CAFÉ + + VIII. POST-PRANDIAL MEDITATIONS + + IX. SOME OF OUR GUESTS + + X. THE OASIS OF LEILA + + XI. A HAVEN OF REFUGE + + XII. THE MYSTERIOUS COUNT + + XIII. TO METLAOUI + + XIV. PHOSPHATES + + XV. THE SELDJA GORGE + + XVI. AT THE HEAD OF THE WATERS + + XVII. ROMAN OLIVE-CULTURE + +XVIII. THE WORK OF PHILIPPE THOMAS + + XIX. OVER GUIFLA TO TOZEUR + + XX. A WATERY LABYRINTH + + XXI. OLD TISOUROS + + XXII. THE DISMAL CHOTT + +XXIII. THE GARDENS OF NEFTA + + XXIV. NEFTA AND ITS FUTURE + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +GAFSA AND JEBEL ORBATA + +ENTRANCE TO THE TERMID + +AT THE TERMID + +A STREET IN GAFSA + +HADRIAN'S INSCRIPTION + +THE LAST PALMS + +CAFÉ BY THE MULBERRY-TREE + +MY FRIEND SILENUS + +NATIVES OF GAFSA + +THE ROMAN WALL + +OLIVES IN THE OASIS + +TOZEUR AND ITS OASIS + +THE WATERS OF TOZEUR + +THE SHRINE ON THE CHOTT + +MARABOUT IN THE NEFTA GARDENS + +A BEGGAR + + + +_FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND_ + + + +_Chapter I_ + +_EN ROUTE_ + + +Likely enough, I would not have remained in Gafsa more than a couple of +days. For it was my intention to go from England straight down to the +oases of the Djerid, Tozeur and Nefta, a corner of Tunisia left unexplored +during my last visit to that country--there, where the inland regions +shelve down towards those mysterious depressions, the Chotts, dried-up +oceans, they say, where in olden days the fleets of Atlantis rode at +anchor.... + +But there fell into my hands, by the way, a volume that deals exclusively +with Gafsa--Pierre Bordereau's "La Capsa ancienne: La Gafsa moderne"--and, +glancing over its pages as the train wound southwards along sterile +river-beds and across dusty highlands, I became interested in this place +of Gafsa, which seems to have had such a long and eventful history. Even +before arriving at the spot, I had come to the correct conclusion that it +must be worth more than a two days' visit. + +The book opens thus: _One must reach Gafsa by way of Sfax._ Undoubtedly, +this was the right thing to do; all my fellow-travellers were agreed upon +that point; leaving Sfax by a night train, you arrive at Gafsa in the +early hours of the following morning. + +One must reach Gafsa by way of Sfax.... + +But a fine spirit of northern independence prompted me to try an +alternative route. The time-table marked a newly opened line of railway +which runs directly inland from the port of Sousse; the distance to Gafsa +seemed shorter; the country was no doubt new and interesting. There was +the station of Feriana, for instance, celebrated for its Roman antiquities +and well worth a visit; I looked at the map and saw a broad road +connecting this place with Gafsa; visions of an evening ride across the +desert arose before my delighted imagination; instead of passing the night +in an uncomfortable train, I should be already ensconced at a luxurious +table d'hôte, and so to bed. + +The gods willed otherwise. + +In pitch darkness, at the inhuman hour of 5.55 a.m., the train crept out +of Sousse: sixteen miles an hour is its prescribed pace. The weather grew +sensibly colder as we rose into the uplands, a stricken region, tree-less +and water-less, with gaunt brown hills receding into the background; by +midday, when Sbeitla was reached, it was blowing a hurricane. I had hoped +to wander, for half an hour or so, among the ruins of this old city of +Suffetula, but the cold, apart from their distance from the station, +rendered this impossible; in order to reach the shed where luncheon was +served, we were obliged to crawl backwards, crab-wise, to protect our +faces from a storm which raised pebbles, the size of respectable peas, +from the ground, and scattered them in a hail about us. I despair of +giving any idea of that glacial blast: it was as if one stood, deprived of +clothing, of skin and flesh--a jabbering anatomy--upon some drear +Caucasian pinnacle. And I thought upon the gentle rains of London, from +which I had fled to these sunny regions, I remembered the fogs, moist and +warm and caressing: greatly is the English winter maligned! Seeing that +this part of Tunisia is covered with the forsaken cities of the Romans who +were absurdly sensitive in the matter of heat and cold, one is driven to +the conclusion that the climate must indeed have changed since their day. + +And my fellow-traveller, who had slept throughout the morning (we were the +only two Europeans in the train), told me that this weather was nothing +out of the common; that at this season it blew in such fashion for weeks +on end; Sbeitla, to be sure, lay at a high point of the line, but the cold +was no better at the present terminus, Henchir Souatir, whither he was +bound on some business connected with the big phosphate company. On such +occasions the natives barricade their doors and cower within over a +warming-pan filled with the glowing embers of desert shrubs; as for +Europeans--a dog's life, he said; in winter we are shrivelled to mummies, +in summer roasted alive. + +I spoke of Feriana, and my projected evening ride across a few miles of +desert. + +"Gafsa ... Gafsa," he began, in dreamy fashion, as though I had proposed a +trip to Lake Tchad. And then, emphatically: + +"_Gafsa?_ Why on earth didn't you go over Sfax?" + +"Ah, everybody has been suggesting that route." + +"I can well believe it, Monsieur." + +In short, my plan was out of the question; utterly out of the question. +The road--a mere track--was over sixty kilometres in length and positively +unsafe on a wintry night; besides, the land lay 800 metres in height, and +a traveller would be frozen to death. I must go as far as Majen, a few +stations beyond Feriana; sleep there in an Arab funduk (caravanserai), and +thank my stars if I found any one willing to supply me with a beast for +the journey onward next morning. There are practically no tourists along +this line, he explained, and consequently no accommodation for them; the +towns that one sees so beautifully marked on the map are railway +stations--that and nothing more; and as to the broad highways crossing the +southern parts of Tunisia in various directions--well, they simply don't +exist, _voilà_! + +"That's not very consoling," I said, as we took our seats in the +compartment again. "It begins well." + +And my meditations took on a sombre hue. I thought of a little overland +trip I had once undertaken, in India, with the identical object of +avoiding a long circuitous railway journey--from Udaipur to Mount Abu. I +remembered those "few miles of desert." + +Decidedly, things were beginning well. + +"If you go to Gafsa," he resumed, "--if you really propose going to Gafsa, +pray let me give you a card to a friend of mine, who lives there with his +family and may be useful to you. No trouble, I assure you!" + +He scribbled a few lines, addressed to "Monsieur Paul Dufresnoy, +Engineer," for which I thanked him. "We all know each other in Africa," he +said. "It's quite a small place--our Africa, I mean. You could squeeze the +whole of it into the Place de la Concorde.... Nothing but minerals +hereabouts," he went on. "They talk and dream of them, and sometimes their +dreams come true. Did you observe the young proprietor of the restaurant +at Sbeitla? Well, a short time ago some Arabs brought him a handful of +stones from the mountains; he bought the site for two or three hundred +francs, and a company has already offered him eight hundred thousand for +the rights of exploitation. Zinc! He is waiting till they offer a +million." + +Majen.... + +A solitary station upon the wintry plain--three or four shivering Arabs +swathed in rags--desolation all around--the sun setting in an angry cloud. +It was a strong impression; one realized, for the first time, one's +distance from the life of civilized man. Night descended with the rush of +a storm, and as the friendly train disappeared from my view, I seemed to +have taken leave of everything human. This feeling was not lessened by my +reception at the funduk, whose native manager sternly refused to give me +that separate sleeping-room which, I had been assured, was awaiting me and +which, as he truthfully informed me, was even then unoccupied. The +prospect of passing the night with a crowd of Arabs was not pleasing. + +Amiability being unavailing, I tried bribery, but found him adamantine. + +I then produced a letter from the Resident of the Republic in Tunis, +recommending me to all the _bureaux indigènes_ of the country, my +translation of it being confirmed and even improved upon, at the expense +of veracity, by a spahi (native cavalryman) who happened to be present, +and threatened the man with the torments of the damned if he failed to +comply with the desires of his government. + +"The Resident," was the reply, "is plainly a fine fellow. But he is not +the _ponsechossi_." + +"Ponsechossi. What's that?" + +"THIS," he said, excavating from under a pile of miscellaneous rubbish a +paper whereon was displayed the official stamp of the _Ponts et +Chaussées_--the Department of Public Works for whose servants this choice +apartment is--or rather ought to be--exclusively reserved: the rule is not +always obeyed. + +"Bring me THIS"--tapping the document proudly--"and you have the room." + +"Could I at least find a horse in the morning--a mule--a donkey--a camel?" + +"We shall see!" And he slouched away. + +There was nothing to be done with the man. Your incorruptible Oriental is +always disagreeable. Fortunately, he is rather uncommon. + +But the excellent spahi, whom my letter from head-quarters had +considerably impressed, busied himself meanwhile on my behalf, and at +seven in the morning a springless, open, two-wheeled Arab cart, drawn by a +moth-eaten old mule, was ready for my conveyance to Gafsa. In this +instrument of torture were spent the hours from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., +memories of that ride being blurred by the physical discomfort endured. +Over a vast plateau framed in distant mountains we were wending in the +direction of a low gap which never came nearer; the road itself was full +of deep ruts that caused exquisite agony as we jolted into them; the +sun--a patch of dazzling light, cold and cheerless. At this hour, I +reflected, the train from Sfax would already have set me down at Gafsa. + +Save for a few stunted thorns in the moister places, the whole land, so +far as the eye could reach, was covered with halfa-grass--leagues upon +leagues of this sad grey-green desert reed. We passed a few nomad families +whose children were tearing out the wiry stuff--it is never cut in +Tunisia--which is then loaded on camels and conveyed to the nearest depot +on the railway line, and thence to the seaboard. They were burning it here +and there, to keep themselves warm; this is forbidden by law, but +then--there is so much of it on these uplands, and the wind is so cold! + +The last miles were easier travelling, as we had struck the track from +Feriana on our left. Here, at an opening of the arid hills, where the road +begins to descend in a broad, straight ribbon, there arose, suddenly, a +distant glimpse of the oasis of Gafsa--a harmonious line of dark palm +trees, with white houses and minarets in between. A familiar vision, and +often described; yet one that never fails of its effect. A man may weary, +after a while, of camels and bedouin maidens and all the picturesque +paraphernalia of Arab life; or at least they end in becoming so trite that +his eyes cease to take note of them; but there are two spectacles, ever +new, elemental, that correspond to deeper impulses: this of palms in the +waste--the miracle of water; and that of fire--the sun. + +A low hill near the entrance of the town (it is marked Meda Hill on the +map) had attracted my attention as promising a fine view. Thither, after +settling my concerns at the hotel, I swiftly bent my steps; it was too +late; the wintry sun had gone to rest. The oasis still lay visible, +extended at my feet; on the other side I detected, some three miles away, +a white spot--a house, no doubt--standing by a dusky patch of palms that +rose solitary out of the stones. Some subsidiary oasis, probably; it +looked an interesting place, all alone there, at the foot of those barren +hills. + +And still I lingered, my only companion being a dirty brown dog, of the +jackal type, who walked round me suspiciously and barked, or rather +whined, without ceasing. At last I took up a stone, and he ran away. But +the stone remained in my hand; I glanced at it, and saw that it was an +implement of worked flint. Here was a discovery! Who were these carvers of +stones, the aboriginals of Gafsa? How lived they? A prolonged and +melodious whistle from the distant railway station served to remind me of +the gulf of ages that separates these prehistoric men from the life of our +day. + +But as if to efface without delay that consoling impression, my downward +path led past a dark cavern before which was lighted a fire that threw +gleams into its recesses; there was a family crouching around it; they +lived in the hollow rock. A high-piled heap of bones near at hand +suggested cannibalistic practices. + +These, then, are the primitives of Gafsa. And for how long, I wonder, has +this convenient shelter been inhabited? From time immemorial, perhaps; +ever since the days of those others. And, after all, how little have they +changed in the intervening thousands of years! The wild-eyed young wench, +with her dishevelled hair, ferocious bangle-ornaments, tattooings, and +nondescript blue rags open at the side and revealing charms well fitted to +disquiet some robust savage--what has such a creature in common with the +rest of us? Not even certain raptures, misdeemed primeval; hardly more +than what falls to man and beast alike. On my appearance, she rose up and +eyed me unabashed; then sank to the ground again, amid her naked and +uncouth cubs; the rock, she said, was warmer than the black tents; they +paid no rent; for the rest, her man would return forthwith. And soon there +was a clattering of stones, and a herd of goats scrambled up and vanished +within the opening. + +The partner was neither pleased nor displeased at seeing me there; every +day he went to pasture his flock on the slopes of the opposite Jebel +Guetter, returning at nightfall; he tried to be civil but failed, for want +of vocabulary. I gave him the salutation, and passed on in the gloaming. + + + + +_Chapter II_ + +_BY THE OUED BAIESH_ + + +This collecting of flint implements grows upon one at Gafsa; it is in the +air. And I find that quite a number of persons have anticipated me in this +amusement, and even written tomes upon the subject--it is ever thus, when +one thinks to have made a scientific discovery. These stones are scattered +all over the plain, and Monsieur Couillault has traced the site of several +workshops--_ateliers_--of prehistoric weapons near Sidi Mansur, which lies +within half a mile of Gafsa, whence he has extracted--or rather retrieved, +for the flints merely lie upon the ground--quantities of instruments of +every shape; among them, some saws and a miniature spade. + +[Illustration: Gafsa and Jebel Orbata] + +My collection of these relics, casually picked up here and there, already +numbers two hundred pieces, and illustrates every period of those early +ages--uncouth battle-axes and spear-points; fine needles, apparently used +for sewing skins together; the so-called laurel-leaves, as thin as +card-board; knife-blades; instruments for scraping beast-hides--all of +flint. What interests me most, are certain round throwing-stones; a few +are flat on both sides, but others, evidently the more popular shape, are +flat below and rise to a cone above. Of these latter, I have a series of +various sizes; the largest are for men's hands, but there are smaller +ones, not more than eleven centimetres round, for the use of children: one +thinks of the fierce little hands that wielded them, these many thousand +years ago. Even now the natives will throw by preference with a stone of +this disk-like shape--the cone pointing downwards. But, judging by the +size of their implements, the hands of this prehistoric race can hardly +have been as large as those of their modern descendants. + +Then, as now, Gafsa must have been an important site; the number of these +weapons is astonishing. Vast populations have drifted down the stream of +time at this spot, leaving no name or mark behind them, save these relics +fashioned, by the merest of chances, out of a practically imperishable +material; steel and copper would have rotted away long ago, and the +stoutest palaces crumbled to dust under the teeth of the desert air. + +The bed of the Oued Baiesh, which flows past Gafsa and is nearly half a +mile broad in some places, is rich in these worked flints which have been +washed out of its steep banks by the floods. Walking here the other day +with a miserable young Arab who, I verily believe, had attached himself to +me out of sheer boredom (since he never asked for a sou), I observed, in +the distance, a solitary individual, a European, pacing slowly along as +though wrapped in meditation; every now and then he bent down to the +ground. + +"That's a French gentleman from Gafsa. He collects those stones of yours +all day long." + +Another amateur, I thought. + +"But not like yourself," he went on. "He picks them up, bad and good, and +when they don't look nice he works at them with iron things; I've seen +them! He makes very pretty stones, much prettier than yours. Then he sends +them away." + +"How do you know this?" + +"I've looked in at his window." + +A modern "atelier" of flints--this was an amusing revelation. Maybe--who +knows?--half the museums of Europe are stocked with these superior +products. + +Sages will be interested to learn that Professor Koken, of Tübingen, in a +learned pamphlet, lays it down that these flints of Gafsa belong to the +Mesvinian, Strepyian, Præchellean--to say nothing of the Mousterian, +Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and other types. So be it. He further +says, what is more intelligible to the uninitiated, that a bed of hard +conglomerate which crops up at Gafsa on either side of the Oued Baiesh, +has been raised in days of yore; it was raised so slowly that the river +found time to carve itself a bed through it during the process of +elevation; nevertheless, a certain class of these artificial implements, +embedded since God knows when, already formed part of this natural +conglomerate ere it began to uplift itself. This will give some idea of +the abysm of time that lies between us and the skin-clad men that lived +here in olden days. + +An abysm of time... + +But I remembered the cave-wench of the Meda Hill. And my companion to-day +was of the same grade, a characteristic semi-nomad boy of the poorest +class; an orphan, of course (they are nearly all orphans), and quite +abandoned. His whole vocabulary could not have exceeded one hundred and +fifty words; he had never heard of the Apostle of Allah or his sacred +book; he could only run, and throw stones, and endure, like a beast, those +ceaseless illnesses of which only death, an early death as a rule, is +allowed to cure them. His clothing was an undershirt and the inevitable +burnous, brown with dirt. + +"What have you done to-day?" I asked him. + +"Nothing." + +"And yesterday?" + +"Nothing. Why should I do anything?" + +"Don't you _ever_ wash?" + +"I have nobody to wash me." + +Yet they appreciate the use of unguents. The other day a man accidentally +poured a glassful of oil into the dusty street. Within a moment a crowd of +boys were gathered around, dabbling their hands into it and then rubbing +them on their hair; those that possessed boots began by ornamenting them, +and thence conveyed the stuff to their heads--the ground was licked dry in +a twinkling; their faces glistened with the greasy mixture. "That's good," +they said. + +Such, I daresay, were the pastimes of those prehistoric imps of the +throwing-disks, and their clothing must have been much the same. + +For what is the burnous save a glorified aboriginal beast-skin? It has the +same principle of construction; the major part covers the human back and +sides; the beast's head forms the hood; where the forefeet meet, the thing +is tied together across the breast, leaving a large open slit below, and a +smaller one above, where the man's head emerges. + +The character of the race is summed up in that hopeless garment, which +unfits the wearer for every pleasure and every duty of modern life. An +article of everyday clothing which prevents a man from using his upper +limbs, which swathes them up, like a silkworm in its cocoon--can anything +more insane be imagined? Wrapped therein for nearly all their lives, the +whole race grows round-shouldered; the gastric region, which ought to be +protected in this climate of extremes, is exposed; the heating of their +heads, night and day, with its hood, cannot but injure their brains; their +hands become weak as those of women, with claw-like movements of the +fingers and an inability to open the palm to the full. + +No wonder it takes ten Arabs to fight one negro; no wonder their spiritual +life is apathetic, unfruitful, since the digits that explore and design, +following up the vagrant fancies of the imagination, are practically +atrophied. You will see beggars who find it too troublesome, on cold days, +to extricate their hands for the purpose of demanding alms! Man has been +described as a tool-making animal, but the burnous effectually counteracts +that wholesome tendency; it is a mummifying vesture, a step in the +direction of fossilification. Will the natives ever realize that the +abolition of this sleeveless and buttonless anachronism is one of the +conditions of their betterment? Have _they_ made the burnous, or +vice-versa? No matter. They came together somehow, and suited one another. + +The burnous is the epitome of Arab inefficiency. + +They call it simple, but like other things that go by that name, it +defeats it own objects of facilitating the common operations of life. It +is amusing to watch them at their laundry-work. Unless a man stand still +and upright, the end of this garment is continually slipping down from his +shoulders; one of the washerman's hands, therefore, is employed in holding +it in its place; the other grasps a stick upon which he leans while +stamping a war-dance with his feet upon the linen. This is only half the +performance, for a friend, holding up _his_ cloak with one hand, must bend +over and ladle the necessary water upon the linen with the other. Thus two +men are requisitioned to wash a shirt--a hand of one, two feet of the +other. No wonder they do not wash them often; the undertaking, thanks to +the burnous, is too complicated. + +Yet there is no denying that it adds charm to the landscape; it is highly +decorative; its colour and shape and peculiar texture are as pleasing to +the beholder as must have been the toga of the old Romans (which, by the +way, was a purely ceremonial covering, to be doffed during work: so +Cincinnatus, when the senators found him at the plough, went in to dress +in his toga ere receiving them). + +Stalking along on their thin bare shanks, their glittering eyes and hooked +noses shaded within its hood, many adult Arabs assume a strangely +bird-like appearance; while the smooth-faced youths, peering from under +its coquettish folds, remind one of third-rate actresses out for a spree. +In motion, when some half-naked boy sits merrily upon a galloping +stallion, his bare limbs and flying burnous take on the passionate grace +of a panathenaic frieze; it befits equally well the repose of old age, +crouching at some street-corner in hieratic immobility. + +Yes, there is no denying that it looks artistic; the burnous is +picturesque, like many antediluvian things. And of course, where nothing +better can be procured, it will protect you from the cold and the stinging +rays of the sun. But if a European wants a chill in the liver or any other +portion of the culinary or postprandial department, he need only wear one +for a few days on end; raise the hood, and you will have a headache in ten +minutes. + +Nevertheless I have bought one, and am wearing it at this very moment. But +not as the poorer Arabs do. Beneath it there is a suit of ordinary winter +clothing, as well as two English ulsters--and this _indoors_. Perhaps this +will give some idea of the cold of Gafsa. There is no heating these bare +rooms with their icy walls and floorings: out of doors a blizzard is +raging that would flay a rhinoceros. And the wind of Gafsa has this +peculiarity, that it is equally bitter from whichever point of the compass +it blows. Let those who contemplate the supreme madness of coming to the +sunny oasis at the present season of the year (January) bring not only +Arctic vestment, eiderdowns, fur cloaks, carpets and foot-warmers, but +also, and chiefly, efficient furnaces and fuel for them. + +For such things seem to be unknown hereabouts. + + + + +_Chapter III_ + +_THE TERMID_ + + +The chief attractions of Gafsa, beside the oasis, are the tall minaret +with its prospect over the town and plantations, and the Kasbah or +fortress, a Byzantine construction covering a large expanse of ground and +rebuilt by the French on theatrical lines, with bastions and crenellations +and other warlike pomp; thousands of blocks of Roman masonry have been +wrought into its old walls, which are now smothered under a modern layer +of plaster divided into square fields, to imitate solid stonework. It +looks best in the moonlight, when this childish cardboard effect is toned +down. + +One of the two hot springs of Gafsa is enclosed within this Kasbah, while +the other rises near at hand and flows into the celebrated baths--the +_termid_, as the natives, using the old Greek word, still call it. It is a +large and deep stone basin, half full of warm water, in which small +fishes, snakes and tortoises disport themselves; the massive engirdling +walls demonstrate its Roman origin. Thick mists hang over the _termid_ in +the early mornings, when the air is chilly, but later on it becomes a +lively place, full of laughter and splashings. Here, for a sou, you may +get the boys to jump down from the parapet and wallow among the muddy ooze +at the bottom; the liquid, though transparent, is not colourless, but +rather of the blue-green tint of the aquamarine crystal; it flows rapidly, +and all impurities are carried away. + +There are always elderly folk idling about these premises, and youngsters +with rods tempting the fish out of the water; day after day the game goes +on, the foolish creatures nibble at the bait and are drawn up on high; +their fellows see the beginning of the tragedy, but never the end, where, +floundering in the street, the victims cover their silvery scales with a +coating of dust and expire ignominiously, as unlike live fishes as if they +came ready cooked out of the kitchen _panés et frits_. + +Above this basin is another one, that of the women; and below it, at the +foot of a lurid stairway, a suite of subterranean (Roman) chambers, a kind +of Turkish bath for men, where the water hurries darkly through; the place +is reeking with a steamy heat, and objectionable beyond words; it would +not be easy to describe, in the language of polite society, those features +in which it is most repulsive to Europeans. + +[Illustration: Entrance to the Termid] + +How easily, as in former days, might now a health-giving wonder be created +out of these waters of Gafsa, that well up in a river of warmth and +purity, only to be hopelessly contaminated! The French tried the +experiment, but the natives objected, and they gave way: these are the +spots on the sunny ideal of "pacific penetration." Any other +nationality--while allowing the Arabs a fair share of the element--would +simply have rebuilt this _termid_ and put it to a decent use, in the name +of cleanliness and civilization; the natives acquiescing, as they always +do when they recognize their masters. Or, if a display of force was +considered inadvisable, why not try the _suaviter in modo_? Had a couple +of local saints been judiciously approached, the population would soon +have discovered that the _termid_ waters are injurious to health and only +fit for unbelievers. What is the use of a _marabout_, if he cannot be +bribed? + +I am all for keeping up local colour, even when it entails, as it +generally does, a certain percentage of local smells; yet it seems a pity +that such glorious hot springs, a gift of the gods in a climate like this, +should be converted into a _cloaca maxima_, especially in Gafsa, which +already boasts of a superfluity of open drains. + +But my friend the magistrate showed me a special bathing room which has +lately been built for the use of Europeans. We tried the door and found it +locked. + +Where was the key? + +At the _Ponts et Chaussées_. + +Thither I went, and discovered an elderly official of ample proportions +dozing in a trim apartment--the chief of the staff. Great was this +gentleman's condescension; he bade me be seated, opened his eyes wide, and +enquired after my wants. + +The key? The key of the _piscine?_ He regretted he could give me no +information as to its whereabouts--no information whatever. He had never +so much as seen the key in question; perhaps it had been lost, perhaps it +never existed. Several tourists, he added, had already come on the same +quest as myself; he also, on one occasion last year, thought he would like +to take a bath, but--what would you? There was no key! If I liked to +bathe, I might go to the tank at the gardens of Sidi Ahmed Zarroung. + +I gently insisted, pointing out that I did not care for a walk across the +wind-swept desert only to dip myself into a pool of lukewarm and +pestilentially sulphureous water. But "the key" was evidently a sore +subject. + +"There is no key, Monsieur"; and he accompanied the words with a +portentous negative nod that blended the resigned solicitude of an old and +trusted friend with the firmness of a Bismarck. This closed the +discussion; with expressions of undying gratitude, and a few remarks as to +the palpable advantages to be derived from keeping a public bathing-room +permanently locked, I left him to his well-earned slumbers.... + +It is hard to understand what the guide-books mean when they call the +market of Gafsa "rich and well-appointed": a five-pound note, I calculate, +would buy the entire exhibition. The produce, though varied, is wretched; +but the scenery fine. Over a dusty level, strewn with wares, you look upon +a stretch of waving palms, with the distant summit of Jebel Orbata shining +in the deep blue sky. Here are a few butchers and open-air cooks who fry +suspicious-looking bundles of animal intestines for the epicurean Arabs; a +little saddlery; half a camel-load of corn; a broken cart-wheel and +rickety furniture put up to auction; one or two halfa-mats of admirable +workmanship; grinding-stones; musty pressed dates, onions, huge but +insipid turnips and other green things, red peppers---- + +Those peppers! An adult Arab will eat two pounds of them a day. I have +seen, native women devouring, alternately, a pepper, then a date, then +another pepper, then another date, and so on, for half an hour. An infant +at the breast, when tired of its natural nourishment, is often given one +of these fiery abominations to suck, as an appetizer, or by way of change +and amusement. Their corroding juices are responsible for half the stomach +troubles of the race; a milk diet would work wonders as a cure, if the +people could be induced to do things by halves; but they cannot; it is +"all peppers or all milk," and, the new diet disagreeing with them at +first, they return to their peppers and a painful disease. + +It is this lack of measure and reasonableness among them which accounts +for what I believe to be a fact, namely, that there are more reclaimed +drunkards among Arabs than among ourselves. They will break off the +alcohol habit violently, and for ever. And this they do not out of +principle, but from impulse or, as they prefer to call it, inspiration; +indeed, they regard our men of fixed principles as weaklings and cowards, +who stiffen themselves by artificial rules because they cannot trust their +judgments to deal with events as they arise--(the Arab regards terrestrial +life as a chain of accidents)--cowards and infidels, trying to forestall +by human devices the unascertainable decrees of Allah. + +Allah wills it! That is why they patiently bear the extremes of hunger, +and why, if fortune smiles, they gorge like Eskimos, like +boa-constrictors. + +I have seen them so distended with food as to be literally incapable of +moving. Only yesterday, there swept past these doors a bright procession, +going half-trot to a lively chant of music: the funeral of a woman. I +enquired of a passer-by the cause of her death. + +"She ate too much, and burst." + +During the summer months, in the fruit-growing districts, quite a number +of children will "burst" in this fashion every day. + +_Mektoub_! the parents then exclaim. It was written. + +And no doubt there is such a thing as a noble resignation; to defy fate, +even if one cannot rule it. Many of us northerners would be the better for +a little _mektoub_. But this doctrine of referring everything to the will +of Allah takes away all stimulus to independent thought; it makes for +apathy, improvidence, and mental fossilification. A creed of everyday use +which hampers a man's reasoning in the most ordinary matters of life--is +it not like a garment that fetters his hands? + +_Mektoub_ is the intellectual _burnous_ of the Arabs.... + +There is some movement, at least, in this market; often the familiar +story-tellers, surrounded by a circle of charmed listeners; sometimes, +again, a group of Soudanese from Khordofan or Bournu, who parade a black +he-goat, bedizened with gaudy rags because devoted to death; they will +slay him in due course at some shrine; but not just now, because there is +still money to be made out of his ludicrous appearance, with an incidental +dance or song on their own part. Vaguely perturbing, these negro melodies +and thrummings; their reiteration of monotony awakens tremulous echoes on +the human diaphragm and stirs up hazy, primeval mischiefs. + +And this morning there arrived a blind singer, or bard; he was led by two +boys, who accompanied his extemporaneous verses--one of them tapping with +a pebble on an empty sardine-tin, while the other belaboured a beer-bottle +with a rusty nail: both solemn as archangels; there was also a +professional accompanist, who screwed his mouth awry and blew sideways +into a tall flute, his eyes half-closed in ecstatic rapture. Arab gravity +never looks better than during inanely grotesque performances of this +kind; in such moments one cannot help loving them, for these are the +little episodes that make life endurable. + +[Illustration: At the Termid] + +The music was not altogether original; it reminded me, with its mechanical +punctuations, of a