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CHAPTER XX

WALKS ABOUT TUNIS

AKE a seat upon one of the magic carpets of the Arabian Nights and fly across the Atlantic Ocean and over the Mediterranean to the shores of North Africa. Direct your genii to set you down beside me on the top of the kasbah, or citadel, in the snowwhite city of Tunis and let us travel together through this, one of the oldest populations of the oriental world. Before we start cast your eyes over the expanse of buildings below you. You are high above the city, which stretches out in every direction, looking like a collection of great blocks of ice, with here and there the white dome of the shrine of a marabout or Mohammedan saint, or the square, marblefaced towers of a mosque rising above them. That reddishbrown section of buildings lying on the edge of the water is the French quarter; and that wide, gleaming avenue is the canal across Lake Tunis built to bring the ocean steamers right up to the town. There are blue mountains on our right with white buildings upon them, while away off to the left over the lake we see the snowy houses of Sidi Bon Said and the cathedral of the "White Fathers," which marks the site where old Carthage once stood. More than twenty centuries ago that was a mighty city; but Tunis, above which we are standing, was founded even before Carthage, throve until it was supplanted by its Phoenician rival, and then lived on to see Carthage crumble to dust.

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From the Mosque of El Zitouna the call to prayer echoes over snowwhite Tunis, which had already passed its youth when the Phoenicians landed here twelve hundred years before Christ.

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Gold-embroidered cloths are much used by the tailors of Tunis to make gorgeous jackets and vests for both men and women.

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Dates cut from the trees in great clusters are everywhere for sale. These African dates are far juicier and sweeter than those sold in American stores.

The Tunis of to-day is rapidly growing and it is one of the most cosmopolitan towns of the world. It contains, with its suburbs, in the neighbourhood of two hundred thousand souls. It has something like forty-four thousand Italians, twenty-six thousand Jews, far different in costume and appearance from the Israelites of our country, and thousands of Maltese, Sicilians, and Spaniards. Its French are somewhat fewer than the Italians, but they include a large garrison of soldiers, dressed in gay uniforms, who form striking figures wherever they go. The most important part of the Tunisian population, however, is the Mohammedan element. This numbers at least seventy thousand, and its members form the chief inhabitants of old Tunis, the great snowy town under our feet. They are Orientals of the Orientals, and live in a world of their own. They do not like Christians and tolerate us only because they must. Their town is shut off from the rest of the city by an enormous wall, and under French rule they are allowed to have their own customs and do about as they please. A person dares not enter any one of the hundred-odd mosques where they go daily for prayers; he must not visit their schools, while he who would attempt to go into one of their houses without permission might be killed. And if he were, I doubt whether the French would object.

I have visited most of the great cities of the oriental world; I have travelled through India, Turkey, and Egypt, and I have yet to find a section so strictly Eastern as the streets of old Tunis. They are narrow and winding. In some of them the fat Tunisian Jewesses have to suck in their breath in order to squeeze through. The white houses which wall these streets are almost windowless, and

the few windows there are perch so high above the street that a field glass would not enable one to look in. They are covered with meshes so small that a lead pencil would not go through them. The doors are kept closed, and outside the business section there are only blank white walls on both sides. Many of the houses are built over the streets so that one goes through vaulted passages from one part of the town to the other.

Let us step down into the city and see for ourselves. We shall spend most of the time in the bazaars, which are stranger than those of Constantinople or Cairo and of greater extent than those of Damascus or Fez. There is an entrance near the kasbah, and a three minutes' walk will take us out of the sun and into a mammoth cave far stranger than that of Kentucky. This Tunisian cave is composed of a labyrinth of covered passageways lined with stores and filled with Arabs buying and selling. We shall meet all the characters of Eastern tradition and see them doing business in the same way as for centuries past. The streets of the bazaars are roofed so that they look like mighty vaults extending on and on until the eye is lost in following them. The roofs are of stone coated with whitewash. These are lighted only by grated holes cut here and there, but the sun is so bright that there is plenty of light, and under its rays the white ceiling itself shines like the stalactites of the cave of Luray. Some of the passageways are roofed with boards. They remind one of the old covered bridges of Venice or Florence which had shops upon them, save that the Tunisian bazaars extend for long distances and their shops are like nothing to be found outside the Orient. In addition there are smaller bazaars running off in every direction, until the whole is a sort of

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