Fountains In The Sand Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia

uch 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

ecomposing frogs and things unmentionable-rise to the surface in turbid clouds. The ele

rier, on his philosophic donkey; nearly all Gafsa draws its supply

ds higher up, by means of a common cast-iron pipe, whence it would rush out, pure and undefiled, to fill in a few mom

ers (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 contin

ON: My Frie

eezing-point they would suffer considerably were they not inured,

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 preterna

ot 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

mishaps. These little wildlings are troublesome to carry about. They are less nimble and amiable than the boys, and often require more

y 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 o

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

night. I looked into the courtyard of a ruinous building which was crammed

corpions, glass, nails, and burning coals; they cut themselves

play to what you ca

he 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 indu

ted. The marabout leader, who is a kind of ma?tre 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 s

bouring in the fields on the day following such excesse

nd 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

hey 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, a

ivilized. We complain considerably just now of the swamping of class distinctions in our lands, but a man of cultu