Fountains in the Sand: Rambles Among the Oases of Tunisia Part 11

Spiky reeds and tamarisks trip alongside, and the wild fig thrusts demoniac roots into the crevices; here and there you may see a group of oleasters, descendants, maybe, of the now vanished Roman olive plantations in the plain, or a stunted palm that has shot up from the stone cast away by some pa.s.sing caravan. For these Oueds are all highways dating from immemorial ages; there is a ceaseless pa.s.sage of man and animals along them.

We pa.s.sed numbers of camels, groaning and snorting among the slippery rocks, with the water splashing over their feet; higher up, a large descending flock of sheep, over six hundred of them, completely blocked up the valley. They were being led to the plain below, where, thanks to the recent rains, a succulent but ephemeral crop of green had sprung up. Their owner was a fine Boujaja, some six and a half feet in height, accompanied by a st.u.r.dy brood of children: milk-drinkers. The upland pastures could wait, he said. Strange to think that two more showers a year might make settlers of these vagrants.

It was among these rocks that Philippe Thomas first detected the traces of those phosphates that have made his name famous. Tissot, in 1878, already antic.i.p.ated their discovery.

In point of sheer grandeur, of convulsed stratification and cloven ravine, of terrorizing features, I have seen gorges far finer than this of Seldja.

Yet it contains one stretch of superlative beauty--a short defile or canon, I mean, formed of two opposing precipices with a chasm of some thirty yards between them; they wind and curve, parallel to one another, with such magisterial accuracy that one would think they had been designed with mighty compa.s.ses from on high, and then carved out, sagaciously, by some t.i.tanic blade.

Here we halted; it was time to turn back. There was an indentation in the rocks near at hand, fretted away by hungry floods of the past and overhung, now, with creepers and drooping fernery, concerning which my Tripolitan companion told me a long and complicated legend. This shadowy hollow, he explained, was the bridal couch, in olden days, of an earthly maiden and her demon-lover. He was a simple fellow, unfortunately, who knew the story too well to be able to tell it coherently.

On my second visit, however, I pushed vigorously up the stream-bed in the heat of the morning, determined to reach the head of the waters. Gradually the aspect of the valley changes. It opens out; the rocks melt away into bare white dunes, the country a.s.suming the character of a tableland; you begin to feel a sense of aloofness.

There was blazing sunshine in these upper regions, but a fresh breeze; this is the Ras el-Aioun, where the French have bridled some of the wild waters, thrusting them into a tube that carries them in a mad whirl to their settlement at Metlaoui. Here, too, they have planted a promising youthful oasis, a kind of nursery garden of poplars and cypresses and tamarisks and mimosas, in whose shade grow geraniums, mesembryanthemum and other flowers and creepers, as well as a host of vegetables of every kind.

I soon discovered a recess in this delectable pleasaunce, and began my solemn preparations for luncheon.

Out of the pool below there resounded a tuneful croaking of frogs: it spoke of many waters....

Presently an Italian workman or gardener with curly grey hair and moustache--the ubiquitous Italian--came up and began to talk,--_per fare un po' di compania_. He conversed delightfully, a smile playing about his kindly old face. He told me about the garden, about the French engineers, about himself, chiefly about himself, in limpid, child-like fashion. He had travelled far in the Old and New Worlds; in him I recognized, once again, that simple mind of the wanderer or sailor who learns, as he goes along, to talk and think decently; who, instead of gathering fresh enc.u.mbrances on life's journey, wisely discards even those he set out with.

Seldja, he told me, used to be a dangerous place for Europeans to traverse; many robberies and even murders had taken place there in times past; the new regime, of course, had put an end to all that. But there were still two perils: the frightful flies that bred diseases and made the gorge almost impa.s.sable in the hot months (every one suffered from fevers), and the serpents. Ah, those _maladette bestie di serpenti_--they swarmed among the rocks: they were of every kind and size; worst of all, the spleenful naja. He himself had killed one that measured two metres in length and was as thick as a man's arm. They don't wait till you can hit them, he said, but rush straight at you, swift as an arrow, upraised on their ma.s.sive posterior coils, hissing like a steam-engine, and swelling out their throat with diabolical rage.

This is the beast that figured in the compet.i.tion between Aaron and Pharaoh's conjurers, and it remains the favourite of modern African snake-charmers, who catch it after first irritating it by means of a woollen cloth wherein the fangs are embedded and broken. It is also, no doubt, the dreaded species which Sall.u.s.t describes as infesting the region of Gafsa. But Lucan goes a little too far in his account of Cato's expedition into these parts; this veracious historian has inserted a few pages of sublime serpent nonsense, exquisite fooling....

