North Africa and the Desert

I WAS fortunate in my first landfall at Tunis. It was a fine sea picture framed in that chill November dawn. On my left, over the rippling watery gold to the few pink clouds eastward, lay the great blue mountain headland, stretching far behind. In front, a little to the right, was Goletta, the port, hard by; and ranging off northward the line of the ocean beach ran stern and solemn, with the lighthouse above. That rise, there, was the hill of Carthage. Westward over the hollow space of waters swept the crescent horizon inland, low and misty, centred a little to the south by the obscure white of far Tunis. Carthage is the first thought of the traveller; his instant memory is of Phoenician ships, and his imagination is of Scipio and Regulus—these are the sights they saw.

The steamer plied up the long canal that makes the shallow, broad lake navigable to the docks some miles beyond; flamingoes flew to the right and left over the level lapping waters, fresh in the raw, damp, almost rainy air; and gradually Tunis drew in sight, like a great white flower on the bosom of the sloping uplands, strange, solitary, unexpected, with minarets and the island look of a Moslem city.

Barren enough was my first acquaintance with the land side, weary, cheerless, desolate, like windy prairies in autumn, uninhabited, uninhabitable; and I was chilled to the bone when I came back to the hotel, then in the bud of its first season. It is more sober now, but then it had a near cousinship to Monte Carlo; it was delightfully irresponsible, vivacious, gay. One passed to the picturesque bar and the café, thick with interesting groups; or with equal ease to the “little horses” with their ever-dissolving banks of faces, a covey of all nations, round the bell-timed play, and to the vaudeville stage with gymnasts, French acting, fat Jewess dancers, and a world lightly enjoying itself, as it looked from railed low boxes on the spacious floor—men, women, children, with tables, glasses, straws, and bright-colored things to drink, waiters, musicians—always a pretty scene, with incidents, and rich in human relations; or one went more gravely by a stairway to the privacy of baccarat in its upper seclusion of the visiting card. It was a pleasant and polite place wherever one might stroll about, and in every corridor and at all hours the grand toilette of capitals, men and women—even adventurers—of the world. The old beylic of Tunis seemed far away; at least, one was still in Christendom.

I stepped out on the sidewalk after dinner, on a broad avenue with trees. At the brilliant crossing carriages were passing with drawn screens; and, as they drove slowly by, fingers held back the curtains, and from time to time glimpses of women’s figures were disclosed of quite a different type from any within doors—ladies of wealthy native families taking the air, and curious to see the French streets by night. So I learned that it was the eve of Leilet-el-Kadir, the twenty-sixth of Ramadan, the night of power commemorating the descent of the Koran on earth, a grand Mohammedan feast; and I went forthwith into old Tunis on my first voyage of discovery. Festivity reigned. On every hand were lights of all varieties; the minarets aloft were outlined with them; in the narrow streets they were as the multitude of the stars for number, colored and clustered, hung and looped and festooned, flaring and lanterned, a fine illumination in the obscurity; and under them an animated throng of all ages, beautifully dressed for the occasion—a city, a race, and a faith en fête.