Fountains In The Sand Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia

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

ant-like hiving quality which paid back, within

ively 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

es. 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 Tuni

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 e

commercial settlers were not discouraged from establishing t

entèle; 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 y

ravellers not c

s 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

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 th

e, referring to Baedeker, with whose sacred pages I had threate

even the worm will turn, when suffering from the to

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

ed 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 youn

tell you, is full of gui

ted,

thermore, is

an

E.