Fountains in the Sand | Page 2

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