concerto by Paderewski which contains an exquisite +movement between the piano and kettledrum--since the flute, which ought to +have supported the voice, was apparently dumb, although the artist puffed +out his cheeks as if his life depended upon it. Only after creeping quite +close to the performers could I discern certain wailful breathings; this +brave instrument, all splotched with variegated colours, gave forth a +succession of anguished and asthmatic whispers, the very phantom of a +song, like the wind sighing through the branches of trees. + + + + +_Chapter IV_ + +_STONES OF GAFSA_ + + +There are interesting walks in the neighbourhood of Gafsa, but I can +imagine nothing more curious than the town itself; a place of some five +thousand inhabitants, about a thousand of whom are Jews, with a sprinkling +of Italian tradespeople and French officials and soldiers. Beyond naming +the streets and putting up a few lamps, the Government has left it in its +Arab condition; the roadways are unpaved, hardly a single wall is plumb; +the houses, mostly one-storied, lean this way and that, and, being built +of earthen-tinted sun-dried brick, have an air of crumbling to pieces +before one's very eyes. A heavy and continuous shower would be the ruin of +Gafsa; the structures would melt away, like that triple wall of defence, +erected in medieval times, of which not a vestige remains. Yet the dirt is +not as remarkable as in many Eastern places, for every morning a band of +minor offenders is marched out of prison by an overseer to sweep the +streets. Sometimes an upper room is built to overlook, if possible, the +roadway; it is supported on palm-rafters, forming a kind of tunnel +underneath. Everywhere are immense blocks of chiselled stone worked into +the ephemeral Arab clay as doorsteps or lintels, or lying about at random, +or utilized as seats at the house entrance; they date from Roman or +earlier times--columns, too, some of them adorned with the lotus-pattern, +the majority unpretentious and solid. + +[Illustration: A Street in Gafsa] + +What do the natives think of these relics of past civilization? Do they +ever wonder whence they came or who made them? "The stones are there," +they will tell you. Yet the wiser among them will speak of _Ruman_; they +have heard of _Ruman_ moneys and antiquities. + +Arabs have a saying that Gafsa was founded by Nimrod's armour-bearer; but +a more reasonable legend, preserved by Orosius and others, attributes its +creation to Melkarth, the Libyan and Tyrian Hercules, hero of +colonization. He surrounded it with a wall pierced by a hundred gates, +whence its presumable name, Hecatompylos, the city of a hundred gates. The +Egyptians ruled it; then the Phoenicians, who called it Kafaz--the walled; +and after the destruction of Carthage it became the retreat and +treasure-house of Numidian kings. Greeks, too, exercised a powerful +influence on the place, and all these civilized peoples had prepared Gafsa +to appreciate the beneficent rule of the Romans. + +Then came Vandals and Byzantines, who gradually grew too weak to resist +the floods of plundering Arab nomads; the rich merchants fled, their +palaces fell to ruins; the town became a collection of mud huts inhabited +by poor cultivators who lived in terror of the neighbouring Hammama tribe +of true Arabs, that actually forbade them to walk beyond the limits of the +Jebel Assalah--a couple of miles distant. So the French found them in +1881. + +There are, however, a few decent houses, two-storied and spacious; in one +of them, I am told, lives the family of Monsieur Dufresnoy, to whom my +fellow traveller at Sbeitla gave me a card. He is absent at the Metlaoui +mines just now, and his wife and children in Paris. + +The cleansing of the streets by prisoners does not extend to the native +houses and courtyards, which therefore survive in all their original, +inconceivable squalor--squalor so uncompromising that it has long ago +ceased to be picturesque. What glimpses into humble interiors, when native +secretiveness has not raised a rampart of earthen bricks at the inside of +the entrance! In the daytime it is like looking into vast, abandoned +pigsties, fantastically encumbered with palm-logs, Roman building-blocks +and rubbish-heaps which display the accumulated filth of +generations--there is hardly a level yard of ground--rags and dust and +decay! Here they live, the poorer sort, and no wonder they have as little +sense of home as the wild creatures of the waste. But at night, when the +most villainous objects take on mysterious shapes and meanings, these +courtyards become grand; they assume an air of biblical desolation, as +though the curse of Heaven had fallen upon the life they once witnessed; +and even as you look into them, something stirs on the ground: it is an +Arab, sleeping uneasily in his burnous; he has felt, rather than heard, +your presence, and soon he unwinds his limbs and rises out of the dust, +like a sheeted ghost. + +It is an uncanny gift of these folks to come before you when least +expected; to be ever-present, emerging, one might almost say, out of the +earth. Go to the wildest corner of this thinly populated land, and you may +be sure that there is an Arab, brooding among the rocks or in the sand, +within a few yards of you. + +_The stones are there_. This is another feature which they have in common +with the beasts of the earth: never to pause before the memorials of their +own past. Goethe says that where men are silent, stones will speak. If +ever they spoke, it is among these crumbling, composite walls of Gafsa. + +A Roman inscription of the age of Hadrian, which now forms the step of an +Arab house, will arrest your glance and turn your thoughts awhile in the +direction of this dim, romantic figure. How little we really know of the +Imperial wanderer, whose journeyings may still be traced by the monuments +that sprang up in his footsteps! Never since the world began has there +been a traveller in the grandiose style of Hadrian; he perambulated his +world like a god, crowned with a halo of benevolence and omnipotence. + +And it occurs to me that there must be other relics of antiquity still +buried under the soil of Gafsa, which is raised on a mound, like an +island, above the surrounding country; particularly in the vicinity of the +_termid_, which we may suppose to have lain near the centre of the old +town. And where are the paving-stones? The painstaking John Leo says that +the streets of Gafsa are "broad and paved, like those of Naples or +Florence." Have they been slowly submerged under the debris of Arabism, or +taken up and worked into the masonry of the Kasbah and other buildings? +Not one is left: so much is certain. + +I borrowed Sallust and tried to press some flavour out of his description +of Marius' march to the capture of Gafsa. It was a fine military +performance, without a doubt; he led his troops by unsuspected paths +across the desert, fell upon the palace, sacked and burnt it, and divided +the booty among his soldiers: all this without the loss of a single man. +The natives needed a lesson, and they got it; to this day the name of +Marius is whispered among the black tents as that of some fabulous hero. +But what interests me most is the style of Sallust himself. How +ultra-modern this historian reads! His outlook upon life, his choice of +words, are the note of tomorrow; and when I compare with him certain +writers of the Victorian epoch, I seem to be unrolling a papyrus from +Pharaoh's tomb, or spelling out the elucubrations of some maudlin scribe +of Prester John. + +The stones are there. And the quarries whence the Romans drew them have +also been found, by Guerin; they lie in the flanks of the Jebel Assalah, +and are well worth a visit; legions of bats--_tirlils_, the Arabs call +them--hang in noisome clusters from the roof. + +Concerning these bats, the following story is told in Gafsa. + +Not long ago a rich Englishman came here. He used to go out in the +evenings and shoot bats; then he put them into bottles with spirits of +wine--he was an amateur of bats. On the day of his departure from the +place, he said to the polyglot Arab guide whom he had picked up somewhere +on his wanderings: + +"You will rejoin me in Tunis in ten days. Bring me more bats--tirlils: +_comprenni?_--from this country. I will give you fifty centimes apiece." + +"Bon, Monsieur," said the guide, and took counsel with the folks of Gafsa, +who, after certain reservations and stipulations, showed him the way into +these quarries. + +On the day appointed he entered the rich tourist's hotel in Tunis, +followed by ten porters, each carrying a large sack. + +"Hallo!" said the Englishman, "what's all this?" + +"Bats, Monsieur." + +"Eh? How much?" + +"Bats; _tirlils_, _chauve-souris_, _pipistrelli_... They will need much +bottles. Six hundred tirlils in each sack; ten sacks; six thousand +tirlils. Much bottles! Three thousand francs, Monsieur. Shall I open him?" + +The tourist cast a dismayed glance over the sacks, gently heaving with +life. + +[ILLUSTRATION: Hadrian's Inscription] + +"Look here," he said, "I'll give you fifty francs...." + +The Arab was surprised and grieved. He thought he was giving a pleasure to +Monsieur, who had asked for bats. He had been obliged to borrow money from +his aged mother to help to pay the nine hundred francs which he had +already disbursed for assistance in catching the tirlils; he had risked +his life; there were the transport expenses, too: very heavy. He had +travelled with many Englishmen and had always found them to be men of +honour--men who kept their word. And in this case there were witnesses to +the bargain, who would be ready, if necessary, to go into the French +tribunals and testify to what they had heard.... + +"I see. Well, come to-morrow morning, but go away now, quick! before I +break your head. Take your damned tirlils to your damned funduk, and be +off!--clear out!--_comprenni?_" + +And he looked so very angry that the Arab, a prudent fellow, walked +backwards out of the room, more surprised and grieved than ever. + +Thanks to the disinterested and strenuous exertions of a Jewish +international lawyer, the affair was settled out of court after +all--fifteen hundred francs, plus expenses of transport. + + + + +_Chapter V_ + +_SIDI ARMED ZARROUNG_ + + +Sidi Ahmed Zarroung--that is the name of the miniature oasis visible from +the Meda Hill, at the foot of those barren slopes. It is a pleasant +afternoon's walk from Gafsa. + +The intervening plain is encrusted with stones--stones great and small. +Here and there are holes in the ground, where the natives have unearthed +some desert shrub for the sake of its roots which, burnt as fuel, exhale a +pungent odour of ammonia that almost suffocates you. Once the water-zone +of Gafsa is passed, every trace of cultivation vanishes. And yet, to judge +by the number of potsherds lying about, houses must have stood here in +days of old. An Arab geographer of the eleventh century says that there +are over two hundred flourishing villages in the neighbourhood of Gafsa; +and Edrisius, writing a century later, extols its prosperous suburbs, and +pleasure-houses. + +Where are they now? + +One of these villages, surely, must have lain near this fountain of Sidi +Ahmed Zarroung, which now irrigates a few palms and vegetables and then +loses itself in the sand; a second spring, sulphureous and medicinal, but +destructive to plants, rises near at hand. This is the one which the +gentleman of the _Ponts et Chaussées_ recommended me for bathing purposes. + +But I saw no trace of ancient life here; there is only a muddy pond, full +of amorous frogs and tortoises, cold-blooded beasts, but fiery in their +passions; and a few Arabs that live in the large white house, or camp on +the plain around. They told me that the descendants of the holy man who +gave his name to the place are still alive, but they knew nothing of his +history beyond this, that he was very pious indeed. + +If you do not mind a little scrambling, you can climb from here up to the +last spur of the Jebel Guettor which overlooks the plain--it is crowned by +a ruined building, once whitewashed, and easily visible from Gafsa. On its +slopes I struck a vein of iron, another of those scientific discoveries, +no doubt, like the flint implements, in which someone else will have +anticipated me. And here I also found iron in a more civilized shape, a +fragment of a shell--relic, perhaps, of the first French expedition +against Gafsa, or of some more recent artillery practice. + +From its summit one sees the configuration of the country as on a map; the +high Jebel Orbata, 1170 metres, now covered with snow, coming forward to +meet you on the other side of the wide valley. From this point it is easy +to realize, as did the commander of that French expedition, the +significance of this speck of culture, its strategic value: Gafsa is a +veritable key to the Sahara. I daresay the abundant water-supply of the +town is due to these two chains of hills which almost touch each other and +so force the water to rise from its underground bed. + +At this elevation you perceive that Gafsa is truly a hill-oasis, bleak +mountains rising up on all sides save the south. There, where the two +highest ranges converge from east and west, where the broad waterway of +the Oued Baiesh has in olden days, when it wandered with less capricious +flow, carved itself a channel through the opening--there, at the very +narrowest point--sits the oasis. A tangle of palms that sweep southward in +a radiant trail of green, the crenellated walls of the Kasbah gleaming +through the interstices of the foliage--the whole vision swathed in an +orange-tawny frame of desolation, of things non-human.... + +[ILLUSTRATION: The Last Palms] + +I was tempted to think that the sunset view from the Meda eminence was the +finest in the immediate neighbourhood of Gafsa. Not so; that from the low +hills behind Sidi Mansur, with the stony ridge of Jebel Assalah at your +back, surpasses it in some respects. Through a gap you look towards the +distant green plantations, with a shimmering level in the foreground; on +your other side lies the Oued Baiesh, crossed by the track to Kairouan, +where strings of camels are for ever moving to and fro, laden with +merchandise from the north or with desert products from the oases of +Djerid and Souf. The dry bed of the torrent glows in hues of isabel and +cream, while its perpendicular mud-banks, on the further side, gleam like +precipices of amber; the soil at your feet is besprinkled with a profusion +of fair and fragile flowerlets. + +Here stand, like sentinels at the end of all things living, the three or +four last, lonely palms--they and their fellows lower down are fed by a +silvery streamlet which is forced upwards, I suppose, by contact with +Professor Koken's conglomerate; above and below this oasis-region the +river-bed is generally dry. It must be a wonderful sight, however, when +the place is in flood--a deluge of liquid ooze careering madly southward +towards the dismal Chotts amid the crashing of stones and palm trees and +the collapse of banks. For the Oued Baiesh can be angry at times; in 1859 +it submerged fifty hectares of the Gafsa gardens. + +Instead of returning by the main road from Sidi Mansur, one can bend a +little to the right and so pass the military hospital, a large +establishment which looks as if it could be converted into a barrack in +case of need. This is as it should be. Gafsa is a rallying-point, and must +be prepared for emergencies. Here, too, lie the cemeteries: the Jewish, +fronting the main road, with a decent enclosure; that of the Christians, +framed in a wire fence and containing a few wooden crosses, imitation +broken columns and tinsel wreaths; Arab tombs, scattered over a large +undefined tract of brown earth, and clustering thickly about some +white-domed maraboutic monument, whose saintly relics are desirable +companionship for the humbler dead. + +The bare ground here is littered with pottery and other fragments of +ancient life testifying to its former populousness: flint implements, +among the rest. Of the interval between the latest of these stone-age +primevals and the first Egyptian invasion of Gafsa we know nothing; they, +the Egyptians, brought with them that plough which is figured in the +hieroglyphics, and has not yet changed its shape. You may see the +venerable instrument any day you like, being carried on a man's back to +his work in the oasis. + +Athwart this region there runs an underground (excavated) stream of water, +led from Sidi Mansur to nourish the Gafsa plantations. Through holes in +the ground one looks down upon the element flowing mysteriously below; +figs and other trees are set in these hollows for the sake of the shade +and moisture, and their crowns barely reach the level of the soil. This is +no place to wander about at night--a false step in the darkness and a man +would break his neck. There was talk, at one time, of leading this brook, +which is sweet and non-mineral, into Gafsa for drinking purposes, but the +native garden proprietors raised their inevitable howl of objections, and +the project was abandoned. + +If you ask a local white man as to the misdeeds of his administration, be +sure he will mention the affair of the railway station which was built too +far from the town, and this of the Sidi Mansur water. And who, you ask, +was to blame for these follies? Oh, the _controlleur_, as usual; always +the _controlleur!_ It is no sinecure being an official of this kind in +Tunisia, with precise Government instructions in one pocket, and in the +other his countrymen's contrary lamentations and suggestions, often +reasonable enough.... + +Loaded down with a choice selection of Sidi Mansur flints, which are +singular as having a white patina, I returned to Gafsa in the late +afternoon and entered my favourite Arab café. Here, at all events, if you +do not mind a little native _esprit de corps_, you will be able to thaw +your frozen limbs; all the other rooms of Gafsa, public and private, are +like ice-cellars. There are many of these coffeehouses in the town, and +this is one of the least fashionable of them. Never a European darkens its +door; seldom even a native soldier; it is not good enough for them; they +go to finer resorts. + +At its entrance there lie, conveniently arranged as seats, some old Roman +blocks, overshadowed by a mulberry, now gaunt and bare. It must be +delightful, in the spring-time, to sit under its shade and watch the +street-life: the operations at the neighbouring dye-shop where gaudy +cloths of blue and red are hanging out to dry, or, lower down, the +movement at the wood-market--a large tract of "boulevard" encumbered with +the impedimenta of nomadism. There is a ceaseless unloading of fuel here; +bargains are struck about sheep and goats, the hapless quadruped, that +refuses to accompany its new purchaser good-naturedly, being lifted up by +the hind legs and made to walk in undignified fashion on the remaining +two. Fires gleam brightly, each one surrounded by a knot of camels couched +in the dust, their noses converging towards the flame, while old desert +hags, bent double with a life of hardship, bustle about the cooking-pots. +There are brawls, too--Arabs seizing each other by the throat, raising +sticks and uttering wild imprecations.... + +[ILLUSTRATION: Café by the Mulberry Tree] + +But within that windowless chamber, all is peace. Eternal twilight reigns, +and your eyes must become accustomed to the gloom ere you can perceive the +cobwebby ceiling of palm-rafters, smoke-begrimed and upheld by two stone +columns that glisten with the dirt of ages. Here is the hearth, overhung +by a few ancient pots, where the server, his head enveloped in a greasy +towel, officiates like some high priest at the altar. You may have milk, +or the mixture known as coffee, or tea flavoured in Moroccan style with +mint, or with cinnamon, or pepper. The water-vessels stew everlastingly +upon a slow fire fed with the residue of pressed olives. Or, if too poor, +you may take a drink of water out of the large clay tub that stands by the +door. Often a beggar will step within for that purpose, and then the +chubby serving-lad gives a scowl of displeasure and makes pretence to take +away the cup; but the mendicant will not be gainsaid--water is the gift of +Allah! And, if so please you, you may drink nothing at all, but simply +converse with your neighbour, or sit still and dream away the days, the +weeks, the year, sleeping by night upon the floor. + +A few of the customers are playing at cards or sedately chatting; others +begin to prepare their favourite smoke of hashish. A board is called for +and the hashish-powder spread out upon it. The operator chops it into +still finer particles by means of a semicircular blade, deftly blowing +away the dust--this brings out its strength. He is in no hurry; it is a +ceremony rather than a task. Slowly he separates the coarser from the +finer grains, his fingers moving with loving deliberation over the smooth +board. Then the cutting process is repeated once more, and yet again. +Maybe he will now add a little of the Soufi stuff, to improve the taste. + +At last all is ready, and small pipes are extracted from the folds of the +burnous and filled with half a thimbleful of the precious mixture. Two or +three whiffs, deeply inhaled, stream out at mouth and nostrils; then the +pipe is swiftly passed on to a friend, who drains the last drop of smoke +and knocks out the ashes. Not a word is spoken. + +Hand him your pipe, if you are wise, and let him fill it for you. This +_kif_, they say, affects people differently; but I think that, as a +general effect, you will discover a genial warmth stealing through your +limbs, while the things of this world begin to reveal themselves in a more +spiritual perspective. + +I thought of the sunset this afternoon, as viewed from Sidi Mansur. They +are fine, these moments of conflagration, of mineral incandescence, when +the sober limestone rocks take on the tints of molten copper, their +convulsed strata standing out like the ribs of some agonized Prometheus, +while the plain, where every little stone casts an inordinate shadow +behind it, clothes itself in demure shades of pearl. Fine, and all too +brief. For even before the descending sun has touched the rim of the world +the colours fade away; only overhead the play of blues and greens +continues--freezing, at last, to pale indigo. Fine, but somewhat trite; a +well-worn subject, these Oriental sunsets. Yet the man who can revel in +such displays with a whole heart is to be envied of a talisman against +many ills. I can conceive the subtlest and profoundest sage desiring +nothing better than to retain, ever undiminished, a childlike capacity for +these simple pleasures.... + +A spirit of immemorial eld pervades this tavern. Silently the shrouded +figures come and go. They have lighted the lamp yonder, and it glimmers +through the haze like some distant star. + +And I remembered London at this sunset hour, a medley of tender +grey-in-grey, save where a glory of many-coloured light hovers about some +street-lantern, or where a carriage, splashing through the river of mud, +leaves a momentary track of silver in its rear. There are the nights, of +course, with their bustle and flare, but nights in a city are apt to grow +wearisome; they fall into two or three categories, whose novelty soon +wears off. How different from the starlit ones of the south, each with its +peculiar moods and aspirations! + +Yet the Thames--odd how one's _kif_-reveries always lead to running +water--the Thames, I know, will atone for much. It is even more impressive +at this season than in its summer clarity, and as I walk, in imagination, +along that rolling flood flecked with patches of unwholesome iridescence +and crossed by steamers and barges that steer in ghostly fashion about the +dusky waters, I marvel that so few of our poets have responded to its +beauty and signification. They find it easier, doubtless, to warble a +spring song or two. The fierce pulsations of industry, the shiftings of +gold that make and mar human happiness--these are themes reserved for the +bard of the future who shall strike, bravely, a new chord, extracting from +the sombre facts of city life a throbbing, many-tinted romance, even as +out of that foul coal-tar some, who know the secret, craftily distil most +delicate perfumes and colours exquisite. The bard of the future ... h'm! +Will he ever appear? As an atavism, perhaps. Take away from modern poetry +what appeals to primitive man--the jingle and pathetic fallacy--and the +residue, if any, would be better expressed in prose. + +My neighbour, a sensible person, has ceased to take interest in the +proceedings. Perched upright at first, his head drooping within the folds +of his cloak, he has slowly succumbed; he has kicked off his sandals, +stretched himself out, and now slumbers. I, too, am beginning to feel +weary, and no wonder.... + +Primitive man with those flints of his, that weigh me down at this moment. +This stone-collecting, _par exemple!_ I wonder what induced me to take up +such a hobby. The German Professor, as usual. Ah, Mr. Koken, Mr. +Koken--those light words of yours have borne a heavy fruit. I possess four +hundred implements now, and they will double the weight of my luggage and +ruin my starched shirts, especially those formidable "præchellean" +skull-cleavers. And I know exactly what the customs officer at Marseilles +will say, when he peeps into my bag: + +"_Tiens, des cailloux! Monsieur est botaniste?"_ + +And then a crowd of people will assemble, to whom I must explain +everything, with the result of being arrested for smuggling forbidden +mining samples out of a colony and ending my days in some insanitary +French prison. + + + + +_Chapter VI_ + +_AMUSEMENTS BY THE WAY_ + + +Meanwhile, to satiate myself with Gafsa impressions, I linger by the +margin of the pool that lies below the fortress. Hither the camels are +driven to slake their thirst, arriving sometimes in such crowds as almost +to fill up the place. Donkeys and horses are scoured by half-naked lads; +in the clearer parts, a number of tattooed Bedouin girls are everlastingly +washing their household stuffs. Only on rare occasions is the liquid +undisturbed, and then it shines with the steely-blue transparency of those +diamonds that are a class by themselves, superior to "first-water" stones. +At the slightest agitation all the accumulated ooze and filth of +generations--rags and decomposing frogs and things unmentionable--rise to +the surface in turbid clouds. The element wells out hot, from under the +neighbouring Kasbah, with a pestiferous mineral aroma. + +Hither comes, at fixed intervals, my friend Silenus, the water-carrier, on +his philosophic donkey; nearly all Gafsa draws its supply of cooking and +drinking water from this fetid and malodorous mere. + +A fine example of French inefficiency, this "abreuvoir." Two hundred +francs would suffice to tap the liquid a few yards higher up, by means of +a common cast-iron pipe, whence it would rush out, pure and undefiled, to +fill in a few moments those multitudinous water-skins that are now +laboriously furnished, by hand, out of the often tainted pool below. + +And of native inefficiency, likewise. Day after day, age after age, have +these women done their laundry-work at this spot, and yet their clothing, +for purposes of the work, is more hopelessly inadequate than the burnous +of the males. They will arrive wrapped up in twenty rags that are always +falling off their backs and shoulders (they possess no baskets). One by +one these articles are removed, soaped with one little hand, stamped upon +by two little feet, and laid aside. Nothing remains, at last, but a single +covering garment--a loose chemise full of artistic possibilities for the +onlookers. It gives the poor girls endless trouble, for it is continually +slipping off their bodies on one side or the other, and one hand is +engaged, all the time, in counteracting these mischievous movements. +Standing as they do up to their knees in the water, it is tucked up high +and of course tumbles down again every minute. At the end of their washing +they are as wet as drenched poodles. + +[ILLUSTRATION: My Friend Silenus] + +No harm in this, in summer-time; but with the thermometer below +freezing-point they would suffer considerably were they not inured, like +to other creatures of the desert, to every kind of discomfort. + +The chief mental exercise of the Arab, they say, consists in thinking how +to reduce his work to a minimum. Now this being precisely my own ideal of +life, and a most rational one, I would prefer to put it thus: that of many +kinds of simplification they practise only one--_omission_, which does not +always pay. They are imaginative, but incredibly uninventive. How +different from the wily Hindu or Chinaman, with his almost preternatural +sagacity in small practical matters! Scorn of theories is one of their +chief race-characteristics, and that is why they end in becoming +stoics--stoics, that is, as the beasts are, who suffer without knowing +why. + +There was one of these girls in particular whom I noticed every day, and +whom, at last, I compassionately supplied with a couple of safety-pins, +after explaining their uses. She was decidedly ugly. But sometimes you may +see others here, with neatly chiselled limbs and elfish eyes of a sultry, +troubling charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an +ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An +enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married one of these sphynx-like +creatures--a hazardous and quixotic experiment. As brides for a lifetime +(slaves) they cost from a hundred to six hundred francs apiece, and even +more; and you will do well to _abonner_ yourself with the family +beforehand, in order to be sure of obtaining a sound article, as with the +Tartar girls in Russian Asia and elsewhere. As a general rule, those of +the semi-nomads--the Gourbi people--cost more than those of the true +wanderers. The price varies according to the season and a thousand other +contingencies; it rises, inevitably, in the neighbourhood of settled +places, where employment of one kind (olive-picking, etc.) or +another--chiefly of another--can be found for them. + +One of the prettiest I ever saw was offered me for three hundred francs. +It was an uncommon bargain, due to a drought and certain family mishaps. +These little wildlings are troublesome to carry about. They are less +nimble and amiable than the boys, and often require more beating than a +European has time to give them. You can always sell them again, of course; +and sometimes (into the towns) at a good profit. + +The Arab woman is the repository of all the accumulated nonsense of the +race, and her influence upon the young brood is retrogressive and malign. +It matters little what happens in the desert where men and women are +necessarily animals, but it does among the middle and upper native classes +of the larger places. Here the French have established their so-called +Arab-French schools, excellent institutions which are largely attended, +and would produce far better results but for the halo of sanctity with +which boys in every country--but particularly in half-civilized ones--are +apt to invest the most flagrantly empty-headed of mothers. In Tunisia, as +soon as the youngsters return home, these women quickly undo all the good +work, by teaching them that what they have learnt at school is dangerous +untruth, and that the Koran and native mode of life are the only sources +of happiness. Then, to keep the son at home, the mother will hasten to +catch a bride for him who shall be, if possible, more incompetent than +herself, in order that she, the mother, may retain her ascendency over +him. The father, meanwhile, shrugs his shoulders: _Mektoub_! There is no +fighting against such heroic perseverance on a woman's part; besides, was +he not brought up on the same lines? + +The mischief is done, for Arabs relapse easily; even native officers, who +have served for years in the French army, will, on returning home, don the +burnous, sit at street corners, and become more _arabized_ than ever. So +it comes about that, if the eyes of the former generation were entirely +averse from French rule, the present one is Janus-faced--looking both +ways. Some day, presumably, there will be a further adaptation, and their +eyes, like those of certain flat-fish, will wander round and settle down +definitely on the right side.... + +This is a favourite month for native weddings. There was one going on last +night. I looked into the courtyard of a ruinous building which was crammed +with spectators. The Aissouyiahs were performing, in honour of the +occasion. + +These are the dervish fanatics whom everyone knows. They eat scorpions, +glass, nails, and burning coals; they cut themselves with knives and other +instruments--impostors, for the most part. + +It is mere child's play to what you can see further East. + +Yet, with the starry night overhead, and the flare of torches lighting up +a seething mass of faces below, of bronzed limbs and bright-tinted rags +dangling at every altitude from the palm rafters and decayed stairway, the +scene was more weirdly fascinating than as one generally sees it--in +mosques or in the open daylight. There were wild strains of music and +song; a wave of disquietude, clearly, was passing over the beholders. +These performances, at such a time, may originally have taken place for +purposes of nuptial excitement or stimulation; but it requires rather an +exotic mentality to be stimulated, otherwise than unpleasantly, by the +spectacle of little boys writhing on the ground in simulated agony with a +long iron skewer thrust through their cheeks. They catch them young; and +these scholars, or aspirants, are indubitably frauds and often worse than +frauds. Mixed with them are a certain proportion of unbalanced, half-crazy +individuals, who really work themselves into a frenzy and give the +semblance of veracity to the entertainment. A judge of native physiognomy +can generally tell the two types apart. There are also a few sensible +men--butchers, porters, and the like--who do not mind a little pain for +the sake of the profit. + +For the rest, the ceaseless mandarin-like head-wagglings and mutterings of +the names of Allah would stupefy anyone's brain up to a point. It is not +only Arabs who daze their understandings with godly ejaculations, oft +repeated. The marabout leader, who is a kind of _maître de ballet_, +enfolds each performer in his arms and makes a few passes round him, or +kisses him. The uninitiated then reel off in a trance of hypnotic joy; the +others do the same, in more theatrical fashion. At the end of each one's +trick he de-mesmerizes him once more, and perhaps touches the wound with +his hands. He passes the skewer or sword between his lips as a +disinfectant--a wise precaution. + +These lacerations heal quickly. I have spoken to men labouring in the +fields on the day following such excesses, and found them ready to "work" +again the same evening. + +It ended up with a beast-dance--two fine negroes, all but naked, depicting +the amorous rages of panthers or some other cat-like feral. This was +really good, of its kind; and if, as regards the earlier part of the +programme, it was still difficult to tell where religion ended and +sensuality began (it sometimes is), there was no doubt about the last +item, which was purely sadistic. Soon there issued the familiar trillings +from the balcony, and the firing-off of guns, to announce that the drama +was terminated. + +It is we shrinkingly æsthetic creatures who conjure up by a mere effort of +the imagination what these blunt folks cannot conceive without gross +visual stimulants. That is because they have not enjoyed our advantages; +they are not civilized. Among other things, they have not gone through a +"reformation." Take a northern stock, sound in mind and body; infuse into +it a perverse disrespect for the human frame and other anti-rational +whimsies; muddle the whole, once more, by a condiment of Hellenistic +renaissance and add, as crowning flavour, puritan "conscience" and +"sinfulness"--mix up, in a general way, good nourishment with ascetic +principles--and you will attain to a capacity of luxuriance in certain +matters that may well be the envy and despair of poor primitives like the +Arabs. + +Extremes meet. Performances such as these are beyond good and evil. They +are for the wholly savage or the wholly civilized. We complain +considerably just now of the swamping of class distinctions in our lands, +but a man of culture has a prerogative to which the biliously moral middle +classes can never aspire: to be an Arab, when it suits him. + + + + +_Chapter VII_ + +_AT THE CAFÉ_ + + +Whether it be due to the incessant cold and dry winds, that parch the more +genial humours, or to some other cause, there is certainly a tone of +exacerbation, at this moment, among the European residents at Gafsa. I +noticed it very clearly yesterday evening in the little French café--a +soul-withering resort, furnished with a few cast-iron tables and +uncomfortable chairs that repose on a flooring of chill cement +tiles--where, in sheer desperation, two or three of us, muffled up to our +ears, congregate before dinner to exchange gossip and imbibe the +pre-prandial absinthe. + +I announced my intention of leaving shortly for Tozeur. + +"So you have not yet taken your fill of dirt and discomfort in Tunisia, +Monsieur?" asked one of the clients. He is a wizened old nondescript with +satyr-like beard, a kind of Thersites, who is understood to have +established, from the days of Abdelkader and "for certain reasons," his +headquarters at Gafsa, where he sips absinthes past all computation, +exercising his wit upon everybody and everything with a fluent and rather +diverting pessimism. "You will probably perish on the road to Tozeur, in a +sandstorm." + +"Ah, those sandstorms: they interest me. Have you ever been to Tozeur?" + +"God forbid! Gafsa is quite bad enough for me. Or you may be strangled by +the Arabs; such things occur every day. You smile? Read the papers! At +some places, like Sfax, there are regular organized bands of assassins, +the police being doubtless in their pay. Be sure to hold your revolver in +readiness--better carry it in your jacket pocket, like this.... No +revolver! (To the company at large) _He has no revolver_! In that case, +don't dream of going out after sunset, here or anywhere else in this +country. And read the papers." + +It was always "read the papers." + +I mentioned that I had walked home, at midnight on the previous evening, +from the station. + +"Then don't do it again, if you value your life. Not long ago a lieutenant +was attacked on that very road, and almost beaten to death. He managed to +crawl back to barracks, and is now a wreck, incapacitated from further +service. By a miracle he was able to identify one of his assailants. They +gave him--what do you think?