Of all the deadly worms that breed in these wildernesses the most formidable, because the most sluggish, is the two-horned nocturnal cerastes, the "pretty worm of Nilus." No sensible person, nowadays, goes into the bled[1] [Footnote: This is one of the many Arabic words which admit of no clear translation. As opposed to a town, it means a village or encampment; as opposed to that, the open land, a plain, or particular district. When colonists talk of "going into the bled," they mean their farms; in newspaper language it signifies the country generally, inhabited or not--what we should call "the provinces "; oftentimes, again, the barren desert or (more technically) the soil.] in summer-time unless armed with a phial of the antidote--Trousse Calmette or Trousse Legros--whose liquid is injected with a hypodermic syringe above and below the wound, and has saved many lives.

"And the scorpions, Signore! We have to tie cotton-wool round the legs of our beds so that these infernal creatures cannot climb up while we are asleep; they get entangled in it, ha, ha! And that is why we all keep cats and hens, who eat them, you know, just like the Arabs do. And sometimes it rains scorpions."

I had heard that story before, from natives; and it may well be founded on fact. The terrific gusts of desert wind overturn the stones under which the scorpions lie; the fragile beasts are exposed to the blast and, being relatively light, swept skyward across leagues of country with the flying sand. A similar explanation has been given for those old accounts of frog and fish rains.

"Yes; they drop from the clouds. During certain storms I have picked them off my clothes, three or four at a time. Rather a ticklish operation, sir."

So we discussed the world in that umbrageous shelter, to the music of the frogs. He condescended to partake of a microscopic share of my meal, and thereafter left me, with some old-world compliment, to irrigate his thirsty lettuces.

_Chapter XVI_

_AT THE HEAD OF THE WATERS_

I sat alone, screened from the midday heat, drowsy and content. It was a pleasant resting-place, under that leafy arbour, through which only a few rays of light could filter, weaving arabesque designs that moved and melted on the floor as the wind stirred the foliage overhead. And a pleasant occupation, listening to those amiable amphibians in the mere below--they carried my thought back to other frog-concerts, dimly remembered, in some other lands--and gazing through the green network of branches upon that sun-scorched garden, where now a silvery thread of water began to attract my attention as it stole, coyly, among the flower-beds.

The day is yet young, methought; it is too hot to think of marching home at this hour. Now is the time, rather, for a pipe of _kif_--if only to demonstrate the difference that exists between man and the ape. For your monkey can be taught to eat and drink like a Christian; he can even learn to smoke tobacco. But he cannot smoke _kif_: the stuff would choke him.

Four pipes, reverentially inhaled ... it was almost too much, for a mere dilettante.

But the mystery of the frogs, the when and where of it, was solved. Slowly and benignly the memories travelled back, building themselves into a vision so clear-cut and elaborate withal, that I might have been holding it, as one holds some engraving or miniature, in my hand. It was in the Rhine-woods, of course; long years ago, in summertime. But the frog-music here was not amiable at all; never have I heard such angry batrachian vociferations. They came in a discontented and menacing chorus from ten thousand leathery throats, and almost drowned our converse as we crept along through the twilight of trees that shot up from the swampy earth.

These Rhine-woods are like pathless tropical jungles: everything is so green and luxuriant; and morning grew to midday while we threaded our way through the tangle of interlacing boughs and undergrowth. Yet we knew, all the time, that something else was in store for us, some joy, some surprise. And lo! there was an opening in the forest, and we suddenly found ourselves standing upon the summit of a high bank at whose foot there rolled a sunlit and impetuous torrent. Too staid for the formation of ripples, too swift for calm content, the river seemed to boil up from below in a kind of frolicsome rage. A blissful sight.

"_Er spinnt_" my companion was saying.

In what obscure chamber of the brain had those words slumbered, closely folded, for thirty years? It was indeed an authentic weaving of arabesque designs upon the even texture of the living liquid ma.s.s; mult.i.tudinous rings and ovals and lozenges were cast up from the green depths as from a mighty over-bubbling cauldron; some fiercely engulfed again, others torn hither and thither into new and pleasing shapes, fresh ones for ever emerging; only a few contrived to linger unchanged, floating in sunny splendour down the face of the waters. A blissful sight! The dark and mazy woodlands, now, were left far behind--the croaking of the frogs sounded strangely distant. We gazed in ecstasy upon that shining flood....

On my return journey down the Seldja gorge, that afternoon, I had a narrow escape. It struck me that it would be more agreeable, instead of once more following the windings of the brook, to proceed along the railway--a single line--that climbs down from Ras-el-Aioun to within a few hundred yards of the _bordj_, where my horse was waiting. It was easier walking; it would also be shadier (in the tunnels) and, last and chiefest, I would enjoy a change of scene by looking down into the valley instead of up at the cliffs.

Plausible reasoning.

