Tunis

“ A strip of blue sky, hot sunshine, the blue-green of a small dome, men in statuesque drapery outside the carved entrance of a mosque. A glimpse within of kneeling silent figures in white, in dove colour, in grey. And your flagging spirit fires again. Tunis is a beautiful Arab woman in European dress, and as such she frequently puts one’s teeth on edge. But push into the country and you will find the native life untouched, the peasant people leading the same lives as generations before them led, no hint of the uneasy modernism that spoils the capital. ”

“ The town of Tunis itself seems to be spreading rapidly, large hotels spring up as suddenly as mushrooms after a night’s rain, and the streets are full of sight-seeing tourists. [141] At times a cargo of as many as five hundred of them may be dumped on shore, earnestly ‘doing’ Tunis in a few hours or a day and a half. The town Arab adapts himself to his environment and becomes one of that race of beings without nationality, familiar to all who have travelled in distant lands, a hybrid creature of most distasteful qualities. ”

“ It will not be breaking the promise that our visit to the exhibition is not to involve us in a description of all its wonders, if we walk up-stairs and look into the Tunisian Café, attracted by the well-known drumming and the moaning dirge which Easterns call music. Tunis is best seen out of Tunis, for the broidered gold and bright-coloured slippers can then be enjoyed without those horrible scenes of filth—dead camels, open sewers, and maimed beggars which encase the shabby mud walls I have seen so near the marble ruins of old Carthage. ”

“ The population of Tunis is the most interesting of all nations under the sun, particularly of a spring or autumn evening as it sits on the broad terrace of one of the boulevard cafés, well dressed and gay, and the Arab the gayest of them all. ”

“ It was the " rendezvous of travellers from the east and the west, and it contained all the advantages that man could desire. Whatsoever the whim of man might fancy could be obtained in Tunis. Its power and glory placed it as a sovereign above its rivals, the capitals of the east and west." Tunis might well have said, " I am the ladder of the temple, by which the faithful mount up to heaven." At the present day Tunis is still considered by all the North African Mussulmans, except those of Egypt and Marocco, the city of good taste, literature, and fashion — in short, a kind of African Paris. ”

“ He is wanted at home to grow up with the country.
Tunis la ville and Tunisia le pays are more mediæval and more Oriental than Algiers or Algeria. In Tunis, as in every Arab town, as in Constantinople or Cairo, you may yet walk the streets feeling all the oppression of that silence which “follows you still,” and of a patient, lack-lustre stare, still regarding you as “an unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good purpose—to be revealed hereafter.” ”

“ The easy ways of Tunis, the smooth, smiling faces of the Moorish dandy, the wealth of harmonious colour, are not found here. The men are of a grave, stern race, not given to bright garments, but content, as a rule, with white, or tones of brown. ”

“ Men now living in Tunis can remember the time when slaves were sold here; it was, indeed, the father, and the predecessor of the present English Consul, the late Sir Thomas Reade, who succeeded in putting an end to the abominable traffic. I was glad to turn away from the bazaar, and to take a walk with Afrigan through those higher and more aristocratic parts of Tunis which are reserved for the native population, and in which no Christian or European is allowed to dwell. ”

“ The country is much more fertile here than it is in the neighbourhood of Tunis; a rich belt of olive forest running along the seacoast, and many handsome Moorish villas and farm-houses nestling between the trees and the shore of the bay. Looking beyond the town inland, I saw ranges of sandhills of curious shape. Beyond these sandhills stretches a marshy desert reaching far into the interior. Riding at anchor in the harbour were two French ships of war, an Italian gunboat, and my old friend the Charles Quint! ”

“ We left Tunis by the Bab el-Khadhera, passed under the Spanish aqueduct behind the Bardo, the ancient palace of the Beys, and the Kasr Saeed, the present sovereign’s favourite residence, and soon entered a vast olive wood. The trees are extremely ancient, contorted in every possible manner, and seemed actually to have been turned inside out, and cut up into fantastic fretwork. At eight miles from Tunis is a wayside fountain and Arab coffee-shop, called Es-Sabala, near a palace built by the celebrated Saheb et-Tabäa, under Hamouda Pacha, now the property of General Kheir-ed-din. ”

“ The town of Tunis itself is cosmopolitan. Approached by steamer, it spreads itself out in a white fan along the edge of a lagoon that has the effect of a bay, being only divided from the Gulf of Tunis by the merest strip of land. ”

“ The Italians are commencing a similar work in the Tripolitaine, and once Italy has got effective control we may look with confidence to the restoration of the sparsely inhabited region between Egypt and Tunis to a state of prosperity such as it has not enjoyed since it ceased to form part of the Roman Empire. Wells will be dug and will tap the immense reserves of water underlying the surface of the Sahara. The French have really transformed Tunis from a semi-desert country to one of the most fertile and beautiful in the Mediterranean Basin. ”

“ The Horse Market.––Effects of Race.––The Bazaars.––Mohamed Medea.––The Bardo.––The Bey of Tunis.––His Mode of administering Justice.––Prince Puckler Muskau’s Account of his Interview.
Tunis is situated on the borders of a lake, or rather inlet of the sea. It is surrounded by a crenelated wall, which resembles very much that of Constantinople. Like that city, too, Tunis, from the exterior, presents a very imposing aspect; but enter the city, and the illusion vanishes; there is the same dirt, the same narrow and filthy streets, as in the Turkish capital. ”

“ It gives one a curious sensation, that of being locked in—even though you are locked into a city as big as Tunis. Outside lies the wild, open country, where no man’s life is safe; where bands of Arab marauders are constantly wandering from village to village, robbing, burning, slaying; and where, if any European were to be found after nightfall, his life would not be worth an hour’s purchase. ”