--two years' imprisonment! Why not the _Legion +d'Honneur_ while we are about it? Then there was the Italian--a +respectable Italian, for a wonder--who went out for a walk and was never +heard of again. The country was scoured for two months, but not so much as +a button was ever found--not a button! They had buried his body in the +sand. That's their usual system, cheap and effective. And the guide-books +say that Tunisia is as safe as the heart of France--ha, ha, ha! I wonder +how much they are paid for making that statement, and who pays it?" + +"The hotel proprietors, with an occasional subsidy from the Government." +This from a bloodthirsty young extremist in gaiters and riding-breeches, +who had once been a _colon_, a farmer, but had given it up in disgust. "We +cherish these savages," he went on, "as if they were our uncles and aunts; +everywhere, that is, save in those districts which are still under +military rule. There you should see the natives stand up and salute you! I +am anti-military myself; but I maintain that this salute should be kept +up, as demonstrating the gulf that exists between ourselves and them. But +the moment you leave that zone the gulf is systematically bridged over, to +make it more pleasant for the poor, misused Arab. Let me tell you what I +think. I think that the Sicilians would have managed things better than we +have done. And I also think that our _controlleurs_, they are not +Frenchmen, but Arabs." + +"_Voyons, voyons!_" said a clear voice from another table--a new-comer, +apparently. "These are the criticisms to which we are exposed, because we +introduce an enlightened and progressive policy." + +"Progressive policy be damned! We have held Gafsa for the last thirty +years, and what have we done to improve the place? Nothing." + +"Pardon me! We have planted twenty-seven pepper trees. Tunisia exists for +needy people in search of work. If you can't make it pay, leave it alone. +You have every facility for buying land, for importing this and that--why +don't you settle down and make yourselves at home? A colony, my friend, is +not an orchid." + +"And as for those Sicilians," interposed the faun-like wooer of the Green +Fairy, "I think you're all wrong. I admit that they are more flexible than +we are, if you like to put it that way. They will do things that no +Frenchman can do; they will establish themselves in places where no +Frenchman could live; they will eat things which no Frenchman could +swallow; they will oust the very Arabs out of the country in course of +time, by sheer number of progeny and animal vitality. Oh, yes; it's clear +the Sicilians can lower their standard to any extent. But they can never +raise it. They are the cancer of Tunisia. Wherever they go, they bring +their filth, their _mafia_, roguery and corruption. Every Sicilian is a +potential Arab, the difference between them being merely external; the +true African variety wears less clothes and keeps his house cleaner. I +know them! A race of sinister buffoons and cut-throats, incapable of any +ennobling thought, whose highest virtues are other men's vices, whose only +method of reasoning is the knife.... Don't accuse me, Messieurs, of +prejudice, when I am trying to state the case impartially." + +You will often hear it put as baldly as that. The alien inhabitants of +Tunisia are well hated by a certain type of Frenchmen. The country has +been compared to a wine-bottle that bears some high-flown label indicative +of fine stuff within--the French administration--but is filled, +unfortunately, with a poisonous mixture from round the corner, the Jews, +Sicilians, Maltese, and Corsicans. + +It is as difficult for a tourist to arrive at a just opinion on this +subject as for the average Frenchman. The traveller will not find it easy +to acquire the necessary first-hand data, while the other is warped by his +congenital xenophobia. + +In 1900 there were 80,000 Italians, mostly Sicilians, in the Regency, as +opposed to 20,000 Frenchmen, one-half of whom were Government servants. +This great predominance of a foreign stock scared some good folks, and a +"Comité du peuplement français" was organized, to study ways and means of +populating Tunisia with French citizens. + +If Sicilians could obtain grants of land under the same conditions as +Frenchmen, large tracts, now waste, would be converted into gardens, to +the profit of the exchequer. Is it worth while? No, thinks the Government; +and with reason. French rule in Northern Africa is a politico-moral +experiment on a large scale, with what might be called an idealistic +background, such as only a civilized nation can conceive. Italians might +improve the land, but they could never improve the Arab; they are +themselves not sufficiently wise, or even well-intentioned. + +The Anti-Semitic agitation has died a natural death: you may curse the +Jews, but you cannot crush them. They make good citizens, and are for ever +trying to gain more political influence, which is surely to their credit, +though it annoys a certain class in Tunis. As intermediaries between the +Arab and the white man they are invaluable, their plasticity allowing them +to ascend or descend in either direction, while their broad and active +tolerance, fruit of bitter experience in the past, has honeycombed the +land with freemasonry and scientific charity and liberalism. So far as I +can see, their dirt does not detract from their astuteness--perhaps it +aids it, by removing one source of mental preoccupation, cleanliness. The +old distinction between Livornese and Tunisian Jews is slowly becoming +effaced. + +If there is one class of these immigrants whom the ordinary French employé +hates more than another it is his own countrymen, the Corsicans. They have +the gift of climbing into small but lucrative posts of administration, and +there, once established, they sit fast like limpets, to the dismay of +competing French office-seekers. Eject them? You might as well propose to +uproot Atlas or Ararat. Not only can they never be displaced, but from +year to year, by every art, good or evil, they consolidate their position. +That done, they begin to send for their relations. One by one new +Corsicans arrive from over the sea, each forming a centre in his turn, +where he sits tight, with a pertinacious solidarity that borders on the +superhuman. + +Cave-hunting savages at heart, and enemy to every man save their own blood +relations, the Corsicans are the nightmare of the Arabs on account of +their irreclaimable avarice and brutality. They would flay the native +alive, if they dared, and sell his skin for boot-leather. They can play at +being _plus arabes que les arabes_, and then, if the game goes against +them, they invoke their rights of French citizenship in the grand manner. +The Frenchman knows it all; he regrets that such creatures should be his +own compatriots--regrets, maybe, that he is not possessed of the same +primordial pushfulness and insensibility; and shrugs his shoulders in +civilized despair. + +As for the Maltese, they would be all very well if--if they were not +British subjects. But such being the case, you never know! It is +disheartening to find such babble in the mouth of respectable officials +and writers. + +I am well aware that there is a Sicilian _in fabula_ who is not "mafioso"; +that the crude banditism which sits in every Corsican's bones has raised +him to the elysium of martyrs and heroes and not, where he ought to have +gone, to the gallows; that the Maltese are not merely cantankerous and +bigoted (Catholic) Arabs, but also sober, industrious, and economical. I +have lived with all these races in their own countries and--apart from a +fatal monkey-like apprehensibility which passes for intelligence but, as a +matter of fact, precludes it--have found chiefly this to admire in them, +that they are prolific and kind to their offspring. + +Small praise? Not altogether. The same may apply to cats and dogs, but it +does not always apply to civilized races of men. The Scotchman, for +instance, can produce children, but is often unkind to them (_Read the +papers!_); the Frenchman is kind to children, but often cannot produce +them. It would seem that chiefly in half-cultured people are these two +qualities, twin roots of racial and domestic virtues, to be met with side +by side. + +Whatever may be the cause of it--better food, a different legislation or +climate, or contact with other nations--the suggestive fact remains, that +the more objectionable idiosyncrasies of the Maltese, Corsicans and +Sicilians become diluted on African soil. Can it be the mere change from +an island to a continent? There may be some truth in Bourget's "oppression +des îles." _Insulani semper mali_, says an old Latin proverb.... + +"Do you know," the gaitered young ex-farmer was saying--"do you know how +many French _colons_ there are in the whole regency? Eight or nine +hundred, drowned in an ocean of Arabs, who own the land. And that's what +we call settling a country. The Americans knew better when they cleared +out the redskins! And how do the English manage in India? Why, they shoot +them--_piff-paff_: it's done! That's the way to colonize (looking +approvingly at me)--_supprimez l'indigène_! A nation cannot condescend to +the idealistic ravings of an individual." + +I observed that I had never heard of that method being actually adopted in +India. + +"You say that, Monsieur, because you fear it sounds a little drastic. But +we are not in Paris or London just now; we can say what we think. Or +better still" (glowing with enthusiasm), "they tie them to the mouth of a +big gun, and then--_Boum ... houpla!! Biftek à la tartare_." + +"You are misinformed, my friend," said the voice from the other table. +"That Indian cannon business was merely an administrative experiment." + +I looked at the speaker, who was smiling mirthfully to himself. He was a +fair-complexioned man of about forty-five, rather carefully dressed, +blue-eyed, with a short, well-groomed beard--evidently an old acquaintance +of the company. + +"It's all right for you," the other retorted, "with your comfortable +offices and your fat, ever-increasing salaries. You are not a harassed +agriculturist, skulking in fear of his life, or a public servant, starving +on four francs a day. Behold!" he went on, extracting a newspaper out of +his pocket, "behold the latest portrait of yourself and your +colleagues--you have an air of revolting prosperity. And your whole +biography, too, in black and white; your wife, your children, your past +career ... what it is to be a capitalist!" + +"_Tiens_! I never saw this. And printed in Paris a fortnight ago! But it +may be lying somewhere about the house. I only returned at midday, you +know. Not exactly a flattering likeness...." + +The document was handed round. It was a French journal devoted to mining +interests, and contained a long article dealing with the phosphate +industry of Metlaoui, near Gafsa, with views of the works and portraits of +its principal representatives. Beneath that of the speaker were printed +the words-- + + "PAUL DUFRESNOY, + Ingenieur civil des mines," + +and some other titles. + +An odd coincidence, this meeting, on the eve of my departure. + +I passed over to his table and mentioned that I possessed an introductory +letter to him. + +"How? And you are leaving to-morrow for the Djerid? You are not coming to +see me?" + +I replied that I would gladly give myself that pleasure. His family, he +explained, was away just now, but if I could arrange to delay my departure +for a little while he would accompany me as far as Metlaoui, which lies on +the Tozeur route, and show me over the mines. He was to return to his work +there in a week or so. The proposal was too tempting to be refused. + +We spoke of the spirit of irritation and discontent that seemed rife among +the Europeans in Gafsa. + +"Yes, the wind," he said; "or perhaps Africa generally. I've often noticed +that men, and women too, put on new faces and characters hereabouts. This +contact with an inferior race upsets their nervous equilibrium. The lack +of comfort and the need of abrupt action makes them discard gentleness and +other external husks of civilization. The mildest of us are liable to +become brusque; and harsh ones, brutal. Only the native remains resigned." + +Thereupon I propounded my hypothesis of the _Mektoub_ or resignation +doctrine: the intellectual burnous of the Arabs. + +The theory, he thought, was so good that there must be something wrong +with it. His work brought him into daily contact with the natives, and, so +far as he could judge, _Mektoub_ was only one aspect of their general way +of looking at things. It was bound up, for instance, with that idea of +impenitence. Unlike ourselves, who approve of self-abasement, the Arab +regards repentance as only fit for slaves. He does not hunt for his own +sins; he hunts for yours, and hits you on the head when he finds them. +There was something in the notion, he thought, for surely remorse was +rather a provincial sensation; it implies that a man has really done +something wrong, or that he thinks he has; in either case, what was there +to boast of? He had little time for studies, nowadays, but it seemed to +him that the trend of feeling was in the direction of Old Testamentary +ideals. Men were growing tired of offering their other cheek to be +smitten; they found it degrading, as do the Arabs. Why not import some of +these sterner conceptions into our morality, as we import their peppery +curries and kouskous and pilaffs into our cuisine? + +He was inclined to say amiable things about the English race. The +Anglo-Saxon, he thought, with his "constitutional non-morality," had come +nearest to discovering a sensible working system of conduct--as a nation. +It is his highest racial virtue to lead the Cosmic Life--to take all he +can get, and ask for more. That is why every one, in his heart of hearts, +envies and admires him. His chief defect, he thought, was a disdain of a +knowledge of general principles, justifiable enough in the times of +unsound teleological theorizings, but not nowadays, when we have at last +set foot upon earth. + +"And what do you say," I asked, "to our so-called national hypocrisy?" + +"Well, we others are apt to stand aside and marvel whether you have +succeeded by reason of it, or in spite of it. Of course it annoys us +beyond words! But there is a form of it which is highly laudable: the +Anglo-Saxon, it seems to me, often acts in apparently hypocritical fashion +out of consideration for what he conceives to be the opinions of the +majority. Profoundly self-respecting, he is equally careful not to impinge +upon the feelings of others, however wrong-headed he may think them. In +such cases, his hypocrisy is only a proof of civilization and genuine +politeness. Hence also that shyness and reserve which I have often noticed +in your countrymen--they are not signs of awkwardness or indecision, but +of strength systematically controlled." + +"That is very gratifying. And what of our snobbishness?" + +"The English snobbishness," he replied, "may not be beautiful, but its +origins are sufficiently venerable to inspire respect. It testifies to +long political stability; it is rooted in Magna Charta. We foreigners, who +upset our Governments and annihilate our aristocracies every ten years, +will never attain that mellow stage. One may dislike it; one dislikes the +by-products of many excellent institutions. Your Government, for example, +does extraordinarily little to foster art or literature or research. Taken +by itself, that is an evil. But as a by-product of the English cult of the +individual--of that avoidance of pestilential State interference in +everything which is the curse of continental Europe--it may be gladly +endured, if not admired." + +He added: + +"When one lives out of Europe, Monsieur, one learns to know England +better. To see things at their true perspective one must take up a stand +at a proper distance from them. England only begins to show its true +proportions at a point where other lands cease to be visible. Austria, for +instance, can only be examined on the spot. Once you have crossed the +insignificant Mediterranean, this immense and fertile country, with its +long history of rulers and battles, has already faded into air. _Ça +n'existe plus_. Your Gladstone explained the phenomenon correctly: Austria +has never done good to the world." + +I gathered that the Metlaoui phosphate company had modelled its principles +on those of the "Anglo-Saxon." There is little "pestilential State +interference" in its management; the board of directors takes all it can +get, and asks for more. It is a paying concern, and consequently the +shareholders admire it unreservedly--in the rest of mankind, this feeling +is tinctured with a strong dose of envy. + + + + +_Chapter VIII_ + +_POST-PRANDIAL MEDITATIONS_ + + +One dines early in Gafsa, and afterwards there is nothing, absolutely +nothing, to do. Cafés become tedious with their card-games, cowboy +politics and persistent allusions to "la femme," that protean fetich which +dominates and saturates the Gallic mind, oozing out, so to speak, at every +pore of their social and national life. They never seem to grow out of the +_Ewig-weibliche_ stage. If only, like the Maltese, they would talk less +and do more in certain respects, the "comité du peuplement" might close +its doors. But such recklessness would ill comport with the ant-like +hiving quality which paid back, within I forget how few years, the German +war indemnity. + +After dinner, therefore, a short promenade about the streets and oasis, to +court that illusive phantom, sleep, and to replenish the mind with new and +peaceful images. I found a cloudless and relatively warm night. The wind +had died down, and there was a brilliant comet (the Johannesburg comet) in +the sky. Knots of natives were gazing at it with disfavour: I listened, +and heard one of them attributing the Franco-Tripolitan frontier incident +to its baleful fires. "And there is more to come," he added, "unless it +goes away." Townspeople, of course; the cultivators are asleep long ago. + +Why don't you settle down and make yourselves at home? With those words +Dufresnoy had put his finger on the spot. The same idea must occur to +every one who compares the French method of colonization with that pursued +in English dependencies. Even our most ephemeral civil servants take +pleasure in "settling down"; they acquire local interests in golf, or +native folklore, or butterflies; they manage to surround themselves with +an atmosphere of home. Among the _colons_ of Tunisia you may find a home +establishment of the most comfortable type, but Government employés regard +the Regency in the light of an exile; they never try to make their life +more endurable, as they easily could do, with a little co-operation. + +In Gafsa, for example, where the summer temperature is 100, no ice can be +procured unless you drive to fetch it from the station settlement where +the phosphate company has its servants; if you want good vegetables, you +must telegraph _inland_ for them to Metlaoui, whither they are brought +from the sea-coast, via Gafsa, for the consumption of the "company"; fresh +fish, which are caught in fabulous quantities at Sfax, and could be +transported by every over-night train, are hardly ever visible in the +Gafsa market. There is no chemist's shop in the place, not even the +humblest drug-store, where you can procure a pennyworth of boric acid or +court-plaster. So they live on, indulging all the time in a luxury of +lamentation. + +There would be better shops in places like Gafsa if foreign commercial +settlers were not discouraged from establishing themselves. French ones, +needless to say, refuse to "settle." + +The hotels in the country places, too, would be better. At present they +exist on a system of monopolism and favouritism; it is quite beyond the +ambitions of their managers to collect a clientèle; most of these concerns +are palpably run on the following principle: to keep the guest in such a +state of chattering starvation, that he is _ready to eat anything_. How +often have I yearned, in these "Grand Hotels"--they are all _grand +hotels_--for the material comforts and the decent fare of some little +wayside hostelry in Finland, or a rest-house in the jungle of Ceylon! + +Why do French travellers not complain oftener? + +Well, the Frenchman is a patriotic creature and congenitally kind-hearted; +the proprietors of these establishments are country-people of his; they +are poor devils who have got stranded, somehow or other, in Tunisia; one +must have patience with them. Sometimes, however, your self-respecting +Gaul is strained beyond the point of patriotic endurance by the +concoctions of these Locustas and Borgias; then he unsheathes that +dagger-like Neanderthal manner which he carries about with him for rare +occasions of self-defence; and it warms the cockles of one's heart to hear +how pertinently he discourses damnation to the cringing host. For we +non-Frenchmen, be it understood, are all "des désequilibrés" who demand +toast, hot water and such-like exotics; our complaints need not be taken +seriously; besides, foreigners are bound to pay in any case. But when a +countryman begins to find fault there is not only a possibility that +something, after all, may not be quite right with the cuisine or drainage, +but even a chance that one or two items will be coldly struck off the +reckoning. And that hurts! + +They will tell you that there is nothing to be procured in the market; but +if you proceed to the spot, you will at least see succulent legs of mutton +exposed for sale. The _chef_ of the establishment, however, when making +his morning purchases, passes by these with scorn, and betakes himself to +a little booth whose table is strewn with dubious scraps of skin and +bones, which have already been fingered and contemptuously thrown aside by +fifty dirty Arabs (I speak as an eye-witness); he buys a few handfuls of +these horrors for three or four sous, and forthwith--hey, presto!--they +are transformed into a "ragout à la bretonne" for the famished traveller. +Tunisia is a sheep-rearing country--there are sixty thousand sheep in the +_contrôle_ of Gafsa alone--but you may live there a lifetime before seeing +a leg of mutton at a country table d'hôte. For all the "gigots" that ever +appear at my host's entertainment, one might really think that the muttons +of Africa were a peculiar species, a species without legs: crawling, +maybe, on their bellies, like Nebuchadnezzar. + +"Je m'en f--de vot' bon-homme," said one of these gentlemen to me, +referring to Baedeker, with whose sacred pages I had threatened him. "And +as for the tourists, they'll come just the same." + +And so they do! But they all end in discovering that even the worm will +turn, when suffering from the torments of _dyspepsia tunesina veridica +sine qua non_ ... + +A good deal of amateurish talking is done, in Gafsa, in regard to the +profits that would be gained were the oasis to be given over to Sicilian +cultivators. Apart from the fact that the wealthy Kaid of Gafsa, who is +the chief owner of it, would have something to say on the subject, these +advantages would be limited to pruning the trees and grafting some of +them; introducing, possibly, a few more vegetables, and having the ground +more parsimoniously tended than at present. The magnesia in the water is +hostile to the majority of delicate European growths. Something, no doubt, +could be done in the way of improvement, but as a set-off to a visionary +project of this kind, which is averse to the whole spirit of French rule +in Tunisia, there would be a great rise in prices: Italians would form +their inevitable ring. The extent of the gardens has almost doubled since +1880, without their help. + +As to the Arabs---- + +If the French looked to their prison system they would soon arrive at +better results. For childish thefts and such-like trespasses, committed +nearly always at the instigation of their parents, boys of ten and twelve +are now locked up with hardened criminals, often for considerable periods: +what is this but a State-aided manufacture of crime? Go to the prison of +Sfax, and you will realize that there may be some reason for the +absinthe-drinker's remark as to the "organized bands of assassins" at that +place. I speak of what I have seen with my eyes. I found the prison of +Souk-el-Arba, for instance, so tightly packed with men and young boys that +there was not room for all of them to lie down at night, and such furious +fights used to occur for the possession of places near the wall (the room +was in pitch-darkness) that the warder was obliged to enter, every now and +then, and restore order by beating those nearest the door about the head +with a club. + +The Arab boy, they will tell you, is full of guile, and must be repressed. + +Granted, but---- + +A colony, furthermore, is _not an orchid_. + +Granted. + +Q.E.D. + + + + +_Chapter IX_ + +_SOME OF OUR GUESTS_ + + +I shall be glad to leave for Metlaoui and the Djerid. Gafsa is losing its +flavour; the novelty and pungency are gone. The same old faces, the same +old _bouts de conversation_; quickly, indeed, does one live oneself into a +place and learn, or think to learn, all its little secrets. + +The hotel, too, has suddenly become an insufferable menagerie. Mysterious +inspectors come and go, and commercial travellers of unappetizing looks +and habits are far more frequent than formerly. But I shall regret the +earth-convulsing laughter of the Greek doctor, who has latterly taken to +putting in an appearance at meal-time. He is a gruff, jovial personage, +and so huge in bulk that he can barely squeeze into the door of his little +shop in the _souk_ where he sits, surrounded by unguents and embrocations, +to treat the natives for their multifarious distempers. He is quite +straightforward about the business. "You come to this country to spend +money," he tells me, "but I--to make it." + +The profession is not all plain sailing, however, for the French +authorities raise every kind of obstacle in his path; they tear his red +advertisements down from the street walls and openly call him a quack. +Were it not for the Greek Consul in Tunis, who happens to be an old friend +of his, who knows how much longer they would allow him to practise in the +land! + +I sometimes go to watch his operations, which, so far as I can judge, are +fairly remunerative, thanks to Achmet the interpreter, one of whose many +duties it is to inform himself confidentially of the financial status of +prospective patients. For the richest sheikh will don tattered clothes +when he visits the surgery, and would doubtless be taken for some poor +labourer were it not for Achmet, who sees through the disguise and gives a +discreet sign to Æsculapius, whose services, of course, must be prepaid; +it is _money down_ before he will prescribe or give away a drop of +medicine. + +I was much interested in one of his methods as exemplified on the person +of a native youth who was led in the other day. He was an Aissouiyah +dancer, and had evidently overdone his part in the heat of enthusiasm; +there were no less than forty-three sword-cuts across his middle. After +receiving a handsome fee the doctor gave him some liniment which caused +exquisite pain: the patient writhed in agony. + +[Illustration: Natives of Gafsa] + +"That's good medicine," I heard Achmet telling him, reassuringly; "that's +strong. See how it hurts!" + +For a while he bore up bravely, but the pain growing worse instead of +better, the doctor was at last persuaded, out of compassion and in return +for a second fee, to give him something with a more soothing effect. + +But eye diseases are his speciality. His _pièce de résistance_ is a Jewish +tradesman whom he has lately supplied with an admirable glass eye--a thing +almost unheard-of in these parts. This man and myself were sitting in the +shop not long ago when a Moroccan happened to be passing who had known him +in his one-eyed days; the stranger gave him a sharp look and then walked +swiftly away, apparently suspecting himself to be the victim of some +absurd hallucination as regards the new eye. But he returned anon, to make +sure of his mistake, I suppose; while the Jew confronted him with a +defiant glance of his two eyes. They stared at each other for some time in +silence. At last the Moroccan enquired: + +"Are you the man who sold me that piece of cloth three weeks ago?" + +"I am he." + +There was another long pause. Then: + +"That new eye: how came you by it?" + +The Jew, a dreadful scoffer, pointed heavenwards with one finger. + +"A thing of God!" he said. "A miracle has been vouchsafed me." + +But the man of Mequinez answered nothing. He gazed at him once more, and +then, slowly bending down his head, folded his hands across his breast in +prayer, and walked away.... + +Then there is the Polish Count, Count Ponomareff, who arrived four days +ago. He is past middle age, with a drooping moustache and large red nose; +a wistful and woebegone figure, but a brilliant conversationalist, when +the mood is upon him. I have not taken very kindly to the man. Among other +things, he disapproves of flint-collecting; he asks, rather scornfully, +"whether one can sell such stones." And yet, for some obscure reason, he +has singled me out among the men as the object of his favourable notice, +affecting rather a distant manner towards the rest of us; the ladies, +however, are charmed by his courtly graces. He wears profuse jewellery, to +set off his title, no doubt. It is understood that he has held high +Government posts, and is now only waiting for some letters before joining +certain friends in a costly caravan expedition further south. Yet he seems +poor--hopelessly poor. I surprised him, soon after his arrival, in a +heated debate with the landlord on the subject of candles and _café au +lait_. Then he enquired if the country was safe. + +"Not if you go out with a _machine comme ça_," touching the Count's +gorgeous watch-chain. + +He knows, at least, how to handle his knife and fork, which is more than +can be said of all the inmates of this hostelry. A town-dweller, +evidently; he tells me he detests wild life of every kind and has come +here only to oblige his friends; he calls the Arabs "ignoble savages." + +Such, however, is not the opinion of another guest, my friend Monsieur +M----. One must be careful how one criticizes the habits of the natives in +his presence; not that he would be angry, for he is too gentle to feel +wrath; or become argumentative--he is too sure of his ground for that; but +he might be wounded on his most sensitive spot, and he would certainly +think you--well, misinformed. + + +The motley crew of Gafsa have become his favourites ever since his arrival +in the country two weeks ago, and he has a theory that it is a mistake to +endeavour to learn their language--it only leads you astray, it spoils the +"direct impression." + +He is a well-known French painter, whom some eye trouble has forced--only +temporarily, let us hope--to abandon the brush. Despite his patriarchal +beard, he is an impenitent romanticist of contagious youthfulness; the +entire universe lies so harmoniously disposed and in such roseate tints +before his mental vision, that no one save Madame M----, a wise lady of +the formal-yet-opulent type, whom Maupassant would have classed as "encore +désirable," is able to drag him to earth again, with a few words of +wholesome cynicism. + +Just for the fun of the thing, and to while away his hours of enforced +idleness, he is collecting facts for a book to be entitled "Customs of the +Arabs," as exemplified by the life of Gafsa. The idea came to him quite +suddenly, after reading some descriptions which he considered sadly +misleading. Customs of the Arabs! To tease him, I quote the authority of +Bordereau, who says that there are practically no Arabs in Gafsa; that the +customs of this town are one thing and those of the Arabs another, unless +he applies the word Arab to all the Mohammedan races of these parts. + +The objection is brushed aside; one word is as good as another, +_n'est-ce-pas_? + +I point out a genuine Arab who happens to be passing; he has come down +from the hills and is leading a camel loaded with halfa; he is gaunt and +ill-clad, but walks with a fine swagger, and is evidently a valuable young +person, to judge by his tattooings. + +"That? That's only a young savage from the mountains. How are you to find +out anything about him? And I make a point, you know, of only recording +what I see with my eyes. No theories for me! I mean to see everything and +to set it down; to describe the Arabs as they are--as they _really are_, +in all the circumstances of their daily lives. One must see everything." + +As a painter, I urge, he must have discovered how useful it is to restrict +the field of vision now and then; to be deliberately half blind. + +"Painting, Monsieur, is one thing, and writing another. It is one of the +few advantages of growing old that things begin to fall, so to speak, into +their proper places. When I go to my studio, I go for distraction; art, it +seems to me, is there to create moods, pleasurable or otherwise; a painter +must seize impressions. But I go to my library for information; the +business of a writer is to collect and arrange facts; a book, as I +apprehend it, should be--a book. That is my quarrel with this Tunisian +literature; many of the things that have been written about the country +are not books at all; while others are full of mistakes. Look at these two +volumes, for instance! Impressionistic realism, I suppose they would call +it, scrawled down by an excitable female journalist who, I am sorry to +say, has created quite a rage for European and American lady tourists +among these Arabs, to the great discredit of our civilization. Read them, +Monsieur, as a warning example, and perhaps you will give me your +Bordereau instead; there may be something in it, after all." + +I gladly make the exchange, and regard the transaction in the light of an +omen, an epoch. I have been craving for something different from the facts +of Bordereau, who has been my companion all these days. A solid little +piece of work, by the way, which often set me wondering whether our +British public would care to pay four shillings for a technical account of +the climate, history and natural products of some remote Egyptian oasis. +But perhaps the cost of production has been defrayed by some Government +department. + +These two volumes by Isabelle Eberhardt--where have I heard that name +before?