This line is a pretty little piece of engineering; there are bridges and steep embankments that afford fine views into the tortuous depths of the gorge; there are tunnels, blasted into the rock without lining of masonry, deliciously cool and all too short--all too short save one, that seemed never-ending. It writhed about, too, in that dark mountain; I saw no speck of light, either before or behind me; the iron roadway was raised about a foot, on rough stones, above the narrow path that followed the jagged, irregular wall of rock along which I was groping and stumbling. Rather an awkward place, I thought, to meet a train----

And as if in that reflection had lain the potency of a spell, there came upon me, at that moment, from behind, a distinct blast of wind and a low rumbling sound. I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears. There was no doubt about it: a train, still invisible, was gliding in good-natured fashion, with steam shut off, down the gradient. A considerable number of ideas, incongruous and quite beside the mark, pa.s.sed through my mind; but also this one--if I ran, I should inevitably stumble against a sleeper or some projecting stone; if I stumbled, I should lose my presence of mind, and then, perhaps--! Meanwhile, the noise grew louder, deafening; already, in imagination, I felt the monster's hot breath upon me.

Walking steadily, therefore, for a few more yards, I felt a little cavity in the rough-hewn wall of rock that appeared deeper than the others; there I compressed myself, feeling flatter than a turbot, and absurdly resigned.

It was the nick of time. The earth was trembling under the mechanical horror; it pa.s.sed me, with a roar and rush of wind, by I know not how many inches; there were flashes of light, a screeching of machinery, an acrid smell of mineral oils and heated metal. Then all was over again, save for a choking-fit produced by a deluge of bituminous coal.

Just a little flutter.

But outside that tunnel, in the sunshine, I sat down and indulged in certain musings. _Suicide of an Englishman in Tunisia_: that was it; inasmuch as even they who know me well could hardly be brought to believe that such an act of abysmal foolishness, as this of not investigating on which side the safety-niches were, could be the result of accident. An ign.o.ble, ridiculous death.

It must have been a fit of temporary obliviousness, brought about by the unaccustomed heat of the sun.

Or possibly the _kif_....

It affects people differently.

I must limit myself to three pipes, in future.

_Chapter XVII_

_ROMAN OLIVE-CULTURE_

Now, on the former occasion, instead of descending into the _bordj_ from the railway line, I rode with the Tripolitan once more out of the rock-portal into the plain, that glowed with the fugitive fires of sunset.

It is a treeless waste, bereft of every sign of cultivation.

And yet, if you look on your left hand as you issue from the gorge, you will perceive, at the very narrowest point, some fragments of ancient masonry adhering to the cliff; they are all that remains of a Roman dam which blocked up the valley, regulated the supply of water flowing from above, and purified it from stones and sand. The inference is clear: the plain must have been cultivated in those days. Likely enough, it was covered, like many other parts of "Africa," with olives, that drew their life from this judiciously managed water-supply.

The Oued Seldja to-day fulfils no such useful function. Once the rock-portal is pa.s.sed, it unlearns all its sprightly grace and trickles disconsolately through the sands, expiring, at last, in the dreary Chott el Rharsa.

Monsieur Bordereau thinks that the ancient "forest of Africa" was composed chiefly of olive plantations, and proofs of the former abundance of these trees can be found in certain local names, such as Jebel Zitouna--the Mount of Olives--clinging to localities where not a tree is now visible; there are also sporadic oleasters growing near many Roman ruins. Strong evidence; and still stronger is this: that Roman oil-presses have actually been found, buried in the desert sand. Up to a short time ago the Arabs deliberately destroyed the olives, to avoid paying the tax on them; the French have changed all this, and though I am not aware that they go so far as did the Romans, who encouraged tree-planting by exemption from imposts, yet they have inaugurated a severe regime; one reads with satisfaction of exemplary penalties inflicted for illicit timber-cutting.

It is good to remember, also, that whereas the Romans had five centuries of peace to bring Tunisia to its high pitch of prosperity, the French only began yesterday. And they have a harder task before them, for in the interval the Arabs have arrived in the country. It is they, with their roving and pastoral habits, who have done the mischief, changing arable land into pasture, which grows ever poorer, and finally desert. The fertility of these regions may be said to have been annihilated by the goats of a nomad race, whose faith has made it improvident and mentally sterile.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have just re-perused Lapie's _Civilizations Tunisiennes_.

He says that "la chevre est le genie malfaisant de la Regence.... Plus que le despotisme, plus que le fatalisme, elle a ruine le pays: c'est la chevre, en effet, qui deboise et surtout qui s'oppose au rebois.e.m.e.nt, et l'on sait quelle influence a eue sur le regime des eaux et sur la fertilite du sol le debois.e.m.e.nt de la province d'Afrique." Apropos of this pasturing by nomad cattle, it is a singular fact that whereas a large proportion of desert plants of northern Tunisia are poisonous to camels and goats, here, in the south, nearly all of them are edible.]