“ In 1881 France, with the deliberate encouragement of Bismarck, sent armies into Tunis, and assumed the protectorate of that misgoverned region. She had good grounds for her action. Not only had she large trade-interests in Tunis, but the country was separated from her earlier dominion in Algeria only by an artificial line, and its disorders increased the difficulty of developing the efficient administration which she had established there. Unhappily Italy also had interests in Tunis. ”

“ Tunis is the veritable gate of Eastern life, of the life of Haroun-Al-Rachid. The European city by the harbour is of to-day. The walled native city is almost unconscious of the existence of modern Europe. It is the most{358} interesting tourist resort of North Africa, more so than Algiers by far, with its souks, its proximity to Carthage, and its Orientalism. ”

“ Tunis [11] is twelve miles distant from this: It is a large and flourishing city. The people are more civilized than in Algiers, and the government milder, but the climate is very far from being so good. Tunis is low, hot, and damp, and destitute of good water, with which Algiers is supplied from a thousand springs.
I delivered my letters from the Bey, and obtained permission to visit the country in whatever direction I should please. I took with me a French renegado, of the name of Osman, recommended to me by Monsieur Bartheleny de Saizieux, consul of France to that state ”

“ The entire Regency of Tunis must, during the Roman occupation, have contained little short of twenty million inhabitants, while now, the most favourable estimate places the population at not more than a million and a half. Day after day, in traversing these arid and treeless plains, intersected by watercourses in which no water flows, the soil covered with sand and stones incapable of supporting vegetable life, we pondered over the causes which had turned a region once so fertile almost into a desert. ”

“ INGENUITY OF THE TUNISIANS.
A stranger visiting a city like Tunis, cannot but be struck with the various peculiarities, which present themselves to his view, wherever he turns. In their government, mercantile pursuits, professions and trades, the Tunisians are centuries behind. But, with all their disadvantages, the traveller, in traversing their crowded sooks (market places) and serpentine streets, finds numerous illustrations of the proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention." ”

“ In the spring of 1881 the French invaded Tunis, in order to punish the turbulence of the Kroumirs, and the French minister resident is now the virtual ruler of the country. Under French administration the Tunisian debt has been consolidated, commerce has increased, the means of transit have been improved, and a number of primary schools established. ”

“ The social and economic possession of Tunis was much more rapidly accomplished than that of Algeria. This country, after having been so long separated from Europe, and by its history become connected with the Asiatic world, is evidently resuming in the western basin of the Mediterranean the position which it should hold from the nature and relief of the land, its flora, and its climate. ”

“ French armies were in occupation of different points in the Regency, and were about to begin the march to the sacred city of Kairwan; and Tunis itself had, as a matter of precaution, been strongly occupied by the soldiers of the Republic. As a result of this state of things it had become dangerous for any Christian to go beyond the very limited districts in which the French troops were actually posted. Even in Tunis itself it was perilous to visit certain quarters of the city at any time, and after dark no European could walk about the streets safely. ”

“ France nominally was never at war with Tunis; yet the result of the invasion was that that country became virtually a French possession, although officially it is only under the protection of France. The treaty of El Bardo of the 12th of May 1881, confirmed by the decree of the 22nd of April 1882, placed Tunis under the protectorate of France. The country is administered under the direction of the French Foreign Office, in which there is a department of Tunisian affairs. ”

“ After some weeks’ excursion of no moment about Tunis, I again set out the eastern circuit by Gemme, or Tisdrus, towards Gabbs or Tacapæ, and continued along that coast till opposite the island of Gerba.
It is situated about half a mile from the land; it is the Meninx Insula, or island of the Lotophagi, and is a sandy island with several small villages, producing a few dates which are not good; labouring under a great scarcity of water; even that which it has is but indifferent. It has a small castle, not capable of any defence, subject to the Bey of Tunis. ”

“ The number of inhabitants, including 30,000 Jews, is upward of 130,000. Tunis is built without any regularity; the streets, in general, are narrow and dirty; and there are few buildings of any magnificence, except the great mosque, the bey's palace, and a few others. ”

“ Tunis is one of its cosmopolitan cities, where it has drunk of every foreign stream and influence, has been civilized, softened, informed—a city of the various Mediterranean world, with great colonies of other folk in it, Italians, Jews, Maltese—a New York, as it were, on its own scale. ”

“ Ever since I can remember, the Italians have suspected the French, and the French have suspected the Italians of designs upon Tunis. Bismarck's mention of it at this moment is probably only one of his usual devices to sow distrust of France. I have never found that the acquisition of Tunis recommended itself to French imagination, and I don't believe it would be taken as anything like a set-off against English acquisitions in Egypt or Syria. I believe our principal interest in Tunis arises from its being a source of supply of provisions to Malta. ”

“ It is packed in large oblong baskets of a caphise weight, and sells, according to its goodness, from seven to eight and a half piastres of Tunis (four and a half piastres being seven shillings English) [270] per hundredweight. This is cut every year and kept low; the ground around is bordered with roses. Between Menzil and Jaara is a castle, and under it encamps the Cayd of Amadis. (?) He has with him 100 spahis of Tunis and Zowawa; he collects the tribute from all the tribes of the south-east district of this kingdom, resembles a Bey, and has the greatest command in Tunis given to a subject. ”

“ This Goulette appears to be the chief place for the Arab malefactors, and they are mainly employed in improving the high road between Goulette and Tunis, and also in repairing the fortifications.
The afternoon was beautiful, though hot. As it wanted some time to dinner at Tunis, I made a détour 74 on my return to the ruins, and it requires a fine air to make you enjoy fine scenery. There was scarcely a ripple on the blue Mediterranean. Beautiful trees of every description, olive and orange trees, oleanders, and others, grew to the very base of the mountain, and sent up a delicious perfume. ”