--look tempting. I promise myself some hours of pleasant reading. + +"And then, for downright misstatement," he continued, "look at this. Here +is a Monsieur Kocher, who passes for an authority, and who, describing the +Arab marriage customs, talks of the 'brutalité du viol dans le +marriage--un drame lugubre.' Now that comes of not examining things with +one's own eyes. Since my arrival here I have already seen several Arab +weddings and something of their married life, and I must say, candidly, +that I find it full of romance. Say what you will, these Arabs are +unconscious poets." + +"And if you want still further information," I said, "ask the boy whom I +saw blacking your boots this morning. He will describe to you the minutest +details of his married life with surprising frankness. His father bought +him a wife two weeks ago, under the condition, however, that his little +brother is to be allowed to share in the joys of matrimony. That young +savage from the mountains would blush, if Arabs ever could blush, to hear +their revelations." + +"Oh, oh, oh! You appal me! But I would like to make personal enquiries +into the matter; that is, if I can make them understand me. It is my rule, +you know." + +"Do, Monsieur; question both the brothers, and write down their answers, +the perusal of which will be a liberal education for our boys at home. +Among other things, they say that whenever----But here is Madame coming!" + +"Never mind her! She takes an interest in Arab institutions, as I do.... +Only imagine, Amélie, our shoeblack is said to be actually married; and so +is his little brother, and they have one and the same bride! Two husbands +to one wife, or half a wife apiece--what do you think of that?" + +"I think it's quite enough to begin with. Remember, _mon cher_, they are +only children." + + + + +_Chapter X_ + +_THE OASIS OF LEILA_ + + +I rode, for a farewell visit, to the small oasis of Leila, or Lalla, which +lies a few miles beyond the railway station. It is one of several +parasitic oases of Gafsa: a collection of mud-houses whose gardens are +watered by a far-famed spring, the fountain of Leila. + +The water gushes out, tepid and unpleasant to the taste--but +health-giving, they say, like so many unpleasant things--from under steep +banks of clay through which the railway to Sfax has been cut. It is a +sleepy hollow of palms, a place to dream away one's cares. The picturesque +but old-fashioned well at this spot has just been replaced by a modern +trough of cement. I watched the work from beginning to end, ten or fifteen +Arabs, supervised by a burly Sicilian mason, finishing the job in a few +days. + +"These Saracens!"--such was the overseer's constant lament--"these +Saracens! You don't know, dear sir, what fools they are." + +In never-ending procession of gaudy rags the village folk come to these +waters, the boys mostly on horseback, the women afoot. Donkeys are loaded +with the heavy black goat-skins of water; there is laundry-work going on, +and a good deal of straightforward love-making under the shade. These +children of nature have a wild beauty of their own, and the young girls +are frolicsome as gazelles and far less timid. They have none of the +pseudo-bashfulness of the townsfolk. For the rest, only the _dessus du +panier_ of womankind goes veiled hereabouts--a few portly dames of Gafsa, +that is, who are none the worse, I suspect, for keeping their features +hidden. Perhaps the good looks of these Leila people are a heritage from +olden days, for this oasis is known to be a race islet, inhabited almost +exclusively by men of the Ellez stock--one of the three races that have +chiefly contributed to the formation of the modern Gafsa type; a +conquering brood of European origin, small but shapely. + +But untold ages ere this the waters of Leila were already frequented by +men of another kind, by the flint-artists. Among the relics of their +occupation I picked up, here, an unusually fine implement of the +"amygdaloid" shape. + +Not a soul in Gafsa, native or foreign, could tell me who was the lady +Leila that gave her name to this fountain. On the spot, however, I heard +this tale: She was a young girl, madly enamoured of an Arab youth, but +strictly guarded. Her married sister alone knew of their infatuation, and +used to help her by keeping a look-out for him at the water-side; and when +he appeared, she would return home and sing to herself (as if it were a +snatch of some old ditty)--Leila, Leila, your lover comes! But the maiden +understood, and swiftly, under pretence of fetching water, she would run +to meet him at the well, and take her joy. The story has an air of +probability; such things are done every day, at every fountain throughout +the land. This lingering at the well is one of the moments when their hard +life is irradiated by a gleam of romance. + +An old man also gave me the following account:-- + +Ages ago, he said, when Gafsa belonged to the Sultan of Trablus (Tripoli) +there was sad misgovernment in the land. The taxes became quite +unendurable, and the city was half emptied of its inhabitants, who fled +this way and that, rather than submit to the extortions of the Sultan's +officers. And among those who escaped in this fashion was a god-fearing +widow and her children. Her name was Leila. She took up her abode near +this fountain, which was then little frequented. Here she dwelt, doing +good works whenever occasion offered. And here, at length, she was +received into the mercy of Allah and entombed. The country-folk gave her +name to the water, to perpetuate the memory of her pious life.... + +The depression beyond this fountain is celebrated as the resort of game, +and yesterday a French gentleman of my acquaintance went there, provided +with all the accoutrements of sport, not omitting a copious +luncheon-basket--there might be snipe or partridges, or perhaps a hare, a +gazelle, a leopard--who knows? + +He returned in good time for dinner. + +"_Voilà ma chasse_!" he said, opening his bag. It contained a bundle of +wild asparagus, for salad, and fourteen frogs, which he had killed with a +rifle. + +"You can't get frogs as easily in my part of France," he told me. "If the +sport were not forbidden for seven months out of the twelve, the species +would long ago have become extinct." + +I enquired whether the close-season for frogs was officially set down, +like that of hares or wildfowl. + +"Frogs," he explained, "are not considered game in the governmental sense +of that word; they fall into the category of fisheries which, as you know, +comes under the jurisdiction of the respective prefects. Hence the +close-time, though officially fixed, varies according to the different +provinces. In my department, for example, it begins on the 15th of +January. At Gafsa, if I may judge by certain indications, it would +probably be arranged to commence still earlier." + +Far be it from me to decry the succulent hams of _Rana esculenta_ (or +rather _ridibunda_). I have been offered far more fearful wild-fowl nearer +home--certain ornithological wrecks, I mean, that have been kept beyond +the feather-adhering stage, and then reverently held before a fire, for +two minutes, wrapped in a bag, lest the limbs should drop off. + +There is considerable talk at Gafsa of the wild mountain sheep, the +Barbary mouflon. They say that as late as the early nineties it was no +uncommon thing to meet with flocks of over thirty grazing in the +mountains. Although a special permit must now be obtained to be allowed to +shoot them, their numbers have much diminished. But the accounts vary so +wonderfully that one cannot form any idea of their frequency. Some talk of +seventeen being shot in the course of two weeks' camping, others of three +in a whole season. As a rule, they are not stalked, but driven, by an army +of Arabs which the sheikh organizes for that purpose, towards certain +openings in the hills where the sportsman takes up his stand. The desert +lynx is sometimes met with, and hyenas, they say, occur as near to Gafsa +as the Jebel Assalah. Arabs have told me that the fat of the hyena is used +by native thieves and burglars to smear on their bodies when they go +marauding. The dogs, they say, are so terrorized by the smell of it, so +numbed with fear and loathing, that they have not the heart to bark. +(Pliny records an ancient notion to the effect that dogs, on coming in +contact with the hyena's shadow, lose their voice.) + +Here, at the Jebel Assalah, I encountered a jackal--a common beast, but +far oftener heard than seen. While resting in a sunny hollow of rock, I +heard a wild cry which came from a shepherd who was driving the jackal +away from his goats. The discomfited brute trotted in my direction, and +only caught sight of me at a few yards' distance. I never saw a jackal +more surprised in my life. When a camel expires in the plain near some +nomads' tents, they sometimes set a spring-trap for jackals near the +carcase--they eat these beasts and sell their skin for a few francs; the +traps are craftily concealed underground, with a little brushwood thrown +over them to aid the deception. It is impossible to be aware of their +existence. But woe betide the wanderer who steps on them! + +For the machine closes with the shock of an earthquake, a perfect volcano +of dust and iron teeth leaping into the air. Its force is such that the +jackal's leg is often cut clean off, and he hops away on the remaining +three. For this and other reasons, therefore, it is advisable not to +approach too near a dead camel. + +The desert hare is shot or coursed with muzzled greyhounds, _sloughis_, +who strike it down with their paws; unmuzzled, they rend it to pieces. +There are few of them in Gafsa just now, on account of the cold to which +they are sensitive; although muffled in woollen garments they shiver +pitifully. Of falconers, I have only met one riding to the chase. It was +the Kaid of Gafsa, a wealthy man of incalculable political influence both +here and in Tunis. It is even whispered--But no; one must not repeat all +one hears.... + +With the proprietor's permission I went over a young plantation of trees +and vegetables that has sprung up near the railway line, about halfway +between Gafsa and Leila. Excavating to a depth of six metres at the foot +of the bare Rogib hill, they encountered an apparently unlimited supply of +water, and here, where formerly nothing but a few scorched grasses and +thorns could be seen, is now a luxuriant little oasis. More might be done +with the place, but the owner seems to have lost interest in it; the +locusts, too, have been rather destructive of late. + +He had planted quantities of prickly pears, he said, but the Bedouins' +cattle had devoured them. These are useful growths in Tunisia, requiring +hardly any moisture and forming, when full-grown, impenetrable walls of +spiky green. They also bring in a respectable revenue. In the district of +Kairouan, for instance, many families draw their entire income from them. +A few have been planted at Sidi Mansur and elsewhere near Gafsa, but they +are unprotected and liable to be trodden down in their early years, or +eaten. Barbed wire, herald of civilization, is almost unknown in these +parts. + +Like most tradespeople, this proprietor was rather despondent about the +future of Gafsa. There had certainly been some improvement within the last +twenty years--slight, but steady; the building of the railway station so +far outside the town he considered a disgraceful piece of jobbery, a crime +which had permanently injured the prospects of the place. Merchants, he +said, are entirely dependent on the state of the Metlaoui mines. If, like +last year, these do well, then Gafsa also thrives. If there is a strike or +over-production, as at this moment, Gafsa suffers. + +[Illustration: The Roman Wall] + +Tourists come to this town, he said, but they leave next day. Nothing is +done to make their stay agreeable. + +The natives are not of a kind to take much interest in its welfare. Gafsa +has gone through too many vicissitudes to be anything but a witches' +cauldron of mixed races. Seldom one sees a handsome or characteristic +face. They have not the wild solemnity of the desert folk, nor yet the +etiolated, gentle graces of the Tunisian citizen class; much less the +lily-like personal beauty of the blond Algerian Berbers. Apart from some +men that possess, almost undiluted, the features of the savage Neanderthal +brood that lived here in prehistoric times, the only pure race-type that +survives is one of unquestionably Egyptian origin, one to which Monsieur +Bordereau, in his book on Gafsa, has already referred. No wonder; since +Egyptian invasions of this region went on for centuries, culminating in +the extended sea-dominion of Thotmes III at the end of the seventeenth +century B.C. + +A bastard Greco-Latin was the language of the place up to the thirteenth +century A.D. + +This confusion of blood has done one good thing for them--it has given +them considerable tolerance in matters of religion. They are the least +bigoted Orientals one could wish to meet. Only fifteen in a hundred, +perhaps even less, perform the devotions prescribed by the Prophet. And it +is part of their charming heterodoxy to be dog-eaters. They will catch and +devour each other's dogs; they even breed them for the market, though they +dare not expose the meat publicly, any more than that of swine, which they +eat with relish. But up to a few days ago they had never ventured to touch +the dog of a foreigner. On Wednesday evening, however, a fox-terrier +belonging to a French official was found in the street, dead, with its +throat cut. A stream of blood was traced from that spot to the door of a +native eating-shop, and enquiries from the neighbours elicited the fact +that the cook of the establishment had caught the beast and cut its +throat; that the miserable creature, in its dying struggles, had escaped +from his grasp and run in the direction of home, only to stagger by the +roadside and expire from loss of blood. + +There was a wild excitement over this little episode. The dog of a +Frenchman killed, for culinary purposes, by an Arab; it was the _comble_ +of temerity! The owner of the animal, on hearing the news, buckled on his +revolver and repaired to the shop with the avowed intention of shooting +his man, whom the police, fortunately, had already conjured into some safe +place of custody. If he is wise he will languish in prison for some days +longer. + +Gafsa lies high, and I ask myself whether its fierce shiftings of heat and +cold, its nocturnal radiation that splits the very rocks and renders life +impossible for many plants (outside the cultivated zone, which equalizes +these extremes)--whether all this has not had a numbing and stupefying +influence on the character of the inhabitants. Would not a man, under such +perennial vexations, end in bowing his head and letting things take their +course? I notice the climatic effect upon myself is a growing incapacity +for mental effort. It is time to depart for the Djerid, where the sun, +they say, still exhales a certain amount of warmth. + +Add to this, Arab frugality and the cheapness of native living throughout +the country, which removes all stimulus to work. A middle-class citizen +tells me that he has just returned from Tunis, where a lawsuit had kept +him for two years. He went there with an overland caravan which cost next +to nothing; he slept in a _zaouiah_, where he also obtained a bath gratis; +he spent on his food four sous a day, neither more nor less, and by way of +amusement took coffee with his friends or strolled down to the harbour to +look at the ships. Six pounds in two years! And natives in authority, who +are generally the richest, pay nothing whatever for their nourishment. +Like the Kaid of Gafsa, they simply requisition it in the market; the +sellers grumble, but conform to custom. + +How quickly their looks can improve is shown by those who join the army. +In a few months they grow fat, cheerful, and bright-complexioned, thanks +to the hygienic life and better food. As it is, I have noticed single +individuals among the poorest classes who look remarkably well as compared +with their fellows. "They drink milk," was the explanation given me. + +There is vitality enough among the young boys who play hockey--these ball +games are non-Arabic, a relic of Berberism--and keep up the sport till +late at night amid a good deal of ill-tempered fighting and pulling about. +Their mothers' milk is still inside them; they have not yet succumbed to +the ridiculous diet, clothing, and life-habits of their elders. But soon +manhood descends upon them like a cataclysm; it tears them with a frenzy +which is anything but divine and thereafter absorbs them, to the exclusion +of every other interest. Hockey-sticks are thrown away.... + +That witchery of Orientalism, with its immemorial customs, its wondrous +hues of earth and sky--it exists, chiefly, for the delectation of +hyperborean dreamers. The desert life and those many-tinted, mouldering +cities have their charms, but the misery at intermediate places like Gafsa +(and there are hundreds of them) is too great, too irremediable to be +otherwise than an eyesore. They have not solved the problem of the simple +life, these shivering, blear-eyed folk. Their daily routine is the height +of discomfort; they are always ailing in health, often from that disease +of which they plaintively declare that "whoever has not had it, cannot +enter the kingdom of Heaven," and which, unlike ourselves, they contract +by their patriarchal habit of eating and drinking out of a common dish. +They die like flies. Naturally enough; for it is not too much to say, of +the poorer classes, that they eat dirt, and that only once a day. A fresh +shirt in the year is their whole tailor's bill; two or three sous a day +will feed them; sunshine, and the stone floor of a mosque or coffee-house +by night, is all they ask for, and more than they sometimes get. + +An old Arab song contains words to this effect: "Kafsa is miserable; its +water is blood; its air is poison; you may live there a hundred years +without making a friend." No doubt the plethoric Sicilian mason at the +Leila fountain would thoroughly endorse this statement with his "Ah, +signore--these Saracens!"... But one learns to like the people none the +less. They are merely depressed; they are not deficient in mother-wit or +kindliness; a little good food would work wonders. + +The oasis people are milk-drinkers, and would be healthier than the +townsmen but for the agues, fevers and troublesome "Gafsa boil" to which +they are subject. + +I go to these plantations at night-time, after dinner, when the moon plays +wonderful tricks of light and shadow with the over-arching foliage. The +smooth sandy stretches at the outskirts of the gardens shine like water at +rest, on which the leaves of an occasional sparse tuft of palms are etched +with crystalline hardness of delineation. + +This untilled region is most artistic, the isolated clumps shooting up +like bamboos out of the bare soil. The whole grove is still wrapped in its +wintry sleep, and one can look through the naked branches of the fruit +trees into its furthest reaches. Only the palm leaves overhead and the +ground at one's feet are green; the middle spaces bleak and brown. But, do +what he will, a man who has lived in the tropics becomes rather _blasé_ in +the matter of palms. Besides, there are no flints to be found here.... + +[ILLUSTRATION: Olives in the Oasis] + +Yet such is the abundance of water that these Gafsa gardens have a +character different from most African plantations. They are more artlessly +furnished, with rough, park-like districts and a not unpleasing impression +of riot and waste--waste in the midst of plenty. + +Then there is a charming Theocritean bit of country--the temperate region +at the tail-end of the grove. Only olives grow here; seventy-five thousand +of them. Beside their silvery-grey trunks you may see herds of the small +but brightly-tinted oxen reposing; the ground is pied with daisies and +buttercups, oleanders border the streamlets, and the plaintive notes of +the _djouak_, the pastoral reed of the nomads, resound from some hidden +copse. + +There will be nothing of this kind, I fear, in the carefully-tended oases +of the Djerid. + + + + +_Chapter XI_ + +_A HAVEN OF REFUGE_ + + +The cold being past all endurance and belief, I was tempted to fulfil my +promise and call upon Monsieur Dufresnoy. What kind of man was this that +managed to survive it? + +They led me to his house, which is one of the few two-storied buildings of +the town and lies in a squalid street of mud-dwellings. Villainously dirty +walls surround a massive entrance-gate studded with nails and bands of +iron, intervolved in artful designs. No bell, no knocker, no door-handle; +only an impressive lock. At the sight of this doorway I paused--it was +grim, claustral, almost menacing; there was an air of enchantment about +the mansion, as if once in a hundred years its forbidding portals might +turn on their rusty hinges. + +Finally, I fled away altogether, in a kind of godly panic. + +M. Dufresnoy, on his way homewards, almost ran into me. I tried to explain +the sensations his domicile had aroused in my mind; he laughed at first, +and then admitted that he had often felt the same thing. The house was apt +to look like that, he said, when his wife was away. + +The inside appearance, once that portal has been passed, is quite +different, and I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing the place, as +it is one of the surprises of Gafsa, one of the few remaining town-houses +that date from better days, being built originally for some Turkish +grandee or governor--for him, I daresay, who drove the god-fearing widow +to the sylvan seclusion of Leila. You step through the gate into an open +square patio, surrounded, on the sides not abutting on the street, by an +arched passage that reposes on old Roman columns. This covered loggia, +running round three fronts of the court, is the feature of the house: +wonderful how a few arcades and pillars will impart an air of distinction +and even luxury! Almost nothing has been done to change the old appearance +of this small but well-proportioned patio; the walls have been freshly +whitewashed, the original mud-flooring replaced by tiles, a bright +flower-bed set in the centre--nothing more. + +The five or six lower rooms to which the loggia gives access must be +delightfully cool in summer, but they are dark and chilly at this season. +Luckily, the mansion possesses an upper story where the family resides +during the winter, in rooms that are actually floored with wood. From +here, looking out of the windows, there is a wondrous view over a +wilderness of decayed Arab dwellings upon the oasis beyond, and the +distant purple mountains. + +There is an irresistible air of geniality about this home: can it be the +house itself? For a subtle influence, no doubt, penetrates to the heart of +man from the mere form and disposition of inanimate things. I was prepared +to be smothered in a profusion of local effects; of saddle-cloths, silk +hangings, water-pipes, daggers and match-locks, dim nooks with divans, and +those other decorations that suggest the glamour of the Orient to certain +Western minds. Or again, I said to myself, this European wife will have +imported certain tastes from over the sea; the house will be replete with +trifles carefully disposed in negligent fashion, silver photograph frames +and flower vases reposing on diminutive tables, and such-like indications +of what our novelists call the "tender but indefinable touches of a +woman's hand." + +Nothing of the kind. The place is simply comfortable: it appeals to one's +sense of propriety. There are carpets and genuine arm-chairs--unique +phenomena in this part of the world; best of all, fire-places wherein +ample logs of olive-wood glimmer and glister all day long. + +And so the last few days have passed. Mentally, too, I am thawing once +more; the hotel life and solitary walks of Gafsa had begun to affect me +disagreeably. Such things are endurable and perhaps stimulating in youth +and in the plenitude of health; but there comes a period when one lives +less in future dreamings than in the experiences of the past--unpleasant +company, for the most part; when one craves to see the faces and hear the +opinions of rational fellow-creatures; when one requires, in short, to be +distracted. This is the age, too, at which a man begins to realize the +significance of those once-despised material comforts. Tunisian hotels can +only be inhabited by young hopefuls. + +The house contains a considerable library of local literature--mostly +technical and dealing with Dufresnoy's Metlaoui district, but some of it +intelligible to a simple traveller like myself. From certain books I have +begun to make extracts concerning the places I am likely to visit: +Metlaoui, the Djerid oases, and the Chott country. + +Dufresnoy is essentially a mining engineer. He evidently knows his +business thoroughly; he has been employed in various parts of the French +dominions and likes the work; all of which has not prevented him from +becoming a man of the world and keeping his other intellectual pores open. +There is nothing of the professional in his conversation. He is rather +undemonstrative, for a Frenchman. + +He told me an odd thing about the native rising in Thala in 1896, when a +marabout preached death to all foreigners, with the result that several +white men were murdered (it was a hastily collected band of Italian +tradesmen who put down the insurrection). They caught him, and in due time +he died (?) in prison--they were probably afraid to execute him: perhaps +he killed himself--and the odd thing is this: that although the necessary +sum has been contributed for erecting a monument to these unhappy victims +of native ferocity, yet the Franco-Tunisian authorities are averse to the +plan, on the ground that such a public monument might offend Arab +susceptibilities. This struck me as overdoing the "pacific penetration" +policy; and he thought so too, more especially as there is a commemorative +stone to some preposterous native bigot at the very place.... + +I shall be sorry to leave Dufresnoy at Metlaoui. In him I often admire +that fine trait of his race: the clarifying instinct. He possesses--with +no pretension at knowledge beyond his mining sphere--an innate rigour of +judgment in every matter of the mind; he avoids crooked thinking by a +process of ratiocination so swift and sure as to appear intuitive. Even as +a true collector of antiques has quite a peculiar way of handling some +rare snuff-box or Tanagra statuette and, though unacquainted with that +particular branch of art, yet straightway classes it correctly as to its +merits, so, to him, an idea of whatever kind is an _objet de vertu_, to be +appraised with unfailing accuracy. He is a connoisseur of abstractions. +What the Goth carves out grotesquely after a painful labour of mental +elimination, the right deposited, as residue, after a thousand +wrongs--what the Latin smothers under a deluge of mere words: this your +Frenchman of such a type will nimbly disentangle from all its +unessentials; he presents it to your inspection in reasonable and +convincing shape--purified, clipped, pruned. What is this gift, this +distinguishing mark? + +Discipline of the mind, culminating in intellectual chastity--in what may +be called a horror of perverse or futile reasoning. + +He mentioned, incidentally, the case of suicides among the natives to +prove that the _Mektoub_ doctrine is not wholly pernicious. Suicides were +quite unusual, he said; the Arabs do not seem to be able to fall in with +the idea, preferring to bear the greatest evils rather than take an active +part in the undoing of themselves. That was _Mektoub_: to bow the head, +dumbly resisting. And were they not right? Did not the great majority of +European cases of suicide imply a neurotic condition--such as when men of +business have suffered reverses on Exchange or lost some trivial +appointment? How easily things could be bridged over, or repaired, or even +endured! The most hopeless invalid could testify to the fact that some +pleasure can still be extracted out of a maimed or crippled existence; a +man, however impoverished, might still live in dignified and fairly +cheerful fashion. + +He thought that in the matter of suicides, as in that of remorse, we were +too "spectacular and altruistic"; that we lived in a rather unwholesome +atmosphere of self-created and foolish ideas concerning honour and duty; +that the _Mektoub_ practice of the Arabs pointed to an underlying +primitive sanity which we would do well to foster within us. + + + + +_Chapter XII_ + +_THE MYSTERIOUS COUNT_ + + +Gafsa, even Gafsa, has its enigmas. + +I climbed this afternoon to the summit of the Rogib hill, which lies near +the railway station, on the further side of the Oued Baiesh. This, +presumably, is the site where Marius halted for the last time before +attacking the town; and the spot was also interesting to me on account of +its flint implements.... + +A sad and barren range of hills. There was no sunshine, for a +scirocco-storm raised clouds of dust and obscured the sky; the wind was +bitterly cold. Finding it impossible to attune my phantasy to the picture +of Marius and his soldiers, I descended once more. + +On the station turnpike I overtook a solitary foot-passenger, who plodded +slowly along. It was the Polish Count. He had been absent from the hotel +for several days, and now appeared to be in the gloomiest of humours. + +Where had he been? + +For a promenade, he said. It was too dreary sitting indoors, all alone. He +had left the hotel. The place was too noisy: the dogs barked incessantly. +He had taken rooms with a Jew, and arranged to have his meals at a small +Italian _trattoria_. + +This was a half-truth, I felt sure. The dogs of Gafsa, no doubt, are past +all endurance; they are worse than in any Turkish village where they howl +at least in unison, and so continuously through the night that one ceases +to take note of them; but the man's real reason for this change of +domicile was probably another one. + +"You must find that much quieter," I said, "and cheaper as well. These +hotels are rather pretentious." + +"Pretentious and dear. Here I am, stranded in an unknown place, without +friends; remittances are due to me, and they never come"--he broke into +the subject without reserve--"and it is hard, I assure you, to deprive +oneself of things, of trifles, if you like to call them so, to which one +is nevertheless accustomed and entitled, so to speak, by birthright. But I +am talking to the winds, no doubt. You, Monsieur, are one of the fortunate +ones; you don't know--you don't know----" + +"Yes I do," I replied, trying to think of something to say in the way of +consolation. "I know quite well----" + +"How do you know?" he interrupted. And next, with needless vehemence: +"_What_ do you know?" + +I was surprised at his sudden change of tone. It was awkward, all this. I +gave utterance to such commonplaces on the instability of human affairs as +occurred to me, and ended up by offering, I hope with sufficient delicacy, +to assist him to the small extent that lay in my power. + +"Ah!" + +He seemed infinitely relieved by my words: he evidently expected some +answer of quite another import. Turning his back to the wind, and pausing +for a moment to adjust his clothing, he replied, with ambassadorial +deliberation: + +"You may be certain, Monsieur, that I would not easily forget a kindness +of this nature; my lot in life has been far too unhappy to make me +undervalue what you, a stranger, have just offered me. But I will decline: +what are a few francs to me? Pray don't think me ungrateful, however. You +have caught me in an almost delirious moment, and your friendly words just +now, when I felt myself so abandoned and in so critical a state of mind, +with this dreadful desert wind moaning and everything, as it seems, +hostile to me: your kind words, I say, touched me more deeply than I can +express." (Here he wiped away a genuine tear.) "But my luck may yet turn, +and then, be sure, I will make you forget all my childish querulousness." + +And he went on, almost gaily: + +"I never could keep money! And the worst of it is, I hate work; I was not +brought up to it, and you will admit that I am too old to begin life anew. +Yet I object on principle to so-called charity, being intelligent enough +to know that there is only one kind of charity, and Justice is its name. +But what is justice? I suppose we all possess some kind of natural rights, +according to our stations; justice, I take it, would consist in our being +permitted to enjoy those rights. If this is correct, then--ah, Monsieur, +the demoralizing effects of poverty, of non-justice, on a man like myself; +how it lowers your self-respect and makes you capable of actions that you +would reprobate, in your right mind--" + +"In your right mind? Is a poor man, then, insane?" + +"How can I make you understand? Tell me, is not poverty a kind of madness, +an obsession that haunts you night and day? To puzzle, at every hour, how +to meet this demand and how to shun that one; to deny yourself the +necessities of life, and your friends those poor little pleasures that you +are yearning to bestow upon them--is it not a mental malady, a fever; is +it not damnation itself? The thousand meannesses: how they degrade you; +how they suck away your strength, your ambition, your faith! To see no +openings before you, save ever darker gulfs of despair! I cannot hope to +make you conceive such a hell: one must have been there oneself. But note +this, Monsieur: never judge an impoverished man by your own standards of +right and wrong--never! For the old-established meanings of things shift +for him--they shift; and his temptations become formidably subtle beyond +belief. When rich, he says calmly _Non; ça ne va pas_. But to forego an +advantage, when poor, is the same as if--let me see ... as if one asked +you to leave lying some fascinating flint in the desert waste." + +"That simile, surely, is all wrong, Count. Nobody can be injured by my +flint-mania, whereas----" + +"I know, I know; I am not trying to excuse things; I am only explaining +how they happen. But how explain to others? We always talk of putting +ourselves in our neighbours' place; idlest of phrases! since we cannot +possibly avoid bringing our personal apparatus to bear on their problems. +There is a gulf between man and man. You will hardly believe that I used +to take an interest--quite superficial, you know, but none the less +real--in all those questions of the day that absorb the ordinary man of +ease, in politics and art and whatnot; but nowadays all my interests are +centred on one single point. On what point, do you think? On keeping up +the external appearance, and the manners, of well-being. I have no energy +left for anything else; and even this effort quite exhausts me. Art and +politics! What, in the name of heaven, do I care for art and politics, +with the knife at my throat? I only utilize these things; yes, I utilize +them for conversational purposes, in order to deceive others as to my +true, incessant and miserable preoccupations. Laughable, is it not? Why +don't you smile, Monsieur--you, who have never known the bitterness?" + +We were crossing the broad Oued Baiesh, a stretch of yellow sand and +stones. To obviate damage by sudden floods, the French have covered this +tract of the road with a coating of asphalt; but the busy life here, the +droves of camels and sheep, the Arab folk laughing over their laundry-work +in the shallow streamlet that trickles through the waste--all these things +were gone for the moment. + +But for the torn line of Gafsa palms that confronted us on the other side +of the river-bed, we might have been in the veriest wilderness. Although +the wind was lulled, petulant little pillars of sand still arose here and +there among the boulders, and sank down again, as if exhausted; the +descending sun had emerged, a lurid disk, framed in a sulphureous halo +that melted imperceptibly into the gold of the west. + +It was growing chillier than ever, and the Count, shivering with cold, +drew his burnous more closely about him; he had bought one for fifteen +francs, probably in imitation of myself, or because I once jokingly called +it "a garment for millionaires who need not use their hands." He liked to +be taken for a millionaire. + +I looked at him awhile, wondering what thoughts were ruling the expression +of his perplexed and sorrowful features, and then tried to turn the +conversation into other channels. + +"Are there interesting people at your Italian restaurant?" + +"Well, there is Hirsch, the young German: you know him?" + +"The police commissaire was talking to me about his case yesterday." + +"Ha, was he? Let me tell you that I have investigated it thoroughly, and +find it most instructive. This young fellow is not yet twenty; he ran away +from home for no discoverable reason, then signed on a merchant vessel at +Marseilles and, disliking the work, slipped out as soon as she touched +port at Sfax, and climbed without a ticket into a night-train, thinking to +reach Tunis. Instead of that, he woke up in the morning and found himself +at Gafsa! Here, you see, are all the elements of wrong-doing, and the +authorities have learnt his history from his papers which they seized. As +a German and a Jew, the French instinctively dislike him; as a Jew and a +foreigner--the Arabs; he is objectionable to look at, dull of wit, and +knows not a word of French or Arabic. But he is poor, and therefore--every +one loads him with kindness." + +"And why not?" I asked. + +"Why not, indeed? Your friend the magistrate has given him some money out +of his own pocket; the restaurant proprietress refuses to be paid for his +food, while another one, near the station, sends word to say that he can +have a plate of soup there whenever he likes; a young Arab boy--these +Arabs are really incomprehensible--gives him as many cups of tea or coffee +as he can drink; a Jewish lawyer has sent him some clothes; a gentleman in +your hotel a quantity of linen; the Italian barber shaves him gratis; a +certain shopkeeper sends him a bottle of liqueur--of liqueur!--every +second day; the commissaire has given him, free of charge, a decent +unoccupied bedroom in the prison, where he can go in and out as he +pleases; best of all, the _Ponts et Chaussées_ are now employing him at +three francs a day--a princely income, they tell me--at some agricultural +job: pure kindness, inasmuch as he has never handled a spade or pickaxe in +his life. He can have a pleasant time in Gafsa; he can marry an heiress if +so disposed; then, when the place begins to bore him, the German Consul in +Tunis will repatriate him at his Government's expense. 'He's a poor +devil,' they say. Why do I tell you all this? Because--well--I am also +poor--" + +Always harping on the old theme! + +"The cases are not quite parallel, are they?" + +"No. He is young, and fit for work, whereas I am past the middle term of +life. Old age--another horror! Besides, I am a gentleman----" + +"Exactly. We should be ashamed to shave you gratis." + +"I suppose you're right, Monsieur. I was only trying to explain--to +explain myself--to myself, I mean. Pardon me if I speak too much of my +wretched affairs. But I'll tell you what I think. To endure this revolting +destitution a man must be an Arab. Now, I cannot pretend to be an Arab; I +would not adopt their ideals if I could. And yet, alas! I am beginning to +believe in predestination, as they do; to believe that our faults and our +virtues are distilled beforehand in the silent laboratory of the past. A +sad creed, to think of men born to misfortune; to be obliged to consider +yourself--how do you say in English?--_a stepchild of nature_...." + +He was always a good talker, but it is impossible to describe the +intensity of feeling in his speech to-day. He seemed to suffer from some +imperious need of unburdening himself, even to a chance acquaintance like +me; long days of loneliness, maybe, had worked on his nerves and produced +a kind of congestion. But in his words and voice I detected lapses into +other moods, into some other state of being; they gave me the impression +as of two different individuals addressing me. The man did not ring true, +altogether; he was mentally disorganized, disharmonious; those +meretricious reasonings about justice, for example, struck me +disagreeably. + +And I could not help contrasting his rambling emotionalism with the +logic--the relentless, diamond-like _justesse_--of the mining engineer. He +is the very antithesis of that pellucid and homogeneous character. The +sanguine temperament ... + +What is a man of this type doing in Gafsa? + +Mystery! + +The rest of us, the cynical Greek doctor, the artist-sage and lover of +Arab institutions, myself (flint-maniac)--to say nothing of men like +Dufresnoy--we all contrive to fit, after a fashion, into the place; we +have a _raison d'etre_. But this composite, unadaptive city-dweller: how +incongruous a figure against that background of palms and barren +mountains! + +An enigmatical creature, and yet not wholly unlovable; he may be unsound +or even unprincipled, he may be deficient in qualities that go to make men +respected and satisfied with the world in general, but he possesses, I +think, certain citizen-virtues unintelligible to the self-centred, rustic +type of mind. He could be stirred to acts of unworldly enthusiasm; he +would share his last crust with some shipwrecked sailor, or shed his blood +gaily for a generous idea. And he is plainly in hard case just now. + +_A stepchild of nature_.... + +"You have a very good English accent, Count." + +"We were carefully brought up in languages. Not every one understands +Polish, you know." + +"By the way, how does it come about that you, being a Pole, should have a +Russian family name?" + +The question seemed to astonish and perplex him. At last he said: + +"Oh, it's about the same thing, isn't it? Nowadays, I mean," he added, +with grandiloquent pathos, "ever since the misfortunes of my unhappy +country." + +At the entrance to the town we separated, and I watched for some time his +bowed form as it crept along the wood-market in the direction of the +Kairouan road. + +This is one of the figures that will persist in my mind very clear and +pathetic, and I shall long remember those plaintive remarks about poverty +that welled up, surely, from the bottom of his heart. How far, I wonder, +is such a man the author of his own calamities, and how far have they +_made him_? Academic questionings, based on out-of-date philosophy! Our +vices, he said, are distilled for us beforehand in the dim laboratory of +the past. His vice, evidently, is to hate work of every kind; his +faculties, therefore, never undergo the rhythmic joy of reaction, for he +is too well nourished to live the _vita minor_ of a starveling, to endure +Arab acquiescence in non-production. + +"I am only trying to explain myself--to myself." Half-truth, I imagine. He +is probably conscience-stricken, or at least dissatisfied with his conduct +for one reason or another, and endeavouring to justify some base plan of +action by re-stating ethics in terms of hunger; a specious line of +argument, since hunger is not the rule but the exception. + +And then I shall think of his red nose and watery little eyes, his absurd +jewellery--a fine presence, none the less, when he pulls himself together; +there is about him an air of faded distinction that softly symbolizes the +history of his adopted country. + +The Count! + +Why a count? Because all Poles are counts--those that are not princes. But +why a Pole? Well, perhaps from the convenience of vagueness, inasmuch as +there is something international about a Pole--international, and yet +neither equivocal nor vulgar; every one sympathizes with them, for they +all possessed, once upon a time, vast estates whose loss is borne in +cheerful resignation, and never so much as alluded to; they know +everybody, and everybody worth knowing is related to them, by marriage or +otherwise, in this or some other century; as men of the world, they are +ready to talk upon any subject with tolerance, geniality and a pleasingly +personal note that withers up the commonplace, smoking, meanwhile, +innumerable cigarettes out of mouthpieces which display a complex +escutcheon contrived in gold and rubies upon the amber surface. Yes, his +choice was good: Poles are gentlemen. But why caricature them? And why, +above all things, select an inappropriate Muscovite name? That argues a +lack of general intelligence and might easily spoil everything; so true it +is, as a legal friend once observed to me, that "it takes a wise man to +handle a lie. A fool had better remain honest." + +What can be the meaning of this unlovely comedy? Some defalcation or +forgery? Likely enough. But I think he lacks the cleverness requisite for +a habitual criminal. Perhaps he is only a poor survivor, drifting about in +lonely and distracted fashion while waiting for the inevitable end. Others +may solve the enigma, but not I; for to-morrow we go to Metlaoui. + +Yet I know that long after the palms and minarets of Gafsa have faded into +the blurred image of countless other palms and other minarets, I shall be +able to call up the figure of this forlorn and ambiguous fellow-creature, +standing on the asphalt of the river-crossing with his cheap burnous +wrapped around him, sighing, shivering, and setting forth certain views +concerning human life for which there is, after all, a good deal to be +said. + + + + +_Chapter XIII_ + +_TO METLAOUI_ + + +I should be sorry to say how long the train takes to crawl through the +thirty odd kilometres that separate Gafsa from Metlaoui. My companion on +the trip, M. Dufresnoy, tells me that the return journey is still slower, +because the line runs mostly uphill and the trucks, thirty or forty of +them, are loaded with minerals. Fortunately, the car in which we +travelled--each train has only a single passenger carriage--was +comfortable, being built after the fashion of the Swiss "Aussichtswagen," +with seats on the exterior platform whence one can admire the view. + +It gave me some idea of the goods traffic (phosphates) along this line +when he told me that during the past seven days 23,000 tons of mineral had +been conveyed to the port of Sfax alone, to say nothing of those that had +gone further on, to Sousse and Tunis. And not long ago, he said, the +company had an unpleasant surprise: sixteen new engines of a powerful +type, which they had ordered from Winterthur, were suddenly discovered to +be liable to a duty of 1000 francs apiece as "imported articles." + +"We can afford it," he said. "Our five hundred-franc shares are standing +at three thousand seven hundred francs." + +But he thought that a grave error had been committed in selecting the +narrow metre gauge; it was all very well for phosphate transport, but once +the line over Feriana and the branch to Tozeur are completed, they would +have to deal with other material, such as tourists, that require fast +services. + +They had an accident last year. The couplings of a train, climbing uphill +from Gafsa past the Leila oasis, suddenly broke, with the result that the +rear portion rushed backwards again, careered through the Gafsa station +and up the artificial incline which leads towards the Oued Baiesh, crossed +the bridge, and thundered at a vertiginous pace into the desert beyond. As +luck would have it, another train was just then approaching Gafsa. They +collided with terrific force and, telescoping being out of the question +since both were loaded with minerals, escaladed each other in Eiffel-tower +fashion. Arab eye-witnesses say that the stoker of the up-train was thrown +out by the impact and flew across country "like a bird" for half a mile; +he alighted on his feet, and was found, after a week or so, wandering +about the plain in a dazed condition. The driver was killed outright, and +his widow draws a respectable pension from the company. + +Since then two engines are always employed to move the train up the few +miles beyond Gafsa. + +The cream-tinted level is speckled with white incrustations and sombre +tufts of desert herbs; here and there, where the winter's rain lingers +underground, are spots of brilliant green; short-lived crops of corn, sown +by the nomads. The hills to the right of the line are bare and torn into +wild ravines; lilac-hued patches, ever changing and fair to see, move +among their warm complexities: cloud-shadows. Here, if anywhere, one +learns that shadows are not always grey or black; even those cast in +moonlight have a certain ghostly coloration. + +It was a marvellously clear day, and not many miles before reaching our +destination we looked back upon the downhill route traversed which, so far +as one could see, might have been a dead level. At a distance of nearly +twenty miles Gafsa was plainly visible--white buildings piercing a dusky +line of palms--an hour's walk, it seemed. I observed in the brushwood a +couple of bustards, their heads peering above the herbage. These birds are +rather rare hereabouts, and shy of approach. Arabs say that the bustard is +like the camel: once it begins to run, you never know when it will stop. +They surround them therefore cautiously, and gradually close the circle to +within shooting distance. + +Metlaoui is the name of two distinct villages which have been conjured out +of the waste by the discovery of its phosphate deposits--the station +village and, a mile or so further on, Metlaoui proper, with its big +establishments for working the minerals. + +Here already, at the station settlement, there is more life than in Gafsa, +though the surroundings are decidedly unpropitious--a waterless plain, +with low hills in the foreground, phosphate-bearing, and wondrously tinted +in rose and heliotrope. There are respectable stores here, very different +from the shops of Gafsa. I entered a large Italian warehouse which +contained an assortment of goods--clothing, jams, boots, writing-paper, +sealing-wax, nails, agricultural implements, guns, bedding, mouse-traps, +wire, seeds, tinned foods--and vainly endeavoured to think of some article +which a _colon_ might require and not find here. The only drawback is that +there are no "colons" in the district. + +While waiting for a conveyance to take me to the industrial settlement, I +strolled about and found my way across a sad stretch of ground littered +with tin cans, bottles, and other refuse, to a slight eminence whereon lay +a cemetery. In this forlorn square are about twenty tombs, already +crumbling to dust, although not one of those I saw was five years old. +Humble victims for the most part--Italians in the prime of life who had +come to these regions to gain a little money; or little children, carried +off by the harsh climate (yet the climate of this place is preferred to +that of Gafsa). The enclosure is filling up with drift-sand; the +inscriptions on the tombs, often a mere charcoal scrawl of some unlettered +friend or parent, is soon effaced by winds and rain. + +One is wholly unprepared for the appearance of Metlaoui proper. In ten +years' time a village has sprung up here, partly of factories and smoky +chimneys, but chiefly of trim bungalows, with white walls and red roofs, +that are dotted over the uneven surface of the ground. The whole site is +owned by the company, and inhabited by its officials and overseers. It has +its own church, shops, schools, hospital, workmen's clubs, bakeries, and +its air of neatness and well-being contrasts pleasingly with the forsaken +landscape all around. + +The higher posts are reserved for Frenchmen, but among the lower grades +you may find a number of other nationalities; Spaniards and +Sardinians--hardiest of white Mediterranean races--as well as some +Italians, and not a few Greeks. The manual labour in the mines is +performed by Africans. + +Not along ago nearly every drop of water for this settlement had to be +conveyed from Gafsa on the backs of camels. But the company has now +captured a spring at the head of the Seldja gorge, about eight miles +distant, which brings a copious flow of water into the place. Thus they +have been enabled to plant a great number of trees, but I wish they could +be persuaded to adopt a little more variety in their choice of them. One +grows tired of the eucalyptus, that doleful and dismal growth, and even of +the eternal pepper trees, green as they are; and the results, in a few +years' time, would be far more charming if they would take the trouble to +copy some of the Algerian municipalities in this respect, or--better +still--obtain professional advice from the Agricultural Institute at +Tunis, which could furnish them with a large list of ornamental timber and +shrubs that would thrive equally well, and convert Metlaoui into a +veritable garden city. The plants suffer at first from the strong winds, +but they acclimatize themselves by degrees. + +Remembering what had been told me of the unsuccessful attempt of the +French to appropriate the water springs of Sidi Mansur, near Gafsa, I +asked Dufresnoy whether the Arabs had not contested the action of his +company at Seldja. + +"I should think so!" he said. "They raised the devil. But we are not civil +servants here, who must humour the caprices of half a dozen savages: the +health of the settlement was dependent on our getting this water, and we +took it, _voilà!_ The great ambition of the company is to fix its people +on the spot; to make life here so pleasant for them that they don't want +to leave." + +"You must find it difficult. The Arabs, I suspect, run back to the desert +as soon as they have earned a few francs; and as for the European +tradesmen, no doubt they get rich quickly, and then return to their homes +again as soon as possible." + +"That is exactly what the company manages to avoid. Let them prosper, we +say; but slowly. And we succeed." + +"How so?" + +"By manipulating the rates of merchandise transport. The railway to Sfax +belongs to us, and we can regulate prices as it suits us; if we liked, we +could choke off all trade. Ah, the company knows its business! Of course, +that makes us many enemies; they call it high-handedness and brutality--a +concern like ours is bound to expose itself to such remarks--_we_ call it +common sense. If the railway were not ours, if we were not practically +dictators of the country, those Americans, with their immense phosphate +importation into Europe, would eat us up; and then these local merchants +would lose everything. That is the justification of our so-called tyranny. +Are we to have nothing for our risks? Look at this installation of +machinery--all built, too, with a view to future aggrandizement: does it +strike you as a half-hearted speculation?" + +Daring, on the contrary. Here are gargantuan sheds, capable of holding +thirty thousand tons of mineral apiece; furnaces, miniature volcanoes, for +drying them artificially in winter-time, when the sun's heat is +insufficient; all around you a gehenna of mad industrial life, smoke and +steam, a throbbing agglomeration of wheels and belts and pistons; there +are chains of buckets, filled with phosphates, wandering overhead in +endless progression or disappearing sullenly into the bowels of the earth; +passionate electric motors; mountains of coal and iron contrivances; +railway engines snorting and whistling, or bearing a load of minerals down +from the hills to where an army of Arabs will tear them out of the cars to +dry, amid clouds of tawny dust. One might well grow crazy at the idea of +the primary difficulties involved in grafting upon the desert soil this +ordered mechanical efflorescence, this frenzied blossoming of human +activity. + +What is happening? + +They are separating the crude phosphate from its natural impurities; +drying, pounding, and loading it upon trains for removal to the sea-board. +That is all. + + + + +_Chapter XIV_ + +_PHOSPHATES_ + + +A light railway leads up to the hills where the phosphates lie. Here you +may see the fiends at work. A legion of wild-eyed, swart and nearly nude +creatures are disembowelling the hoary mountain: visions such as this must +have floated before Milton's eye when he drew his picture of Mammon, who, +with his horde of demons, opened in the hill a spacious wound-- + + Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands + Rifled the bowels of our mother Earth + For treasure better hid.... + +The workers are chiefly of three races: Tripolitan, Khabyle (Algerian), +and Moroccan; they live in separate clusters among the rocks, each with +their peculiar national traits and mode of building; there is hardly a +woman among them all. + +Besides these tribes a certain proportion of Tunisian Arabs are employed, +but they are too weak or timorous to relish underground work; a sprinkling +of negroes, as well as some of the hillfolk from the district surrounding +Metlaoui, who go by the quaint name of Boujaja. + +"Good fellows," said Dufresnoy. "They will slit your throat for a you." + +The surface phosphates having already become exhausted, the mineral is now +pursued into the dim recesses of the earth. Tunnels are excavated, whence +smaller ones radiate in definite directions--all of them sustained by +wooden beams; the amount of material to be extracted from a given spot is +scientifically fixed; it is shattered by minute blasts of dynamite and, +once the trolley cars have carried it away, the wooden supports are +removed and these cavities filled up by the collapse of the roof. By this +means accidents are forestalled such as that which took place some years +ago when, owing to an oversight of some subordinate left in charge, an +immense mass of mountain fell in, entombing about three hundred miners, +whose bodies are not yet recovered. The ill-fated engineer who was legally +responsible for the mishap was in Paris at the time; he returned in all +haste. After seeing the mischief, he tried to throw himself into an Arab +well, and, baulked of this, lay down at night under a passing train and +was decapitated. + +They showed me a map of this subterranean world, variously tinted +according to the regions already exploited and those yet virgin. It +reminded me, with its regular streets and blocks, of some model city in +the Far West. + +The underground workings here are about thirty kilometres in length. +Beside these Metlaoui deposits, the company has begun to attack those of +Redeyeff, and will shortly open an assault upon the others at Ain +Moulares, which lie near Henchir Souatir, the present terminus of the +Feriana line. It employs six thousand men; some of the mineral goes as far +as Japan; the output of last year amounted to over a million tons. + +One may well be interested in the discoverer of these phosphates, in the +man who has revolutionized the trade of Tunisia. He is a veterinary +surgeon in the French Army--Monsieur Philippe Thomas. + +His record is of the best. + +Born in 1843, he has taken part in twelve military campaigns, +distinguishing himself particularly in the Franco-Prussian war. + +But, above all, he is a savant. + +He has written valuable treatises on the diseases of domestic beasts, +describing, among other things, a hitherto unobserved infectious malady of +goats. He is the author of a number of memoirs on the geology of Northern +Africa, and has discovered no less than two hundred new species of fossil +animals of that country; he has made numerous contributions to our +knowledge of its ethnology, prehistoric tombs, and flint implements. Many +of these writings date from the seventies and earlier; they have procured +for him the membership of learned societies, as well as medals and +decorations of all kinds. + +A man of such distinction, one would think, coming to Tunisia in 1885 at +the head of a scientific expedition sent by the Ministry of Public +Instruction, would be received according to his merits. It was far +otherwise. Whether from distrust of his capacities or some other cause, +Monsieur Cambon, the Resident, assumed towards him a most chilling +official manner, and the commanding military officer, General Boulanger, +all but refused to grant the escort necessary for his expedition. In one +of his papers he speaks of this reception as "several degrees below zero." + +Then, in the same year, appeared his sensational report of the discovery +of phosphate deposits which he had traced over a long line of country; +realizing their commercial value, he insisted that they should be +exploited "_pour le plus grand bien de l'agriculture française et +algérienne._" Nevertheless, ten years passed ere a company could be +formed, as financiers were diffident about the American competition and +the risks of installation in a desert country. + +A tardy recognition of his services to the company took the form of a +pecuniary grant, in 1904, of fifteen thousand francs--little enough, in +all conscience, considering the millions he has gained for them. They +further honoured him by changing the name of the station-settlement of +Metlaoui into "Philippe-Thomas." + +"It's very economical," Dufresnoy observed. + +I am glad to think that another place of that name, the mining village, +will continue to exist; it would seem a pity to erase from the map the +tuneful word Metlaoui, which contains the five vowels in a remarkably +small compass.... + +Dufresnoy tells me that those barren slopes where the mines lie, and where +the different races now work together in apparent amity, were once the +scene of a sanguinary primitive battle. There is a steep gully at one +point, a dry torrent; the Khabyles lived on one side of it, the +Tripolitans on the other, and between these two races there occurred, on a +starlit night in May, 1905, an affray of unearthly ferocity. + +The Khabyles, prudent folk, many of whom had served in the French Army, +had long been laying in a store of warlike provisions; their secret was +well kept, although it was observed that piles of stones were being +collected round their huts, and that a goodly quantity of dynamite and +petroleum was missing from the stores; some of them possessed guns and +revolvers, the rest were armed with knives, daggers and savage mining +gear. They chose a Sunday for the attack, well knowing that the +Tripolitans, who are good-natured simpletons, would be least prepared to +resist them on that day, and half of them in a state of jollification; and +they were so sagacious, that they actually induced a few drunken +Tripolitans to insult them, before beginning the conflict. This, they +knew, would be counted in their favour afterwards. + +Hardly was the night come when they advanced in battle array--the fighting +contingent in front; behind them the boys and older men, who kept them +supplied with stones and weapons. A well-nourished volley of missiles +greeted the Tripolitans, some of whom rushed to the fray, while others +took refuge in their huts or with the Moroccans who lived in their own +village near at hand. It was now quite dark, but at close quarters the +stones began to take effect, and hardly was a man down, than five or six +Khabyles ran out of the ranks to finish him off with their knives; others, +meanwhile, went to the locked huts and fired them, or burst them open with +dynamite. + +The explosions and lights began to attract attention in Metlaoui; the +whole sky was aflame; there were mysterious bursts of sound, too, and a +chorus of wild howls. Something was evidently wrong, up there. + +A party of Europeans, accompanied by a small force of local police, went +up to the mines to investigate. They found themselves powerless; "keep +yourselves out of danger," they were told, "and let us settle our own +affairs." The carnage was in full swing; it was hell let loose. Not +content with killing, they mutilated each other's corpses, bit off noses, +gouged out eyes, and thrust stones in the mouths of the dead; burnt and +hacked and slashed each other till sunrise; no element of bestiality was +lacking. The wounded crawled away to die in caves, or were carried to +nomad camps. The number of the dead was never ascertained; Dufresnoy says +"about a hundred," which is probably below the mark, as an eye-witness saw +three railway trucks loaded with the slain. To this day they find +mouldering human remains, relics of that battle, hidden away in crevices +of the rocks. + +Although, once roused, the Tripolitans fought like demons, they were +worsted--the others were too numerous. They had a brief moment of revenge, +however; for during their retreat, on Monday morning, they encountered two +young Khabyle boys who had been on absence and were now returning to work +at the mines, blissfully ignorant of what was going on. These unfortunate +lads were literally torn to shreds. + +I confess that, as a spectacle, I should have preferred that night's +engagement to anything in modern warfare. It must have been a stupendous +exhibition of the _bête humaine_. + +The Khabyles meditated nothing short of a total extirpation of the +Tripolitan stock; they sent to the mines of Redeyeff for auxiliaries of +their nation, some of whom actually arrived in time for the slaughter; the +rest were intercepted on the hill-paths by the police of Gafsa, who had +been telegraphically summoned and despatched by special train. And soon +afterwards, elated by success, the Khabyles fell foul of the Moroccans and +sent word that they meant to fight them too for sheltering Tripolitan +fugitives in their huts. The Moroccans were delighted at the prospect; but +the management got wind of the project in good time, which was just as +well, for the Moroccans are not only the most orderly of the native +settlers at the mines, but also by far the strongest and fiercest, and it +might have fared ill with the Khabyles. The Tripolitan village has now +been moved to another site--a certain number of troops, too, are +definitely stationed at Metlaoui. + +"As usual," said Dufresnoy, "we came in for the blame. They say that we +did not allow the real authors, the Khabyles, to be punished, because they +are French citizens, and all the rest of it. Don't believe a word of that. +If it had been the Tripolitans, we would have acted just the same; we +cannot be bothered with decisions of civil courts, which would have +satisfied nobody, besides depriving us, probably, of a number of good +workmen. There was a little outcry about this, too: that none of the +wounded were treated in our hospital, but carried down to the native +_funduk_ near the station. 