amusement, and even written tomes upon the subject--it is ever thus, when
one thinks to have made a scientific discovery. These stones are scattered
all over the plain, and Monsieur Couillault has traced the site of several
workshops--_ateliers_--of prehistoric weapons near Sidi Mansur, which lies
within half a mile of Gafsa, whence he has extracted--or rather retrieved,
for the flints merely lie upon the ground--quantities of instruments of
every shape; among them, some saws and a miniature spade.

[Illustration: Gafsa and Jebel Orbata]

My collection of these relics, casually picked up here and there, already
numbers two hundred pieces, and illustrates every period of those early
ages--uncouth battle-axes and spear-points; fine needles, apparently used
for sewing skins together; the so-called laurel-leaves, as thin as
card-board; knife-blades; instruments for scraping beast-hides--all of
flint. What interests me most, are certain round throwing-stones; a few
are flat on both sides, but others, evidently the more popular shape, are
flat below and rise to a cone above. Of these latter, I have a series of
various sizes; the largest are for men's hands, but there are smaller
ones, not more than eleven centimetres round, for the use of children: one
thinks of the fierce little hands that wielded them, these many thousand
years ago. Even now the natives will throw by preference with a stone of
this disk-like shape--the cone pointing downwards. But, judging by the
size of their implements, the hands of this prehistoric race can hardly
have been as large as those of their modern descendants.

Then, as now, Gafsa must have been an important site; the number of these
weapons is astonishing. Vast populations have drifted down the stream of
time at this spot, leaving no name or mark behind them, save these relics
fashioned, by the merest of chances, out of a practically imperishable