CHAPTER XXIV TO THE COLOSSEUM OF EL DJEM BY MOTOR CROSS Africa in an automobile! A Snorting and puffing through the silent deserts of eastern Tunisia; dashing along on the back of a "yellow devil" through crowds of superstitious Mohammedan Arabs! Scaring the people, routing the donkeys and the camels, and turning the caravans into flying hordes of men and beasts! These are some features of my eighty-mile journey from Sousse to Sfax by automobile. From Tunis to Sousse we came by train. The journey, which is less than a hundred miles and all the way along the Mediterranean Sea, took us nearly six hours. Sousse lies on the Mediterranean away off here on the edge of North Africa. It is an old walled city of twenty-seven thousand Mohammedans made up of snow-white, flatroofed buildings. The men in the streets are dark-skinned Arabs while the black-clad women are closely veiled. A town of few foreigners, Sousse has all the aspects of the days of Haroun al Raschid. Its streets resound with the tales of story-tellers, with the high, thin voices of Arab schoolboys as they sing out the Koran they are trying to learn, and with the shrill cries of the imams from the minarets of the mosques as they call the Faithful to prayers. It seems queer to see anything so modern here as an automobile. Sousse is one of the oldest cities of the world, having been founded by the Phoenicians twenty-eight centuries ago. It existed before Carthage itself and was an imperial Roman city in the days of the Emperor Trajan. Under the Arabs it was for a long time the stronghold of pirates and corsairs. A strange picture was presented at the time of our departure with the crowd that gathered outside the walls to see the "yellow devil" start off. The "devil" is a great golden automobile imported from Paris to carry first-class passengers from Sousse to Sfax. It is shaped like an old Concord coach, with three seats on the top, six inside, and one in front for the chauffeur. Take a seat with me on the top and ride through the wild scenes of northeastern Africa. We are higher than the roofs of the huts by the roadside and away above the motley crowd of Arabs watching the start. The chauffeur cranks our "yellow devil." Now he blows his horn. Honk! Honk! We are off. run to get out of our way. Men and beasts in the road We pass an encampment of Arab soldiers. The men are drying their wash and wave their wet garments at us as we go by. Now we have left the suburbs of Sousse and are far out on the plains, travelling through olive orchards. They cover the country for miles. Sousse makes salad oil for shipment all over the world, and has been noted for its olives ever since the days of the Carthaginians. Indeed, most of the trees look old enough to have been planted long before the time of Christ. They are knotted and gnarled, but their wide-spreading branches are loaded with fruit. The orchards are interspersed with grain fields and pastures and the automobile startles the men at the ploughs and the animals that feed near the roadside. See those black sheep, their fat tails flopping as they gallop over the fields! The ewes are running as fast as they can, with the little lambs tagging behind. Now we are passing a flock where the rams are butting the ewes to make them get out of the way. See the camels cantering over the plain. They look like interrogation points on legs. Nearer the road are some harnessed to the forked-stick ploughs of the region. Their backs are turned to the automobile, but they see us and break away in a panic, dragging their rude ploughs after them. We meet others on the road carrying great burdens which they almost lose as they gallop out of the way. We see them hobbled in the fields and standing out like great yellow ostriches against the horizon. Farther on we reach the edge of the desert. We pass Arab encampments. The low black tents become alive as we approach. Bedouin women clad in Turkey red gowns crawl out from under the tent curtains, and gaily dressed children loaded with jewellery stand and stare at our motor car. There are Bedouin girls whose silver anklets flash in the sun and whose enormous earrings gleam out against their rich copper faces. Now we are passing a cemetery. It is filled with Arabs in white gowns and there is evidently a funeral going on. They rise from the ground about the tombs to gaze at us as we fly by. The tombstones are mere boxes of clay. Each has a stone at the head and one at the foot upon which the guardian angels of the deceased are supposed to sit watching their dead. Notice the road. It is as smooth as a park drive in any |