'The hospital,' said our director, 'is for +those who are injured in the performance of their duty, and not for +bloodthirsty savages.' That's sound--that's military. One cannot afford to +be sentimental in this country." + +I asked what could possibly be the reason for such a ferocious outbreak of +hostility. + +"Long-standing animosities of race," he said, "and, as determining cause, +_cherchez la femme_" + +"But you said that there were no women on the place." + +"_Eh bien, cherchez toujours_...." + +And then it also occurred to me that among the mass of local literature +and newspaper files I had perused in his house there was not a single +criticism of this affair. I thought it strange, I said. + +He smiled. + +"Local politics, my friend! We are obliged to keep the Press well under +control, you know. Don't compare Tunisian life with life in England; there +is no public opinion here, no idea of fair play. These papers, if they +were not subventioned, would print abominations such as no English +journalist could conceive; they would alienate our best friends in the +long run. The company must take account of things as they are, not as they +should be--of Arab savagery, Franco-Tunisian malevolence; of journalistic +venality and public credulity. Whoever is not for us is against us. That +is why the only papers that dare to criticize our management are those +which nobody reads; those, to put it bluntly, which are not worth bribing. +For the rest, there is not a writer in the whole country capable of +grasping either our aims or our methods; the poor fellows have not had the +required education. They only want their mouths stopped." + +"That must be more convenient than libel suits; and more economical as +well." + +"Just so. Above all things, we are bound to consider the interests of our +shareholders." + + + + +_Chapter XV_ + +_THE SELDJA GORGE_ + + +It is good, after such visions of human infirmity and of death, to ride +over the plain to the Seldja gorge, an astonishing freak of nature. I was +twice within its towering walls of rock; the first time on horseback, +accompanied by a young Tripolitan miner, and in the evening; yesterday +again, in the torrid noon, afoot, alone. + +You will do well, in every case, to ride as far as the _bordj_, or +rest-house, that stands near the entrance of the cleft, since there are +about four wearisome miles of level country to be traversed after leaving +Metlaoui. On the first occasion the Tripolitan ran for this whole long +stretch beside my horse, which trotted briskly; he amused himself, none +the less, in belabouring its hind-quarters with a club to make it go still +faster, and I confess to being not scandalized, not inordinately +scandalized, at this performance. We grow hard among the implacable desert +stones. Besides, it was only a hired beast. Any true lover of animals will +understand. + +Skirting the foot of the hills that trend along, apparently closed, one +suddenly encounters a broad stream-bed with a rivulet meandering down its +centre; this is the Seldja-water (_arabice_, Thelja). It issues out of a +gateway, hitherto unrevealed; and here you may turn aside from the plain +and enter into the heart of the mountains, into a world of nightmare +effects. This very portal is fantastic, theatrical; it leads into an arena +of riven rocks that might serve as council-chamber for a cloud of Ifrits, +and is closed at the further end. There is a second gateway to be passed +before you can enter the gorge itself. + +The track winds upwards--the whole length of the defile is about three +miles--sometimes between walls of rock which are chiselled so smoothly by +the gentle waters that one can hardly believe them to be of natural +workmanship (and at these points, as a rule, your only path is the +stream-bed itself); opening out again into wide amphitheatres, rose-tinted +cirques of desolation, where masses of debris, slipped down from the +heights, lie prone in Dantesque confusion. There are rock-doves and +falcons fluttering about the sunny precipices; cliff-swallows build +precarious habitations against the roof of yawning caverns; sandpipers and +wagtails skim over the streamlet that glides in a smiling flood across +reaches of yellow sand. The charm of water in the waste! This Seldja-brook +is a true child of the sun; cold in the morning and evening hours, its +restless little heart becomes tepid at midday with the glowing beams. + +Spiky reeds and tamarisks trip alongside, and the wild fig thrusts +demoniac roots into the crevices; here and there you may see a group of +oleasters, descendants, maybe, of the now vanished Roman olive plantations +in the plain, or a stunted palm that has shot up from the stone cast away +by some passing caravan. For these Oueds are all highways dating from +immemorial ages; there is a ceaseless passage of man and animals along +them. + +We passed numbers of camels, groaning and snorting among the slippery +rocks, with the water splashing over their feet; higher up, a large +descending flock of sheep, over six hundred of them, completely blocked up +the valley. They were being led to the plain below, where, thanks to the +recent rains, a succulent but ephemeral crop of green had sprung up. Their +owner was a fine Boujaja, some six and a half feet in height, accompanied +by a sturdy brood of children: milk-drinkers. The upland pastures could +wait, he said. Strange to think that two more showers a year might make +settlers of these vagrants. + +It was among these rocks that Philippe Thomas first detected the traces of +those phosphates that have made his name famous. Tissot, in 1878, already +anticipated their discovery. + +In point of sheer grandeur, of convulsed stratification and cloven ravine, +of terrorizing features, I have seen gorges far finer than this of Seldja. +Yet it contains one stretch of superlative beauty--a short defile or +cañon, I mean, formed of two opposing precipices with a chasm of some +thirty yards between them; they wind and curve, parallel to one another, +with such magisterial accuracy that one would think they had been designed +with mighty compasses from on high, and then carved out, sagaciously, by +some titanic blade. + +Here we halted; it was time to turn back. There was an indentation in the +rocks near at hand, fretted away by hungry floods of the past and +overhung, now, with creepers and drooping fernery, concerning which my +Tripolitan companion told me a long and complicated legend. This shadowy +hollow, he explained, was the bridal couch, in olden days, of an earthly +maiden and her demon-lover. He was a simple fellow, unfortunately, who +knew the story too well to be able to tell it coherently. + +On my second visit, however, I pushed vigorously up the stream-bed in the +heat of the morning, determined to reach the head of the waters. Gradually +the aspect of the valley changes. It opens out; the rocks melt away into +bare white dunes, the country assuming the character of a tableland; you +begin to feel a sense of aloofness. + +There was blazing sunshine in these upper regions, but a fresh breeze; +this is the Ras el-Aioun, where the French have bridled some of the wild +waters, thrusting them into a tube that carries them in a mad whirl to +their settlement at Metlaoui. Here, too, they have planted a promising +youthful oasis, a kind of nursery garden of poplars and cypresses and +tamarisks and mimosas, in whose shade grow geraniums, mesembryanthemum and +other flowers and creepers, as well as a host of vegetables of every kind. +I soon discovered a recess in this delectable pleasaunce, and began my +solemn preparations for luncheon. + +Out of the pool below there resounded a tuneful croaking of frogs: it +spoke of many waters.... + +Presently an Italian workman or gardener with curly grey hair and +moustache--the ubiquitous Italian--came up and began to talk,--_per fare +un po' di compania_. He conversed delightfully, a smile playing about his +kindly old face. He told me about the garden, about the French engineers, +about himself, chiefly about himself, in limpid, child-like fashion. He +had travelled far in the Old and New Worlds; in him I recognized, once +again, that simple mind of the wanderer or sailor who learns, as he goes +along, to talk and think decently; who, instead of gathering fresh +encumbrances on life's journey, wisely discards even those he set out +with. + +Seldja, he told me, used to be a dangerous place for Europeans to +traverse; many robberies and even murders had taken place there in times +past; the new regime, of course, had put an end to all that. But there +were still two perils: the frightful flies that bred diseases and made the +gorge almost impassable in the hot months (every one suffered from +fevers), and the serpents. Ah, those _maladette bestie di serpenti_--they +swarmed among the rocks: they were of every kind and size; worst of all, +the spleenful naja. He himself had killed one that measured two metres in +length and was as thick as a man's arm. They don't wait till you can hit +them, he said, but rush straight at you, swift as an arrow, upraised on +their massive posterior coils, hissing like a steam-engine, and swelling +out their throat with diabolical rage. + +This is the beast that figured in the competition between Aaron and +Pharaoh's conjurers, and it remains the favourite of modern African +snake-charmers, who catch it after first irritating it by means of a +woollen cloth wherein the fangs are embedded and broken. It is also, no +doubt, the dreaded species which Sallust describes as infesting the region +of Gafsa. But Lucan goes a little too far in his account of Cato's +expedition into these parts; this veracious historian has inserted a few +pages of sublime serpent nonsense, exquisite fooling.... + +Of all the deadly worms that breed in these wildernesses the most +formidable, because the most sluggish, is the two-horned nocturnal +cerastes, the "pretty worm of Nilus." No sensible person, nowadays, goes +into the bled[1] [Footnote: This is one of the many Arabic words which +admit of no clear translation. As opposed to a town, it means a village or +encampment; as opposed to that, the open land, a plain, or particular +district. When colonists talk of "going into the bled," they mean their +farms; in newspaper language it signifies the country generally, inhabited +or not--what we should call "the provinces "; oftentimes, again, the +barren desert or (more technically) the soil.] in summer-time unless armed +with a phial of the antidote--Trousse Calmette or Trousse Legros--whose +liquid is injected with a hypodermic syringe above and below the wound, +and has saved many lives. + +"And the scorpions, Signore! We have to tie cotton-wool round the legs of +our beds so that these infernal creatures cannot climb up while we are +asleep; they get entangled in it, ha, ha! And that is why we all keep cats +and hens, who eat them, you know, just like the Arabs do. And sometimes it +rains scorpions." + +I had heard that story before, from natives; and it may well be founded on +fact. The terrific gusts of desert wind overturn the stones under which +the scorpions lie; the fragile beasts are exposed to the blast and, being +relatively light, swept skyward across leagues of country with the flying +sand. A similar explanation has been given for those old accounts of frog +and fish rains. + +"Yes; they drop from the clouds. During certain storms I have picked them +off my clothes, three or four at a time. Rather a ticklish operation, +sir." + +So we discussed the world in that umbrageous shelter, to the music of the +frogs. He condescended to partake of a microscopic share of my meal, and +thereafter left me, with some old-world compliment, to irrigate his +thirsty lettuces. + + + +_Chapter XVI_ + +_AT THE HEAD OF THE WATERS_ + + +I sat alone, screened from the midday heat, drowsy and content. It was a +pleasant resting-place, under that leafy arbour, through which only a few +rays of light could filter, weaving arabesque designs that moved and +melted on the floor as the wind stirred the foliage overhead. And a +pleasant occupation, listening to those amiable amphibians in the mere +below--they carried my thought back to other frog-concerts, dimly +remembered, in some other lands--and gazing through the green network of +branches upon that sun-scorched garden, where now a silvery thread of +water began to attract my attention as it stole, coyly, among the +flower-beds. + +The day is yet young, methought; it is too hot to think of marching home +at this hour. Now is the time, rather, for a pipe of _kif_--if only to +demonstrate the difference that exists between man and the ape. For your +monkey can be taught to eat and drink like a Christian; he can even learn +to smoke tobacco. But he cannot smoke _kif_: the stuff would choke him. + +Four pipes, reverentially inhaled ... it was almost too much, for a mere +dilettante. + +But the mystery of the frogs, the when and where of it, was solved. Slowly +and benignly the memories travelled back, building themselves into a +vision so clear-cut and elaborate withal, that I might have been holding +it, as one holds some engraving or miniature, in my hand. It was in the +Rhine-woods, of course; long years ago, in summertime. But the frog-music +here was not amiable at all; never have I heard such angry batrachian +vociferations. They came in a discontented and menacing chorus from ten +thousand leathery throats, and almost drowned our converse as we crept +along through the twilight of trees that shot up from the swampy earth. + +These Rhine-woods are like pathless tropical jungles: everything is so +green and luxuriant; and morning grew to midday while we threaded our way +through the tangle of interlacing boughs and undergrowth. Yet we knew, all +the time, that something else was in store for us, some joy, some +surprise. And lo! there was an opening in the forest, and we suddenly +found ourselves standing upon the summit of a high bank at whose foot +there rolled a sunlit and impetuous torrent. Too staid for the formation +of ripples, too swift for calm content, the river seemed to boil up from +below in a kind of frolicsome rage. A blissful sight. + +"_Er spinnt_" my companion was saying. + +In what obscure chamber of the brain had those words slumbered, closely +folded, for thirty years? It was indeed an authentic weaving of arabesque +designs upon the even texture of the living liquid mass; multitudinous +rings and ovals and lozenges were cast up from the green depths as from a +mighty over-bubbling cauldron; some fiercely engulfed again, others torn +hither and thither into new and pleasing shapes, fresh ones for ever +emerging; only a few contrived to linger unchanged, floating in sunny +splendour down the face of the waters. A blissful sight! The dark and mazy +woodlands, now, were left far behind--the croaking of the frogs sounded +strangely distant. We gazed in ecstasy upon that shining flood.... + +On my return journey down the Seldja gorge, that afternoon, I had a narrow +escape. It struck me that it would be more agreeable, instead of once more +following the windings of the brook, to proceed along the railway--a +single line--that climbs down from Ras-el-Aioun to within a few hundred +yards of the _bordj_, where my horse was waiting. It was easier walking; +it would also be shadier (in the tunnels) and, last and chiefest, I would +enjoy a change of scene by looking down into the valley instead of up at +the cliffs. + +Plausible reasoning. + +This line is a pretty little piece of engineering; there are bridges and +steep embankments that afford fine views into the tortuous depths of the +gorge; there are tunnels, blasted into the rock without lining of masonry, +deliciously cool and all too short--all too short save one, that seemed +never-ending. It writhed about, too, in that dark mountain; I saw no speck +of light, either before or behind me; the iron roadway was raised about a +foot, on rough stones, above the narrow path that followed the jagged, +irregular wall of rock along which I was groping and stumbling. Rather an +awkward place, I thought, to meet a train---- + +And as if in that reflection had lain the potency of a spell, there came +upon me, at that moment, from behind, a distinct blast of wind and a low +rumbling sound. I pricked up my ears. There was no doubt about it: a +train, still invisible, was gliding in good-natured fashion, with steam +shut off, down the gradient. A considerable number of ideas, incongruous +and quite beside the mark, passed through my mind; but also this one--if I +ran, I should inevitably stumble against a sleeper or some projecting +stone; if I stumbled, I should lose my presence of mind, and then, +perhaps--! Meanwhile, the noise grew louder, deafening; already, in +imagination, I felt the monster's hot breath upon me. + +Walking steadily, therefore, for a few more yards, I felt a little cavity +in the rough-hewn wall of rock that appeared deeper than the others; there +I compressed myself, feeling flatter than a turbot, and absurdly resigned. +It was the nick of time. The earth was trembling under the mechanical +horror; it passed me, with a roar and rush of wind, by I know not how many +inches; there were flashes of light, a screeching of machinery, an acrid +smell of mineral oils and heated metal. Then all was over again, save for +a choking-fit produced by a deluge of bituminous coal. + +Just a little flutter. + +But outside that tunnel, in the sunshine, I sat down and indulged in +certain musings. _Suicide of an Englishman in Tunisia_: that was it; +inasmuch as even they who know me well could hardly be brought to believe +that such an act of abysmal foolishness, as this of not investigating on +which side the safety-niches were, could be the result of accident. An +ignoble, ridiculous death. + + +It must have been a fit of temporary obliviousness, brought about by the +unaccustomed heat of the sun. + +Or possibly the _kif_.... + +It affects people differently. + +I must limit myself to three pipes, in future. + + + +_Chapter XVII_ + +_ROMAN OLIVE-CULTURE_ + + +Now, on the former occasion, instead of descending into the _bordj_ from +the railway line, I rode with the Tripolitan once more out of the +rock-portal into the plain, that glowed with the fugitive fires of sunset. +It is a treeless waste, bereft of every sign of cultivation. + +And yet, if you look on your left hand as you issue from the gorge, you +will perceive, at the very narrowest point, some fragments of ancient +masonry adhering to the cliff; they are all that remains of a Roman dam +which blocked up the valley, regulated the supply of water flowing from +above, and purified it from stones and sand. The inference is clear: the +plain must have been cultivated in those days. Likely enough, it was +covered, like many other parts of "Africa," with olives, that drew their +life from this judiciously managed water-supply. + +The Oued Seldja to-day fulfils no such useful function. Once the +rock-portal is passed, it unlearns all its sprightly grace and trickles +disconsolately through the sands, expiring, at last, in the dreary Chott +el Rharsa. + +Monsieur Bordereau thinks that the ancient "forest of Africa" was composed +chiefly of olive plantations, and proofs of the former abundance of these +trees can be found in certain local names, such as Jebel Zitouna--the +Mount of Olives--clinging to localities where not a tree is now visible; +there are also sporadic oleasters growing near many Roman ruins. Strong +evidence; and still stronger is this: that Roman oil-presses have actually +been found, buried in the desert sand. Up to a short time ago the Arabs +deliberately destroyed the olives, to avoid paying the tax on them; the +French have changed all this, and though I am not aware that they go so +far as did the Romans, who encouraged tree-planting by exemption from +imposts, yet they have inaugurated a severe regime; one reads with +satisfaction of exemplary penalties inflicted for illicit timber-cutting. + +It is good to remember, also, that whereas the Romans had five centuries +of peace to bring Tunisia to its high pitch of prosperity, the French only +began yesterday. And they have a harder task before them, for in the +interval the Arabs have arrived in the country. It is they, with their +roving and pastoral habits, who have done the mischief, changing arable +land into pasture, which grows ever poorer, and finally desert. The +fertility of these regions may be said to have been annihilated by the +goats of a nomad race, whose faith has made it improvident and mentally +sterile.[1] + +[Footnote 1: I have just re-perused Lapie's _Civilizations Tunisiennes_. +He says that "la chèvre est le génie malfaisant de la Régence.... Plus que +le despotisme, plus que le fatalisme, elle a ruiné le pays: c'est la +chèvre, en effet, qui déboise et surtout qui s'oppose au reboisement, et +l'on sait quelle influence a eue sur le régime des eaux et sur la +fertilité du sol le déboisement de la province d'Afrique." Apropos of this +pasturing by nomad cattle, it is a singular fact that whereas a large +proportion of desert plants of northern Tunisia are poisonous to camels +and goats, here, in the south, nearly all of them are edible.] + +Yet it may be disputed whether the land was as thickly wooded under the +Romans as some would have us believe. If so, how was it that after three +centuries of their rule there should come a drought lasting for five +years? Wood brings water, and if things were so satisfactory, why did they +penuriously hive and distribute the element? They described Africa as a +"waterless land"; Marius, when he made his forced march across country to +surprise Gafsa, took in at one place a sufficient provision of water to +last for three days. This, however, may be due to the fact that he +purposely kept to the desert lest, by following the main route, his +designs should be made public. + +One thing strikes me as conclusive evidence that the "Africa" of olden +days was a different country: they had no camels. These beasts were +unknown there at the time of Julius Cæsar, and only came into common usage +towards the end of the fourth century. The Africa of to-day, without +camels, would be almost uninhabitable. + +Some years ago, whilst staying among the magnificent forests of +Khroumiria, forests such as certainly never clothed these southern hills, +I grew interested in this question of the old African water-supply. +Comparing the accounts of classic authors with what has been written by +modern students like Bourde, Carton and others, whose very names have +faded from my memory, I remember coming to the conclusion--a very obvious +one, no doubt--that supposing all the ruined Roman hydraulic contrivances +were now in working order, supposing them even to be furnished with such +improvements as modern science could suggest, still the French would be +unable to obtain, at the present moment, the agricultural results of the +Romans. The positive diminution in the supply of liquid has been too +great. Archæologists, for instance, have discovered in the district of +Gafsa alone over a hundred Roman wells and reservoirs, of every shape and +size; but it would be sheer waste of money to re-activate many of these +ancient works--there are wells which would remain dry from one year's end +to another; the watercourses, too, have shrunk or altogether expired. + +Quite apart from what the French have taken from it, this Seldja brook +must have carried down a larger volume of water in those days, helped, as +is very probable, by small tributary streamlets which have now ceased to +flow. + +Old Arab authors say that one used to be able to walk from one end of +North Africa to the other in the shade. Allowing for some exaggeration, +this means that either the legendary African forest of the Romans +continued to subsist, or that certain bare tracts covered themselves with +timber in post-Roman periods of abandonment, before the Arabs and their +goats had time--for it must have required time--to change the climate and +aspect of the province. + +These woodlands, at all events, cannot have been all of olives. There is +Sbeitla, for instance, the Roman city whose remains I was unable to visit +owing to the Arctic blasts of wind; viewed from the railway, its +surroundings look so bleak and bare that nobody would believe they could +ever have been timbered. Yet, concerning Sbeitla, we happen to possess the +testimony of three independent older eye-witnesses, who visited the spot +at different periods: first Shaw (about 1725), then Bruce, then the +botanist Desfontaines. All three of them describe the region as wooded. +And, as if to clinch the matter, Leo Africanus, writing in 1550, says that +the inhabitants of Gafsa and its district made their boots out of the +skins of stags. (These are no doubt the fortassa deer, a few of which +still linger in the country north of Feriana.) Stags can only live in +timbered regions. If these forests were still in existence there would be +a greater abundance of water; the cold in winter would be less intense, +and so would the summer heat, since forests are harmonizers of all +climatic discords. + +Now these woodlands were not composed of olives, but for the most part of +junipers and of Aleppo pines, a precious growth to which the French began +to pay attention some five years ago. These bright and graceful trees +flourish on the poorest soil and multiply rapidly; they are valuable not +only for their timber, but for their turpentine. You can buy, in the Gafsa +market, a crude black tar made from this tree; the Arabs use it for +impregnating the linings of their water-skins, like the Greeks for their +receptacles of rezzinato wine. + +The only drawback to these pines is that their inflammable branches are +always suggesting a display of extempore fireworks to the Arabs, who are +the veriest pyromaniacs. + + + + +_Chapter XVIII_ + +_THE WORK OF PHILIPPE THOMAS_ + + +The old olive plantations are creeping back again into regions that have +been deserted for centuries. They follow the railway lines; and nothing is +a fitter commentary on the medievalism which deplores _the building of +railways into the desert_ than facts like that of the plain of Maknassy--a +sterile tract up to a few years ago--which is now covered, for a distance +of sixty kilometres, by olive groves. Why? Because the line from Sfax to +Gafsa happens to pass through it. + +The same will take place in due course along the Feriana and other +southern lines, and thus one of the gravest problems that confront the +Tunisian administration will be solved: the unstable nomads will fix +themselves--they are already fixing themselves--round these new +agricultural centres. In 1890 there were still eight tents to every five +houses in Tunisia, but this proportion is rapidly changing. And besides +this, the railway, with its facility for the rapid conveyance of troops, +has given security to regions formerly so dangerous that no settler, +however favourable the soil, would have dared to establish his home there; +it has awakened the date industry and created halfa deposits all along the +line. + +There is one of them at Gafsa station, for instance--relatively small; and +yet, in the season, two hundred camel-loads of this costly hay arrive +there every day, to be dried, pressed and stored ready for transportation +to the coast, whence it is shipped to Europe. In 1905 sixteen thousand six +hundred tons of halfa were forwarded from the interior by the Sfax-Gafsa +line alone! + +And were it not for this railway the branch line to Tozeur would never +have been contemplated; the oases of Souf and Djerid and Nefzaoua, with +their teeming populations, would have slumbered the sleep of ages in their +burning desert sands. And to realize what a change it has wrought in the +appearance of the ports of Sfax, Sousse and even Tunis, one must have +known these places in the olden days. The company pays yearly half a +million francs to the Government; it contributes another yearly sum of +600,000 francs towards the harbour enlargement scheme of Sfax; indeed, it +may be said to have created the modern town of Sfax, its hotels, banks, +restaurants, theatres. + +And what brought the railway? + +The phosphates. But for their discovery no Utopian would have thought of +constructing these lines just yet. An unlovely deposit of brown dust has +worked a revolution upon the minds of men, upon the face of the country. +It has even enriched the French vocabulary. + +"Your friend, is he an _alfatier_?" + +"No, sir; he is a _phosphatier_." + +As I issued out of the rock-portal of the Seldja gorge and beheld that +strip of masonry which told so plain a story, with the now barren plain at +its foot, it struck me that this spot was pregnant with a romance beyond +that of mere scenery. It was well, here, to pause awhile and contrast old +and new notions of African prosperity. The Romans had the same +difficulties to contend with as have the French: a harsh climate, and +fickle and faithless natives who "cannot be bridled by threats or +kindness." They had the same ambitions; so Strabo tells us that they used +every endeavour to make settlers of them and fix them to the soil, and +"paid particular attention to Masanasses, King of Numidia, because it was +he who formed the nomads of civil life and directed their attention to +husbandry." + +Both administrations are necessarily based on military rule. And if the +now uncultivated plain affronts our eye, there is already a set-off to +this apparent superiority of the ancient regime in the new line of railway +which, at great expense, has been made to climb up the sinuosities of the +Seldja gorge itself. + +Whither wending? + +To fetch more phosphates! + +Here they lie, the quintessential relics of those little Eocene fishes and +other sea beasts, if such they were, that swam and crawled about the +waters many years ago--piled up on terraces so high that the mind grows +dizzy at contemplating their multitudes, or the ages required to squeeze +them into this priceless powder; piled up for 500 miles along their old +sea-beach--an arid inland chain of hills, nowadays, where hardly a blade +of grass will grow; sterile themselves, the cause of surpassing fertility +elsewhere. These phosphates are something of a symbol: there are men and +women fashioned after this model. + +I question whether the men of the _Pax Romana_ could ever have reached the +phosphate-extracting stage. They were not trending in that direction. Eyes +were turning inwards, and the age of sober thinking was past and over for +the time being, since the Orient began to infect the world with the +mephitic vapours of self-consciousness. Truth was a drug in the market; +for twenty long centuries the Banu-Israel, with their ferocious contempt +of craftsmanship and honest intellectual labour, were enabled to foul the +stream of human endeavour. It is gratifying to think how thoroughly the +modern Jews have shaken off their ancient bigotry--a good refutation, by +the way, of those scholars who still argue about the "immutability of +race-characters." + +But those earlier and artless Galileans, methinks, must have been on the +mental level of the Tripolitan savage running beside my horse: it needs no +very cunning marabout to convince him that his little troubles will be set +aright in a world hereafter, where he shall sit comfortably enthroned and +listen to his enemies gnashing their teeth. For the poor in mind are like +children in this, that they create realities to coincide with emotional +states; and for such as these, they say, is the kingdom of Heaven +reserved. + +Nevertheless, though men sought the "inner light" and not phosphate +deposits in those days, yet certain men of God, roaming about these same +stony wildernesses, made discoveries in natural history no less surprising +than that of Monsieur Philippe Thomas. Saint Anthony encountered a +faun--half-man, half-goat; he spoke to the creature and was charmed by its +edifying discourse. You will object that Saint Anthony is known to have +been a hallucinated neyropathe; that the story, therefore, may not be +true. So be it. + +But such a description can hardly be applied with decency to certain +holier and wiser men, who saw with their own eyes things yet stranger. The +great Augustin tells his congregation--it is in one of his sermons, I +believe--that in these deserts there are men without heads, men who have +one single eye placed in the centre of their breasts. You may suggest that +the saint was quoting from the heathen pages of Herodotus, the _Father of +Lies_. Nothing of the kind. He is too conscientious to speak from hearsay +of such marvellous matters; he says that he personally went among these +headless monocular folk; he says that he spoke to them and lived with +them; that he made a study of their morals and social institutions, which, +in this particular sermon, he holds up as an example to his two-eyed +Christian hearers. + +And Saint Augustin has the reputation of being a fairly truth-loving saint +and _doctor ecclesiæ_. + +No; phosphate-hunting was assuredly out of the question under such +conditions; scientific curiosity and commercialism, parents of fair talk +and fair dealing among men, retire discomfited when there are immortal +souls to be saved. And soon enough they came, those Ages of Faith, of +moral dyspepsia and perverse aspirations, when truth-seeking, useless +under the _Pax Romana_, became much worse than useless--perilous, that is, +to life and limb. So quickly do we forget past torments, that some of us +continue to yearn for those picturesque days of burnings and +thumb-screwings. + +Meanwhile, if truth is found useful for the moment, it is due to the +humanizing work of those quiet investigators like Philippe Thomas--to the +men who have armed their country for the heroic task of cleansing the +Augean stables. + +Monsieur Dufresnoy had never met the phosphate discoverer, but another +gentleman described him as follows:-- + +"He is a simple fellow, and the devil for work. Married, and a good +husband; clear eyes; spectacles, a short beard, rather stout, and not +dark; never so happy as when he is examining old bones and trash of that +kind. A _bon garçon_, mind you. And yet--Lord! what a simpleton. He could +have become a millionaire if he had managed the thing properly. Too +modest, perhaps--too unworldly; too foolish, or too proud: who can tell? + +"You never know what is going on in the minds of these _savants_. He told +them he was a veterinary surgeon, and not a man of business. Can you +understand such an attitude?" + +"I must think about it, Monsieur." + +And so I did, riding home that evening from the Seldja gorge--and next day +too; but, somehow or other, have not yet attained a mature opinion on the +subject. It may be, however, that there is nothing to prevent a man from +being simultaneously modest and proud--nothing, save the fact that we have +not yet coined a word for an alloy of these particular ingredients. We +have words, always either too few or too many; words which are for ever +emancipating themselves from our control and becoming masters instead of +slaves, so that our ideas, which ought to be formed by independent +cerebration, are half derived from mere verbal symbols, which become a +kind of intellectual pepsine that weakens the strongest systems. So when +we speak of a man being "proud," that miserable expression is apt to +engross and dominate us, conjuring up an image which excludes certain +others: that of modesty, for instance. + +It comes to this, that if we wish to describe a man who does not seem to +fit into any of the categories permitted by ordinary words, we are driven +to refer him to some exemplar recognized in legend or history--we talk of +his being Epicurean, Voltairean, and so forth. + +Let us say, therefore, that Monsieur Thomas, like Pasteur, is of the +Promethean type--a seeker after verity, a light-bringer. + +POSTSCRIPT.--This is surely a land of coincidences. In a Tunisian paper of +this very morning I read of the death, on the 13th of February, of +Monsieur Thomas. It describes him as "one of the most perfect citizens of +our poor humanity." He only lived a year to enjoy the annuity of six +thousand francs which the Government of the Regency, with belated +thoughtfulness, had granted him. + + + +_Chapter XIX_ + +_OVER GUIFLA TO TOZEUR_ + + +A mule, a sturdy beast, was waiting to convey me from Metlaoui to Tozeur. +Leaving my heavier baggage to follow with some camels, I rode into the +dawn. + +Considerably less than half-way stands the rest-house of Guifla, kept by +an Algerian with a pretty wife. Here I saw a few carved Roman stones which +had been found, the man told me, in the neighbouring Oued Baghara. At +Guifla, according to Valery Mayet, they killed an ostrich twenty years +ago--a _rara avis_ in these parts. + +There were numbers of engineers and workmen at this place, engaged in +laying down the line of railway which will unite Tozeur to Metlaoui. It +cannot help being a paying concern, I should think, to judge by the +traffic that passed me in the course of this day, for I was hardly ever +out of sight of a caravan. + +It was an ideal day for desert travelling--a grey, sunless sky, a gentle +breeze. Another weary stretch brings one to El-Hamma, a small oasis fed by +hot springs which the Romans long ago utilized, and where I had hoped to +refresh myself with a Turkish bath. Alas! the hammam is only a shallow +tank covered with palm-thatching; there were some twenty Arabs splashing +about this establishment and soaping themselves and their +boy-children--bathing was out of the question. Near at hand lies the +women's bath, which is built on the same primitive lines. A pious legend +runs to the effect that this water of El-Hamma used to be cold, but an +Arab marabout was persuaded to spit into it and, lo! it suddenly became +hot and mineral.... + +As you approach Tozeur the landscape becomes more desert-like; mountains +are left behind; stones are rarer; you wade in sand. One realizes how +useless it would be to construct a good road in these parts, since every +storm would drown it. And such storms are sometimes of great force; there +was a celebrated one in 1857 which lasted for seventy-two hours. It threw +some of the riders of a French detachment off their horses, and finally +obliged the whole company to stamp up and down for twenty-four hours in +the twilight of raging sand for fear of being buried alive. It submerged +several hundred palm trees of the Tozeur oasis _up to their crowns_ (they +are 60 to 100 feet high). + +[Illustration: Tozeur and its Oasis] + +Notwithstanding these difficulties, an enterprising Maltese runs a +motor-car from Metlaoui to Tozeur and Nefta for all such persons as are +prepared to pay his price, and I hear that the speculation has paid well. +There were moments during my ride when I regretted not having come to some +understanding with him; when I grew tired of the jolting mule, the rough +track and an Arab saddle which keeps one's legs at an angle of 179 +degrees. True, my conveyance had only cost four francs.... + +Straining my eyes at the water-shed beyond El-Hamma, whence one has the +first view of Tozeur and its palm forest, I thought to detect, at an +immeasurable distance, two minute dusky streaks, swimming in air--other +oases, no doubt. They seemed to dangle, by some gossamer thread, from the +grey vault of Heaven. + +This first view of the oasis of Tozeur, and the Chott Djerid beyond it, +has often been praised. To me, arriving at the water-shed on a cloudy +afternoon, that line of inky-black palm trees with its background of +blanched sterility melting into a lowering, leaden-hued sky, conveyed a +most uncanny impression: the prospect was absolutely familiar! Yes, there +was no doubt about it: I had seen the place before; not in Africa, of +course, but--somewhere else. Where--where? Suddenly I remembered: it was a +northern landscape, a well-known forest of sombre firs, rising out of the +wintry plain. The white, salty expanse, filling up the interstices between +the palms, helped to complete the illusion; it was powdered snow among the +tree-tops. For a brief moment I was _transported_.... + +It was not long before I found a companion at Tozeur. He was an Arab from +the Souf, region of sand; dark-skinned, oval-faced, with straight +eyelashes, straight nose, and an infectious, lingering smile; quite a +worthless fellow; he had picked up a few words of French slang, and never +tired of exhibiting them. We rode out to the Chott to see the extraction +of the salt, which is a Government monopoly; the track leads past a famous +lotus, a Methuselah among trees, whose shadow covers 120 square metres of +ground and whose branches are so long, so weary with age, that they bend +downward and touch the earth with their elbows--to rest, as it were--and +then rise up again, refreshed. These salines are about three miles from +Tozeur and an uncommonly simple establishment; they dig a ditch in the +morass which promptly fills with water; the liquid evaporates, leaving the +salt, which impregnates it, to be piled up in heaps on dry land. Next, +they stow the mineral in sacks and transport it to Tozeur on donkeys. It +undergoes no preparation whatever, but is sold as it comes out of the +Chott, agreeable to the palate though rather yellowish in colour. Needless +to say the Government runs no risk of the supply failing; there is salt, a +swooning stretch of salt, as far as eye can reach. + +Once you have issued from the oasis in this direction it is all a level of +dried-up mud, speckled with low shrubs and dangerous watery spots, where a +man may slowly sink down and disappear for ever. A strange desert lily, +purple and golden, starts leafless, like a tall orchid, out of the bitter +waste; camels eat its fat, bulbous, snowy-white root; the Arabs call it +_tethuth_. + +I saw some darker markings on the surface of the expanse which the workman +at the salines declared to be the ruins of old buildings and quite +inaccessible nowadays, but they may well have been small ridges of sand, +magnified by mirage: those oasis-Arabs have rather indifferent eyesight. +Plainly visible, however, was a line of palms about eight miles distant to +the east; it was one of a group of oases of Oudiane. I looked at it, +wondering whether I should pass that way on my homeward journey. + +But my companion, with a languishing gesture, pointed in the other +direction, towards his home. + +Tozeur, he thought, was all very well, and so were Oudiane and all the +rest of them, but Eloued was fairer by far. And only three days' journey! +Why not leave this country and go to the Souf, to Eloued, instead? _Sacré +nom!_ I could return by way of Biskra if I liked. And if I paid him five +francs for a camel he would accompany me the whole way, like a brother. +The five francs, he explained, were only for camel-hire; he did not want +me to pay for his food; he liked me for my company--it seems I reminded +him, in a way, of the folks at Eloued. They must be charming people, and I +was almost tempted to follow his advice and make their acquaintance. + +Later on we went to what they call the Roman _barrage_ of the main oasis +river; the large blocks of which it is composed are unquestionably +antique, but they have been carried to this spot not by the ancients, but +by Berber cultivators of long ago. Gazing upon these venerable stones we +were led to talk of past times, of buried treasures and their wondrous +lore. One of his uncles, he tells me, is versed in the black arts and an +adept at raising hoards; he learnt it from a Moroccan. But bad luck had +dogged his footsteps lately. He discovered a treasure whose guardian _jin_ +offered to surrender it if he brought three things: a white goat, certain +materials for fumigation, and "the book." It seemed a very simple request, +but each time, unfortunately, that he arrived at the enchanted spot, +he found that, for some extraordinary reason, he had left at home one or +the other of these three articles; and when at last he managed to bring +all three of them together, he accidentally--_sale bête!_--said a pious +"bismillah" at the critical moment, which of course spoilt everything. + +And here a wild craving came upon me: I wished to follow the winding of +this brook and trace it to its source, which I judged to be not far +distant. The companion, smiled, as usual; he was ready for anything; but +the undertaking proved to be rather arduous. We walked and climbed for +long among the gardens, crawling under vines and thorny shrubs, wading +tributary brooks and clambering up and down their steep earthen banks with +a hundred dogs in full pursuit; there was no possibility of orientation; +we doubled our tracks over and over again--it was like being imprisoned in +the works of a clock. + +At last, and doubtless by the merest of accidents, we emerged from the +true oasis of orderly fruit trees and vegetables; the soil became sandy +and uneven, with palms sprouting up in isolated clusters amid tamarisks +and bristly reeds. The stream, meanwhile, continued to divide and +subdivide into smaller rivulets. After a good deal of walking on this kind +of ground, we finally reached the head of the waters--the eye, as the +Arabs poetically call a fountain, alluding to its liquid purity, its +genial play of light and movement. + +It trickles out under a tall incline of sand, and the crowns of the palms +at this spot are not quite on a level with the desert overhead. Looking +down from these sandy heights, I found that we had followed a tortuous +river of green palms, that flowed through yellow sands into a distant lake +of the same green--the oasis. + +But the companion had become quite silent. He was bewitched, apparently, +by the rural charms of this place. At last he said: + +"If only I had brought some _kif_ to smoke!" + +Your Oriental, as a rule, becomes hungry at the sight of a fair landscape; +he manifests a sudden yearning for food. Not so these Souafa; they must +have their native _kif_ on such occasions. They are all, I am sorry to +say, partakers of the pernicious drug. + +"You have forgotten your _kif_?" I asked. "Well, that _was_ an oversight!" + +And, to his astonishment, I fumbled in my pocket, produced the stuff and +lit a pipe. I smoked on placidly, looking at him and wondering what his +thoughts might be. "An Inglis"--perhaps he was saying to himself--"one of +those who joke and talk in such friendly fashion, and then, when it cornes +to a you's worth of _kif_--a single puff of his pipe...! _Sacré cochon!_ +That is how they grow rich." + +Possibly he reasoned thus, but I fancy he reasoned not at all. There he +sat, and kept his eyes fixed on the ground; a European might have feigned +interest in something else, or cheerful indifference, but this +desert-child did none of these things. He simply sat and suffered dumbly: +it was a blow of fate, to be borne like all the rest of them. A fine +exemplar (_édition mignonne_) of the mektoub profession. It gave a dignity +to the fellow. + +Presently I made him a gift of the whole apparatus. He was quite +speechless, at first, with surprise. + +The spot was well chosen for indulgence in the divine herb, bland quencher +of doubts, begetter of blissful images; impossible to conceive anything +but a good genius residing amid these bubbling waters and gently stirring +foliage. Everything was kindly and gracious, and yet---- + +"Yonder," he said, pointing dreamily with his pipe-stem to a place not far +distant, "yonder they killed a man and a woman. They hacked them to little +pieces." + +And he unfolded a tale of love and revenge. + +It was the usual intrigue; with this peculiarity, that the woman was quite +a poor creature, of blameless past, married and mother of children; the +man--though what we should call a "gentleman by birth"--had long ago +become a vagabond, a child of iniquity, an outcast from the coast-towns, +whom some wave of misfortune had left stranded on this green island in the +desert. Listening to the hazy and rather disconnected recital, I tried to +piece the story together as it really happened; to discover its logic, its +necessity; the arts by which this decayed citizen, proficient only in the +lore of vice and scorned by the whole populace, had gained his end; above +all, how it came about that these two never wearied of their infatuation. +Had he struck some latent and hideously defective chord in her motherly +breast, that began to throb in response to his amorous complexities--was +_that_ their common bond? + +Likely enough. + +But I would prefer to think otherwise. I would prefer to think that this +woman's very simplicity, and this green dell, had worked a miracle; +purging and simplifying him, carrying him away from depraved memories of +middle life towards certain half-forgotten and holier ideals of youth that +revived, at last, and took shape in the prime features of this--as he may +have called it--pastoral diversion; making him cling to them stubbornly, +even as we might promise ourselves to cling to some friend of past days, +were he ever to return.... + +The idyll lasted for long, ere the awful retribution came--the element of +insecurity acting, I suppose, as a cement. There is in most of us, Arabs +or otherwise, a deep-seated sporting instinct (is that the right word?) +which the system of legalized unions was contrived to curb, but cannot; if +connubial life were a hazardous liaison there would be fewer divorces. + +A perverse and sordid romance, you will say. + +And yet it endured, like many of its kind. + + + + +_Chapter XX_ + +_A WATERY LABYRINTH_ + + +Tozeur is more than twice as large as Gafsa, and the inhabitants are a +healthier race, good-natured and docile, with much of the undiluted Berber +blood still in their veins. The houses are also of better construction, +and not a few of them can boast of cool, vaulted chambers and an upper +story. Unfortunately for the artistic effect, new French buildings are +rising up here and there; it is inevitable--the place cannot be expected +to stand still; artists and dreamers must now go further afield. + +And the oasis is a forest of sumptuous splendour, wherein grow bananas +(absent in Gafsa), together with every other kind of fruit and vegetable, +but chiefly date-palms, that give the highest and most constant return. +They cultivate seventy different varieties. There are half a million trees +paying taxes--the common variety sixty centimes, the delicate amber-tinted +and translucent _deglat_ twice as much; some trees produce more than fifty +francs a year. But they require incessant care; "palms must eat and +drink," say the Arabs; they drink, in the summer months, a hundred cubic +metres of water apiece! + +The export of these dates has been going on for centuries; in 1068 the +geographer Bekri wrote that almost every day a thousand camels, or even +more, leave Tozeur loaded with dates, and the trade will become still +livelier when they have finished building the railway which is to connect +this place with the present terminus Metlaoui. Maybe the Egyptians +introduced the tree into these regions: they cultivated dates as early as +3000 B.C. It is perhaps the earliest fruit of which we have clear record, +save that old apple of 4004 B.C. which gave some trouble to Adam and Eve. + +In olden days they sold negro slaves here for two or three quintals of +dates apiece. + +The irrigation of these palms is a hair-splitting business. +Water-conduits, varying in size from a brook to the merest runlet, cross +and recross each other on palm-stem aqueducts at different levels; the +properties are served with the precious element according to time. And +inasmuch as the labourers have no clocks or watches, they have devised a +complicated and apparently frivolous system of marking the hours; the +water is cut off from a certain property, for instance, when a certain +shadow shall have attained the length of three footsteps of a man, and so +forth; the shadow varies according to the seasons, but, in the long run, +everybody is satisfied. There is peace now under the palms; the days are +over when the lean and hungry desert folk, who cannot climb trees, used to +ride hither and, pointing their guns at the terrified cultivators, make +them clamber aloft and throw down a month's provision of dates. + +Arabs will tell you that there are 194 water springs at Tozeur; they are +ready to give you the names of every one of them, and several more; these +unite to form what might almost be called a river, which is then +artificially divided into three rivulets--divided so neatly, says an old +writer, that even some fragment of wood or other object drifting down the +current is split up, perforce, into three equal parts, one for each of +them; these three, later on, are once more subdivided into seven smaller +ones apiece--twenty-one in all; and these, again, into a certain fixed +number of almost microscopic brooklets. Allah is all-knowing! To me, +wandering for the first time in this region, the irrigation canals seemed +to flow from every point of the compass. I teased my spirit with the +imaginary task of unperplexing the liquid maze, of drawing a map of this +dædal network of intersecting waters. + +[Illustration: The Waters of Tozeur] + +You can stroll in every direction along shady paths in the oasis and never +weary of its beauty. The tiller-folk are a happy people--one can see from +their faces that they have few cares; those that are not at work under the +trees may be seen splashing about the brooks or wending to market with +donkeys that almost disappear under immense loads of green stuff; they +will greet you with a smile and a "Bon soir, Moussié!" (It is always bon +_soir_.) + +Seven little villages nestle under the palms; here and there, too, you +enter unexpectedly upon gem-like patches of waterless, shimmering +sand--mock-Saharas, golden and topaz-tinted, set in a ring of laughing +greenery; there are kingfishers in arrowy flight or poised, like a flame +of blue, over the still pools; overhead, among the branches, a ceaseless +cooing of turtle-doves. At this season, a Japanese profusion of white +blossoms flutters in the breeze and strews the ground; these peaches, +apricots, plums and almonds are giants of their kind, and yet +insignificant beside the towering trunks of the palms whose leaves shade +them from the sunny rays; the fruit trees, in their turn, protect the +humble corn and vegetables growing at their feet. + +During the Turkish period these oases were in danger of their lives; the +sand invaded them, choking up the waters and gradually entombing the +plants. The nomads and their flocks and camels, pasturing at liberty round +the cultivated tracts, had destroyed the scrub vegetation which hindered +the flying desert sands from penetrating into the groves; they had +trampled to powder the soil at these spots, so that every breath of wind +raised it heavenwards in a cloud. But the peril is averted now by the +system of _tabias_ or sand-dykes introduced some twenty years +ago--introduced, I believe, in accordance with the suggestion of Monsieur +Baraban, whose book on Tunisia drew attention, among other things, to this +deplorable condition of the oases and the threatened loss to the +exchequer. + +Now, if you look closely at this sand, you will see that it is full of +minute crystalline particles, and that, in places where it lies +undisturbed, these hard and jagged grains wedge themselves into the softer +ones and form a coherent crust. It was observed that the wind cannot raise +this crust, and the problem how to manufacture it in the neighbourhood of +the oases was solved by enclosing the near-lying tracts of half-desert +within low mounds crowned by upright palm branches, and forbidding all +access to man and beast. The flying plague heaps itself against the +palisade and submerges it; a new set of branches is then inserted, and so +the structure grows higher and more efficacious every year. The soil +within the enclosures, meanwhile, grows hard; wild shrubs sprout up to +help in the work, and though the crust yields, like thin ice, at the +slightest pressure of the fingers, the end is accomplished. + +The protected districts are already assuming a different aspect from the +true desert outside, which shifts with the breeze; apart from their tufts +of vegetation, the soil has become quite dark in colour. Only the most +reckless of nocturnal nomads will dare to violate these hallowed precincts +in search of firewood; the citizens have already learned to regard them +with reverential fear. At a long distance from the town I asked a small +boy to climb over the palisade. + +"Not if you give me a packet of cigarettes!" he said. "The +_brigadier_"--in an awed whisper--"he sees everything." + +Hearing that protective works of a new kind are being carried on at this +moment, I walked yesterday to the bare slopes that lead down to the +water-springs. A hundred or more Arabs were engaged, under the supervision +of a keen-eyed young Frenchman, in digging a multitude of curved +concentric ditches across the hollow of the catchment area, intersected by +diagonal ones here and there; the general appearance of the work--the +bright yellow of the newly excavated part set against the dark ground of +the old--was as if some gigantic fishing-net had been carelessly thrown +across the country. These little dykes were about two feet deep, and there +must have been already some twenty miles of them. The overseer explained: + +"You see what happens. Our putting this tract under the tabia-system had +prepared us an unpleasant surprise. The rain formerly used to sink into +the soft sand, but since the crust has formed, thanks to our efforts, it +no longer sinks, but runs over the hard surface, pours in a flood down +that steep incline at whose foot the fountains issue, and threatens to +suffocate them with soil torn from its banks. The very life of the oasis +was imperilled by our well-meant artifices. But now, with these little +ditches, we hope to catch and tame the showers, and force them to wander +about in these channels till they either sink into the earth or evaporate. +Not a drop of liquid is to leave the catchment basin; it is exactly the +reverse of what we desire in Europe." + +It struck me as a simple and efficient device. + +Midday came and the workers were paid off, each of them receiving a slip +of printed paper for the half-day's work; the possession of four of these +slips entitles them to exemption from the yearly tax of two francs forty +centimes which they would otherwise pay: a good example of the "politique +d'association." They trooped away gleefully, and I could not help +remarking on their cheerful humour. + +"They are gentle as young girls," he said, "and far more tractable; +thievish, of course, and untruthful--but so are all children! They attach +themselves to me in a pathetic, dog-like fashion, without hope of +preferment or any ulterior object.... Yes, they have established +themselves in my heart, somehow or other; perhaps because I am an orphan +and rather lonely and susceptible.... I really love these poor Arabs, as a +father might love them----" + +"That stick of yours: it looks business-like. May I ask whether you ever +chastise them?" + +"Why not? Would I not thrash my own children if they deserved it? This +work in Africa," he went on, "attracts and interests me. At home I lose my +personality and become a sheep in a herd, but here, in the desert, I can +create and leave a mark, which has always been my ambition. I think I +could live in this country for ever. Can you understand such a feeling? +None of my colleagues can; their minds are in France, and they complain of +a colonial exile, as if Tunisia were the Devil's Island; they call me an +enthusiast, because I think well of this warm, palpitating soil in which I +seem, I don't know how, to have struck deep roots." + +And he gazed lovingly over the sea of glossy palm-tops, down yonder, on +our right. This, I thought, was a most unusual type of Frenchman; and yet +there was something in his language, or perhaps in his ideas, which was +already familiar to me. + +"To be Sultan of Tozeur, for example--ha! I would bend them to my will; I +would lead them to battle and give them laws; I would have them about me +as slaves and companions--they should sing to me and tell me stories while +I go to sleep. This fair land seems like the realization of some old, +dimly remembered dream of mine. How does it all come about, I wonder?" + +_Sultan of Tozeur_--that gave me the cue, and I hazarded the guess that he +had inherited his tastes from certain old rovers and conquerors of the +northern seaboard. + +"True," he said, "our family comes from Normandy, though we have lived in +Paris for two generations. Now how on earth did you find that out?" + +These are the men whom the Franco-Tunisian administration will do well to +encourage as officials and settlers in the wilder parts. + + + + +_Chapter XXI_ + +_OLD TISOUROS_ + + +There is a daily recurring spectacle at Tozeur which enchanted me: the +camping ground at dawn. Here the caravans repose after their desert +journeys; hence they start, at every hour, in picturesque groups and +movement. But whoever wishes for a rare impression of Oriental life must +go there before sunrise, and wait for the slow-coming dawn. It is all dark +at first, but presently a sunny beam flashes through the distant palms, +followed by another, and yet another--long shafts of yellow light +travelling through the murk; then you begin to perceive that the air is +heavy with the smoke of extinguished camp-fires and suspended particles of +dust; the ground, heaving, gives birth to dusky shapes; there are weird +groans and gurglings of silhouetted apparitions; and still you cannot +clearly distinguish earth from air--it is as if one watched the creation +of a new world out of Chaos. + +But even before the sun has topped the crowns of the palms, the element of +mystery is eliminated; the vision resolves itself into a common plain of +sand, authentic camels and everyday Arabs moving about their +business--another caravan, in short.... + +And at midday? + +Go, at that hour, to the thickest part of the grove; then is the time; it +must be the prick of noon, for the slanting lights of morning and eve are +quite another concern; only at noon can one appreciate the incomparable +effects of palm-leaf shadows. The whole garden is permeated with light +that streams down from some undiscoverable source, and its rigid trunks, +painted in a warm, lustreless grey, are splashed with an infinity of keen +lines of darker tint, since the sunshine, percolating through myriads of +sharp leaves, etches a filigree pattern upon all that lies below. You look +into endless depths of forest, but there is no change in decorative +design; the identical sword-pattern is for ever repeated on the identical +background, fading away, at last, in a silvery haze. + +Here are no quaint details to attract the eye; no gorgeous colour-patterns +or pleasing irregularities of form; the frosted beauty of the scene +appeals rather to the intelligence. Contrasted with the wanton blaze of +green, the contorted trunks and labyrinthine shadow-meanderings of our +woodlands, these palm groves, despite their frenzied exuberance, figure +forth the idea of reserve and chastity; an impression which is heightened +by the ethereal striving of those branchless columns, by their joyous and +effective rupture of the horizontal, so different from the careworn tread +of our oaks and beeches. + +Later on, when the intervening vines and fruit trees are decked in leaves, +the purity of this geometrical design will be impaired.... + +The origin of Tozeur is lost in the grey mists of antiquity, since a site +like this must have been cultivated from time immemorial; the first +classical writer to mention the town is Ptolemy, who calls it Tisouros; on +Peutinger's Tables it is marked "Thusuro." The modern settlement has +wandered away from this ancient one which now slumbers--together, maybe, +with its hoary Egyptian prototype--under high-piled mounds whereon have +arisen, since those days, a few mediæval monuments and crumbling +maraboutic shrines and houses of more modern date, patched together with +antique building blocks and fragments of marble cornices: an island of +sand and oblivion, lapped by soft-surging palms. + +They call it Bled-el-Adher nowadays, and this is the place to spend the +evening. I was there yesterday, perhaps for the last time. + +It exhales a soporific, world-forgotten fragrance. There is no market +here, no commercial or social life, save a few greybeards discussing +memories on some doorstep; the only mirthful note is a swarm of young boys +playing hockey on the sand-heaps, amid furious yells and scrimmages. + +True hockey being out of the question on account of the deep sand, they +have invented a variant, a simple affair: they arrange themselves roughly +into two parties, and the ball is struck into the air with a palm branch +from the one to the other; there, where it alights, a general rush ensues +to get hold of it, clouds of sand arising out of a maze of intertwining +arms and legs. The lucky possessor is entitled to have the next stroke, +and the precision and force of their hitting is remarkable; they evidently +do little else all day long. + +I noticed an element of good humour and fair play not prevalent among the +Gafsa boys; there was no peevish squabbling, and I only saw one fight +which was a perfectly correct transaction--nobody interfering with the two +combatants who hammered lustily at each other's faces, and at last +separated, satisfied and streaming with blood. + +For some days past they had seen my interest in the game, and yesterday I +observed that it was suddenly suspended; a consultation was taking place, +and presently one of the boys approached me and politely asked whether I +would not care to join; if so, I might have his club; and he placed the +weapon and ball in my hand. The proposition tempted me; it is not every +day that one is invited in such gentlemanly fashion to wallow on all fours +with young Arabs. I made one or two strokes, not amiss, that called forth +huge applause; and then returned, rather regretfully, to my sand-heap, to +meditate on my own misspent youth, a subject that very rarely troubles me. + +There is a tall, round building that stands within a hundred yards of +where I sat; they call it the "Roman" tower, and the foundation-stones, +though not _in situ_, are probably of that period; it was a Byzantine +bell-tower, then a minaret, now a ruin. And here, confronting me, lie a +few stones, that are all that remain of a pagan temple which became a +Christian basilica and afterwards a mosque. In the fifth century +Tisouros--this slumberous Bled-el-Adher--was a dependency of the Greek +"Duke of Gafsa" (how strange it sounds!); Florentinus, its bishop, was +executed by the king of the Vandals; Christian churches survived, side by +side with mosques, as late as the fourteenth century. There seems to have +been no great religious intolerance in those days. + +They showed me a gold coin of the Emperor Gordian--the same who built the +amphitheatre of El-Djem--which was found here, as well as some lamps and +sculptured fragments of stone. Bruce speaks of cipollino columns; they are +still to be seen, if you care to look for them, split up, since his time, +to mend walls and doorsteps. Tozeur must have looked well enough under the +later Empire. + +And now, sand-heaps and a brood of young savages, shouting at their game. +It is long since these people knew the meaning of refined things, although +some of the houses, their fronts decorated with gracious designs in +brickwork, testify to a not extinct artistic feeling--the citizens once +enjoyed a reputation for delicacy and love of letters. There is nothing +like systematic misgovernment for degrading mankind, and I think it likely +that the gradual fusion of the Arab and Berber races, so antagonistic in +all their aspirations, may have helped to abrade the finer edges of both +parent-stocks. But the native civilization was not remarkable at any time. + +The climate, and then their religion, has made them hard and incurious; it +is a land of uncompromising masculinity. The softer element--thanks to the +Koran--has become non-existent, and you will look in vain for the +creative-feminine, for those intermediate types of ambiguous, submerged +sexuality, the constructive poets and dreamers, the men of imagination and +women of will, that give to good society in the north its sweetness and +_chatoyance_; for those "sports" and eccentrics who, among our lower +classes, are centrifugal--perpetually tending to diverge in this or that +direction. The native is pre-eminently centripetal. His life is reduced to +its simplest physiological expression; that capacity of reflection, of +forming suggestive and fruitful concepts, which lies at the bottom of +every kind of progress or culture, has been sucked out of him by the sun +and by Mahomet's teaching. + +A land of violence, remorseless and relentless; the very beetles, so +placid elsewhere, seem to have acquired a nervously virile temperament; +they scurry about the sand at my feet with an air of rage and +determination. + +So I mused, while the game went on boisterously in the mellow light of +sunset till, from some decaying minaret near by, there poured down a +familiar long-drawn wail--the call to prayer. It was a golden hour among +those mounds of sand, and I grew rather sad to think that I should never +see the place again. How one longs to engrave certain memories upon the +brain, to keep them untarnished and carry them about on one's journeyings, +in all their freshness! The happiest life, seen in perspective, can hardly +be better than a stringing together of such odd little moments. + + + + +_Chapter XXII_ + +_THE DISMAL CHOTT_ + + +Hearing that there are few or no tourists in Nefta just now, I left Tozeur +three days ago, an hour or so before sunrise. + +This region, the Djerid, is all sand; an isthmus of sand thrust in between +the two Chotts of Djerid and Rharsa; the oases ara scattered about the +country, says some old writer, like the spots on a leopard's skin.... + +The air was keen, and I shivered on my mule, looking back often at the +dark forest of Tozeur, where I had spent some happy days. + +After about five miles of comfortable wading through soft sand, I became +aware of a ghostly radiance that hovered over the pallid expanse of the +Chott. Abruptly, with the splendour of a meteor, the morning star shot up. +Then the sun's disk rose, more sedately, at the exact spot where Lucifer +had shown the way; and climbing upwards, produced a spectacle for which I +was not prepared. + +For as it left the horizon, a counterfeit sun began to unroll itself from +the true, as one might detach a petal from a rose; at first they clung +together, but soon, with a wrench, parted company, and while the one +soared aloft, the image remained below, weltering on the treacherous mere. +For a short while the flaming phantasma lingered firm and orb-like, while +the space between itself and reality grew to a hand's breadth; then slowly +deliquesced. It gave a prolonged shiver and sank, convulsed, into the +earth. + +Light was diffused; the colour of daytime invaded the ground at our feet, +flitting like some arterial rill through the dun spaces. Wonderful, this +magic touch of awakening! It is the same swiftness of change as at sunset, +when the desert folds itself to sleep, like some gorgeously palpitating +flower, in the chill of nightfall; or rather, to use a metaphor which has +often occurred to me, it hardens its features, crystallizing them into a +stony mask, even as some face, once friendly, grows strangely indifferent +in death. + +My companion of this morning, who happened to be of a religious turn of +mind, took the opportunity to glide off his beast and, standing a little +apart, with his arms thrown through the reins to prevent the mule from +straying, recited the dawn prayer. The noble gesticulations looked well on +that bare sandy dune, in the face of the Chott. + +As for myself, I thought of the old god Triton, who dwelt in yonder foul +lake and showed some kindness to Jason, long ago, when his ships were +entangled in the ooze; I thought of Tritogeneia, the savage, mud-born +creature who, cast into the purifying crucible of Hellenic mythopoesis, +emerged as bright-eyed Athene, mother of wisdom and domestic arts. The +Amazon maidens of the country used to have combats in her honour with +sticks and stones, and the fairest of them, decked in a panoply of Grecian +armour, was conducted in a chariot about the lake. A fabled land! Here, +they say, Poseidon was born, and Gorgo and Perseus, Medusa and Pegasus and +other comely and wondrous shapes that have become familiar to us through +Greek lore. + +These folks of Atlantis "saw no dreams," but they studied astronomy and +navigation; their priests may well have been those Druids whose +temple-structures, the senams and cromlechs, have wandered from the +Tripolitan frontier as far as the chilly coasts of Brittany, and Salisbury +Plain, and Ultima Thule. And every day, as the sun passed over their +heads, they saluted him not as the Giver of Life or Lord of Earth, but +cursed him with imprecations long and loathsome, for his scorching fires. + +Shaw, I believe, was the first to identify the Chotts with Lake Triton. + +There were islands in this sea; the sacred isle of Phla, for instance, +which the Spartans were commanded by an oracle to colonize, and whereon +stood a temple to Aphrodite. There are islands to this day, great and +small; one of them is called Faraoun--evidently an Egyptian name, for +Egyptian influence was felt early in these regions; at Faraoun grows a +peculiar kind of date which, we are told, an Egyptian army had left there. +The waters of the pool touched Nefta, whose Kadi gave Tissot a description +of a buried vessel which, from its shape, could be nothing but a "galère +antique"--it was dismembered for fuel, and metal nails were found in its +framework. + +Movers is probably correct in seeking at Nefta the Biblical Naphtuhim of +the generation of Noah: an Egyptian document speaks of it as the "land of +Napit." Arabs have another theory of its origin. According to a chronicle +preserved in the Nefta mosque, the founder of the town was Kostel, son of +Sem, son of Noah; he called it Nefta because it was here that water +boiled, for the first time, after the Deluge. The Romans called it Nepte, +but, in confirmation of this old story, I observe that the Arabs of to-day +invariably pronounce Nefta as _Nafta_. It is quite likely, too, that the +name Hecatompylos, the city of a hundred gates, which has been applied to +Gafsa, is a misreading for Hecatompolis, the land of those hundred cities +which, they say, studded the shores of this great lake. + +For it was a lake, or series of lakes, and nothing else; geological +evidence is opposed to the supposition that the Chott country was ever a +gulf of the Mediterranean within historical times--it was merely a chain +of inland waters. And another surprising discovery has been made of late, +namely, that these depressions lie at different levels and have, each of +them, its own system of alimentation. This fact came to light between 1872 +and 1883, when a number of studies were undertaken with a view to the +restoration of this ancient Libyan Sea. Men of middle years will still +remember the excitement produced by this scheme which originated with +Tissot, though another name will for ever be associated with it, that of +Roudaire, a man of science dominated by an obsession, who clung to this +project with the blind faith of a martyr, his enthusiasm growing keener in +proportion as the plan was proved to be futile, fantastic, fatuous. True, +the great Lesseps had taken his part. + +Desolation reigns on this morass of salt, where the life of man and beast, +and even of plants and stones, faints away in mortal agony. Unnumbered +multitudes of living creatures have sunk into its perfidious abysses. "A +caravan of ours," says an Arab author, "had to cross the Chott one day; it +was composed of a thousand baggage camels. Unfortunately one of the beasts +strayed from the path, and all the others followed it. Nothing in the +world could be swifter than the manner in which the crust yielded and +engulphed them; then it became like what it was before, as if the thousand +baggage camels had never existed." Yet it is traversed in several +directions, and if you strain your eyes from these heights you can detect +certain dusky lines that crawl in serpentine movement across the +melancholy waste--caravan tracks to the south. + +Unlike the living ocean, this withered one never smiles: it wears a +hostile face. There is a charm, none the less--a charm that appeals to +complex modern minds--in that picture of eternal, irremediable sterility. +Its hue is ever-changing, as the light falls upon it; the plain, too, +shifts up and down with mirage play, climbing sometimes into the horizon, +or again sharply defined against it; often it resembles a milky river +flowing between banks of mud. The surface is rarely lustrous, but of a +velvety texture, like a banded agate, mouse-colour or liver-tinted, with +paler streaks in between, of the dead whiteness of a sheet of paper; now +and again there flash up livid coruscations that glister awhile like +enamel or burnished steel, and then fade away. These are the fields of +virgin salt which, when you cross them, are bright as purest Alpine snow, +and may blind you temporarily with their dazzling glare. Viewed from these +uplands, however, the ordered procession of horizontal bars stretching +into infinity, their subdued coloration, fills the mind with a wave of +deep peace. + +Walking from Nefta to the Chott, you will reach, on the burning plain, a +maraboutic shrine that might serve as an asylum for some +conscience-stricken, malaria-proof penitent. They go well together, +maraboutism and the Chott--two factors that make for barrenness in man and +nature. + +And Nefta is full of such shrines. Another one, for example, has been +built into the very heart of the rustling palm forest; the water glides +under its walls wherein sits the aged impostor who, unlike his amiable +colleague at Tozeur, is too holy even to speak to unbelievers (you are +permitted to gaze upon him through a grated window). Yet another one is +the humble Sidi Murzouk, the negroes' sanctuary, among the sand-hills on +the middle heights. + +[Illustration: Nefta: The Shrine on the Chott] + +These are three representative types of a hundred, at least. + +It is hard to say why the French foster these Arab maraboutic tendencies +as opposed to the saner ideals of the Berber stock; perhaps they think it +politic to _arabize_ the older race in this and a few other particulars, +though it signifies, almost invariably, a retrograde movement of +civilization. + +Of these pious folk the paradox is true that the best are the worst; +those, that is, who do not expose themselves to ridicule or adverse +criticism, whose good intentions are self-evident, who carry out to the +letter the apostolic injunction of clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, +and succouring the distressed. It is they who pander to all the worst +qualities of the Arabs, improvident and incorrigible loafers, besides +affording an asylum to every criminal; their _zaouiahs_, like our own +mediæval convents, are often enough mere menageries of deformed minds and +bodies. As for the much-vaunted calm to be found within their walls, it is +there, to be sure, together with certain other things--there and nowhere +else, since the frantic religious passions, of which such monastic +institutions are offshoots, have made peaceable living outside their walls +an impossibility. + +In a land where no one reads or writes or thinks or reasons, where dirt +and insanity are regarded as marks of divine favour, how easy it is to +acquire a reputation for holiness--(oral tradition alone can make a +saint)--to turn the god-habit of your fellow-creatures into a profitable +source of revenue: as easy as it was in Europe, in the days when we +cherished such knaves and neurotic dreamers. Some of them are simple +epileptics, verminous and importunate; others, shrewd worldly rogues who, +having run away from home after a fit of discontent or homicide, cruise +vaguely about Islamism for half a lifetime, and at last return, bearded +venerables, to be stared at by their kinsfolk as portents, heaven-sent, +because they have freighted themselves with a cargo of fond maxims such as +"The World is Illusion: all Flesh is Vanity," and similar gnomic +balderdash, the wisdom of the unlettered. + +No wonder they despise what they call the world. For the real world, the +cosmos of rational thought and action, has never existed for them. At +Tangier, Mecca, Jerusalem or Timbuctu, they have sat eternally in the same +coffee-houses or mosques, and listened eternally to the same theological +chatterings; which accounts for a certain "family likeness" between all of +these mentally starved creatures, who are nevertheless favoured of Allah +so far as bodily comforts are concerned, inasmuch, as (if they play their +cards correctly) money, wives, and lands pour down upon them till, in old +age, they become so fuddled with homage and holy mumblings that they +themselves cannot exactly remember whether they are humbugs or not: this, +I take it, must be the culminating point, the _dernier mot_, of maraboutic +enlightenment. + +And beside these ten thousand impromptu saints that spring up daily out of +the fertile soil of Arab imagination and poverty, every one of the +descendants of Mahomet's daughter is a marabout, and all their children, +male and female, in _sæcula sæculorum_. + +God alone, who numbers the stars, can keep count of their legions. + + + +_Chapter XXIII_ + +_THE GARDENS OF NEFTA_ + + +A person unacquainted with tropical vegetation would be amazed at the +prodigality of the oasis of Nefta; in point of exuberance it is as +superior to Tozeur as that to Gafsa. But the cathedral-like gravity of +Tozeur is lacking; there is too much riot and opulence, too many +voluptuous festoons and spears and spirals, a certain craving, so to +speak, after the purely ornate: if Tozeur represents the decorative style +of Louis Quatorze, this is assuredly Louis Seize. One great drawback is +that the thick undergrowth often obstructs the view; and another, that you +cannot walk about in all directions, as at Tozeur, because there is too +much running water--perhaps one should say too few paths and bridges. For +the last two days a sand-storm of unusual violence has been raging. On the +ridges above the town one can hardly stand on one's feet; the grains fly +upwards, over the crest of the hill, in blinding showers, mighty squadrons +of them careering across the plain below. The landscape is involved in a +dim, roseate twilight. But occasionally there comes a sickly radiance from +behind the curtain of cloud that glimmers lustreless, like an incandescent +lamp seen through a fog: it is the sun shining brightly in the pure +regions of the upper air. + +Here, under the trees, the wind is scarce felt, though you can perceive it +by the fretful clashing of the palm branches overhead. And despite the +storm there is a strange hush in the air, the hush of things to come, a +sense of uneasiness; spring is upon us, buds are unfolding and waters draw +up forcefully from a soil which seems to heave under one's very feet. It +is a moment of throbbing intensity. + +And the scirocco moans to these pangs of elemental gestation which man, +the creature of earth, still darkly feels within him. + +The ground is cultivated with mathematical parsimoniousness and divided +into squares which made me think of the Roman _agrimensores_. But +concerning this point, a civilized old native told me the following +legend. Long ago, he said, these oases were wild jungles, and the few +human creatures who lived near them little better than beasts. Then came a +wise man who cut up and ploughed the watery district of Gafsa, Tozeur and +Nefta; he planted trees and all the other growths useful to mankind; he +divided the land into patches, led the water through them, and apportioned +them among certain families--in short, he gave these oases their present +shape, and did his work so well that up to this day no one has been able +to suggest any improvements or to quarrel with his arrangement. The story +interested me; it may be a variant of the old Hercules myth--it shows how +much the Arabs, with their veneration for past heroes and prophets, and +their sterile distrust in the possibility of any kind of progress, will +believe.[1] + +[Footnote 1: It shows, also, that one cannot be too careful what one +writes.] + +I will take this little credit to myself, that, unconvinced of my own +explanation, I made further enquiries and learned that--allowing for the +inevitable exaggeration--the man actually existed! His name was Ibn +Shabbath; he was a kind of engineer-topographer who lived about the +thirteenth century; he wrote a commentary, in three volumes, on some +well-known Arabic geographical poem--a commentary which exists only in a +few manuscript copies, one of which is preserved at the Grand Mosque in +Tunis, and another, I am told, in the library of Monsieur de Fleury. + +[Illustration: Marabout in the Nefta Gardens] + +Yet the _deglat_ palms which grow here in great abundance--the finest in +the world--with their lower leaves pendent, sere and yellow; the figs, +lemons, apricots and pomegranates clustering in savage meshes of unpruned +boughs among which the vine, likewise unkempt, writhes and clambers +liana-fashion, in crazy convolutions--all these things conspire to give to +certain parts of the oasis, notwithstanding its high cultivation, a +bearded, primeval look. The palms, particularly the young ones, are +assiduously tended and groomed by half-naked gardeners who labour in the +moist earth by relays, day and night. + +What nights of brooding stillness in summer, under the palms, when those +leaves hang motionless in the steaming vapour as though carved out of +bronze, while the surrounding desert exhales the fiery emanations of +noontide, often 135 degrees in the shade. For the heat of Nefta is +hellish. One might think that the inhabitants, whom Bertholon holds to be +descendants, somewhat remote, of the old marrow-sucking, +grandmother-devouring Neanderthal folk, would have become placid by this +time; that all harshness must have been boiled out of them. Far from it! +The faces that one sees are less friendly than those at Tozeur, and they +were noted, in former days, for their vehemence in religious matters. I am +sorry to hear it, but not surprised. The arts and other fair flowerings of +the human mind may succumb to fierce climates, but theological zeal is one +of those things which no extremes of temperature can subdue; it thrives +equally well at the Poles or Equator, like that "Brown or Hanoverian rat" +which Charles Waterton--a glorious old zealot himself--so cordially +detested. + +There are eight Europeans here, and thirteen thousand natives: I should +not care to be in Nefta on the day when the Senoussi are to realize their +long-deferred hopes. All the same, it is a relief not to hear the eternal +gossip of employés or to see the soldiers loitering at street corners, +like dressed-up chimpanzees. The better class of natives are sometimes of +an astonishing immaculate cleanliness from head to foot; they are often +remarkably handsome. The traveller Temple was struck, at Nefta, with the +beauty of its "desart nymphs, whose eyes are all fire and brilliancy," and +he might have said the same of the boys. + +But I observe a defect in the eyes of all Arabs, namely, that they seem to +be unable to utilize them as a means of conveying thoughts; they have no +eye language, even among each other, and must express by words or by some +gesture what other people can make clear with a glance. The best-looking +youth or maiden has eyes which, beautiful as they are, might be those of a +stuffed cow for all the expression they emit. They cannot even wink. + +From the rising ground at the back of Nefta you look down into a circular +vale of immoderate plant-luxuriance, a never-ending delight of the eye; +the French call it by the appropriate name of "la corbeille." Here the +springs issue--152 of them--from under steep walls of sand; they form glad +pools of blue and green that mirror the foliage with impeccable +truthfulness and then, after coursing in distracted filaments about the +"corbeille," join their waters and speed downhill towards the oasis, a +narrow belt of trees running along either side. This marvellous +palm-embroidered rift sunders Nefta, seated on the arid sand-hills +overhead, into two distinct towns or settlements. The eye follows the +stream as far as the low-lying plantations and into the Chott beyond, +resting at last upon the violet haze of its mysterious southern shores. + +Visible from here are also certain mounds at the eastern extremity of the +oasis, near the Chott; they are marked on the map as "ruins of Zafrana." +What this Zafrana was, or how it comes to have a name resembling that of a +small Sicilian village, I cannot tell; thither, at all events, I bent my +steps, having heard that ancient coins, as well as lamps, had been found +here. So far as I can make out there is only pottery on this site, and +none of it pre-Mohammedan; if a city ever stood here it has been +completely entombed, or torn into shreds by the wind, the flying sands, +and the heat. Nefta itself, built of soft loam, would crumble away in +briefest time if left unrepaired. The acute Guerin was not more successful +than myself at Zafrana, nor was Maltzan. + +This being the most exposed corner of the oasis, the _tabias_ have grown +to a fine size; I climbed over the inner one, which must be ten yards high +and at least twenty in breadth. From its summit one perceives distant +forms of ruinous buildings rising up in the Tozeur direction, on the slope +which inclines to the Chott. Was this, perhaps, Zafrana? + +No. Riding up to them, I found they were merely turret-like eminences of +hard bluish clay, the carapace of the desert, which the wind has carved +into quaint semblances of human dwellings. In the evening light they catch +the last rays of the sun and shine like diaphanous spectres upon the +darkened ground, but at sunrise, when the yellow sands sparkle with light, +they tower up grim and menacing: a mournful, ghoul-haunted region, like +those veritable townships of the past, Dougga, Timgad and the rest of +them, standing all forlorn in their African desolation. + +Whoever has visited such sites will understand the impression they +conveyed to men of simpler ages. He will realize how they must have +inflamed the phantasy of those wandering mediæval Arabs who could make no +distinction, in this respect, between the works of man and those of +nature, nor bring themselves to believe that such titanic structures were +reared by human hands or for any human purpose--were otherwise than an +illusion, or a natural incongruity. That amphitheatre of El-Djem, for +example, visible for leagues in the solitude around--what more apt to +become a true mountain of wondrous shape, the haunt of some Ifrit +imprisoned in its cup or soaring thence, a pillar of cloud, into the +zenith? + +These are the ruins whose report was carried to Bagdhad by those early +caravan traders, and there woven into the flowery tapestries of the +"Arabian Nights"--nightmare cities, rising like an enchantment out of the +desert sand; bereft of the voices and footsteps of men, but teeming with +hoarded treasure and graven images of gods that gaze down, inscrutable and +sternly resplendent, upon the wanderer who, stumbling fearfully through a +labyrinth of silent halls, suddenly encounters, in demon-guarded chamber, +some ensorcelled maiden, frozen to stone. + + + +_Chapter XXIV_ + +_NEFTA AND ITS FUTURE_ + + +There are cities in the East where, from ramparts that support fairy-like +palaces--complicated assemblages of courts and plashing fountains and cool +chambers through which the breeze wanders in an artificial twilight of +marble screens pierced so craftily, one might think them a flowing drapery +of lace-work--where, from such wizard creations of Oriental pomp, you +glance down and behold, stretched at your feet, a burning waste of sand. A +fine incentive to the luxurious imagination of a tyrant, this contrast, +that has all the glamour of a dream.... + +But such abrupt transitions are not the rule. Midway between the pulsating +town-life and the desert there lies, mostly, a sinister extra-mural +region, a region of gaping walls and potsherds, where the asphodel shoot +up to monstrous tufts and the fallacious colocynth, the wild melon, +scatters its globes of bitter gold. For it is in the nature of Orientals +that their habitations should surround themselves with a girdle of +corrupting things, gruesome and yet fascinating: a Browning might have +grown enamoured of its macabre spell. + +No European cares to linger about these precincts after dusk; here lie the +dead, in thick-strewn graves; here the jackal roams at night--it thrusts +its pointed snout through the ephemeral masonry of townsmen's tombs or +scratches downward within the ring of stones that mark some poor bedouin's +corpse, to take toll of the carrion horrors beneath; so you may find many +graves rifled. And if you come by day you will probably see, crouching +among the ruins, certain old men, pariahs, animated lumps of dirt and +rags. They are so uncouth and unclean, so utterly non-human, that one +wonders whether they are really of the sons of Adam, and not rather +goblins, or possibly some freak, some ill-natured jest on the part of the +vegetable or mineral kingdoms. Day after day they come and burrow for orts +among the dust-heaps, or brood motionless in the sunshine, or trace +cabalistic signs with their fingers in the sand--the future, they tell +you, can be unriddled out of its cascade-like movements. + +It is one of the complaints of sentimentalists that the French are +abolishing these picturesque Arab cemeteries in Tunisia; combining +firmness with a great deal of tact, they insidiously appropriate these +sanctified premises and deck them with timber as a solace for coming +generations. Let them go! The undiluted Orient is still wide enough; and +no one will appreciate the metamorphosis more than the native citizens +themselves, who love, above all things, to play about and idle in the +shade of trees; perhaps, in the course of time, they will realize that not +only Allah, but also man, is able to plant and take care of them. Your +Arab often has a love of nature which is none the worse for being wholly +unconscious. + +At Nefta there is no impure region, properly so called. The searching +sunbeams and the winds are inimical to all the lush concomitants of decay; +the sand also plays its part; so every dead dog, and every dead camel, +arrests the flying grains and is straightway interred--transformed into a +hillock, trivial but sanitary. + +There are tombs, of course, tombs galore; but what strikes one most are +the numerous shrines erected to saints alive or dead, of which I have +already spoken. + +You will do well to visit the Christian cemetery. It lies on an eminence +above the town and is almost buried under deep waves of sand, which have +risen to the summit of the surrounding walls and drowned the three graves, +all but their tall stones that emerge above the flood. One of them is that +of a _controlleur_ of the district who died at his post while combating a +cholera epidemic--there may be more of them, for aught I know, submerged +beneath the drift. + +It is surely in the interests of French prestige to pay a few francs for +the cleansing of such a place in a land where, as conquerors, they live on +a pedestal and are to assert their superiority in every way. It will be +long ere Arabs can appreciate French art and science, but they understand +visible trifles of this kind, and, conversing with them, I have found +that, like many simple-minded people, they are disposed to contrast +unfavourably their own burial-grounds with our trim method of sepulture, +which assures to the defunct a few more years of apparent respect, while +flattering the vanity of the living. To a sensitive Christian this +cemetery of Nefta must be a sad and a scandalous sight; no humble nomad's +tomb on the bleak hillside is more neglected than these memorials to his +fellow-believers who have died, far from their homes, under the flaming +sun of Africa. + +From this point you can see the tail-end of the oasis. It lies in the +Zafrana region, and is the worst nourished. This, I suppose, is +inevitable; the gardens must be continually moving--moving away from the +Chott towards their vital sources, which now lie under a respectable +precipice of sand. It is hard to believe that the present site of the +fountains is what one might call the natural, aboriginal one. I imagine +that the cultivators, in the course of ages, must have tracked the element +and followed it up, as a terrier will pursue a rabbit in its burrow, +planting trees in proportion as they laid bare its once subterranean bed. +Thus, the supply of liquid being constant, the oasis is impelled to wander +in the direction of its springs; the more you add to the head, the shorter +grows the tail. In prehistoric days, maybe, the water gushed out somewhere +near the Chott; the charming depression of the "corbeille" is perhaps the +work of human hands. + +The same has struck me at Tozeur, which also marches horizontally away +from its termination. An exquisite corbeille could be manufactured here; +all the elements are present; it only requires a few thousand years of +labour. And what are they, in a land like this? + +And the oases are undergoing another and more curious +progression--downwards. Strange to think that, while towns and villages +rise higher every year, these gardens are slowly descending into the +depths; they are already far below the circumambient desert, though not so +deeply sunk as the verdant, crater-like depressions of some parts of +Africa. For it stands to reason that as the stream-beds become excavated +more and more--and this is what has brought them to their present +position--the groves must irrevocably follow suit, since water escapes at +the lowest level, while trees cannot be suspended in air. Supposing the +system of dams, which now force the liquid to keep to a certain plane, +fell into disuse, how would it end? + +The imagination of an Edgar Poe might picture these Nefta gardens as the +reverse of those of Semiramis--sunk, that is, further into the +profundities of the earth than the already existing Sahara +plantations--with this difference, that here, to obviate infiltration from +the ooze of the Chott, sturdy walls must enclose them. Ages pass, and +still the groves descend, while the defences grow so stout and high that, +viewed from above, the palms down there, in that deep funnel, look like +puny vegetables, and men like ants. And still they descend.... One day the +pale population engaged in tilling this shadowy paradise will be horrified +to perceive, in their encircling bulwarks, rents and crevices that ooze +forth ominous jets of mud. The damage is hastily repaired, but the cracks +appear once more, and, widening imperceptibly at first, soon burst asunder +and admit, from every side, a wrinkled flood of slime which closes with +sullen murmur over the site of the drowned oasis. + +Or if the wells dried up? One of those geological displacements that have +taken place in past times would suffice to wipe out the memory of this +town--the palms would wither, the clay-built houses melt into the earth +whence they arose. + +Meanwhile, perched on the last wave of an ocean of shining sand, Nefta +sits in immemorial contemplation of the desert and vividly green oasis +which flows, like a grand and luminous river, into the very heart of its +flat dwellings. There is a note of passionate solemnity about the place. +All too soon, I fear, the railway to Tozeur will have done its work; dusty +boulevards, white bungalows, eucalyptus trees and _bureaux de monopoles_ +will profane its strangely wonderful beauty, its virginal monotone of +golden grey. Nefta will become a neurasthenic demi-mondaine, like Biskra. + +Such, at least, is the prognosis. + +But one is apt to forget on how precarious a tenure these gardens are +held, with the hungry desert gnawing ceaselessly at their outskirts; for +the desert is hungry and yet patient; it has devoured sundry oases by +simply waiting till man is preoccupied with other matters. And how rare +they are, these specks of green, these fountains in the sand--rare as the +smiles in a lifetime of woe! Beyond and all around lies a grave and +ungracious land, the land of the lawless, fanatical wanderers. + +Those Romans and heathen Berbers, tillers of the soil, had remained in +contact with phenomena; unconcerned, relatively speaking, with the affairs +of the next world, they attained a passable degree of civilization in this +one. But your pastoral Arab scorns a knowledge of general mundane +principles. His life is a series of disconnected happenings which must be +enjoyed or endured; he is incapable of reading aright the past or present, +because he asks himself _why?_ instead of _how?_ Whoever despises the +investigation of secondary causes is a menace to his fellow-creatures. + +Face to face with infinities, man disencumbers himself. Those abysmal +desert-silences, those spaces of scintillating rock and sand-dune over +which the eye roams and vainly seeks a point of repose, quicken his animal +perception; he stands alone and must think for himself--and so far good. +But while discarding much that seems inconsiderable before such wide and +splendid horizons, this nomad loads himself with the incubus of +dream-states; while standing alone, he grows into a ferocious brigand. +Poets call him romantic, but politicians are puzzled what to do with a +being who to a senile mysticism joins the peevish destructiveness of a +child. + +It is an almost universal fallacy to blame the desert for this state of +affairs; to insinuate, for example, that even as it disintegrates the +mountains into sand, so it decomposes the intellectual fabric of mankind, +his synthesizing faculty, into its primordial elements of ecstasy and +emotionalism. This is merely reaction: the desert's revenge. For we now +know a little something of the condition of old Arabia and Africa in the +days ere these ardent shepherds appeared on the scene, with their crude +and chaotic monotheism. The desert has not made the Arab, any more than it +made the Berber. It would be considerably nearer the truth to reverse the +proposition: to say that the evils which now afflict Northern Africa, its +physical abandonment, its social and economical decay, are the work of +that ideal Arab, the man of Mecca. Mahomet is the desert-maker. + + + + +INDEX + +Ain Moulares, +Aissouiyah, + +Bagdhad, +Bekri, geographer, +Bertholon, +Biskra, +Bled-el-Adher, _see_ Tozeur +Bordereau, Pierre, +Boulanger, General, +Boujaja, +Bournu, +Bruce, James, + +Cambon, M., +Carthage, +Chotts, the, +--el Rharsa, +--Djerid, +Couillault, M., + +Desfontaines, +Djerid, the, +Dougga, +Dufresnoy, M. Paul, + +Eberhardt, Isabelle, +Edrisius, +El Djem, +El Hamma, +Eloued, + +Faraoun, +Feriana, +Florentinus, Bishop, + +Gafsa, +--Meda Hill, +Gordian, Emperor, +Guerin, +Guifla, + +Henchir Souatir, + +Jebel Assalah, +Jebel Guettor, +Jebel Orbata, +Jebel Zitouna, + +Kairouan. +Khroumiria. +Kocher, M. +Koken, Professor. + +Leila (Lalla). +Leo, John. +Lesseps, Ferdinand de. +Lucan. + +Majen. +Maknassy. +Maltzan. +Mayet, Valery. +Melkarth. +Metlaoui. +Mount Abu. +Movers. + +Nefta. +Nefzaoua. + +Orosius. +Oudiane. +Oued Baghara. +Oued Baiesh. + +Phla, +Ptolemy, + +Ras-el-Aioun, +Redeyeff, +Rogib (hill), +Roudaire, + +Sallust, +Sbeitla, +Seldja, gorge, +--water +Sfax, +Shaw, Thomas, +Sidi Ahmed Zarroung, +Sidi Mansur, +Sidi Murzouk, +Souf, +Souk-el-Arba, +Sousse, +Suffetula, + +Temple, +Thala, +Thomas, M. Philippe, +Timgad, +Tissot, James, +Tozeur (Tisouros) +Triton, lake +Tunis + +Udaipur + +Zafrana + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fountains In The Sand, by Norman Douglas + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUNTAINS IN THE SAND *** + +***** This file should be named 8185-8.txt or 8185-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/8/8185/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred, S. R. Ellison and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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