a radiant trail of green, the crenellated walls of the Kasbah gleaming
through the interstices of the foliage--the whole vision swathed in an
orange-tawny frame of desolation, of things non-human....

[ILLUSTRATION: The Last Palms]

I was tempted to think that the sunset view from the Meda eminence was the
finest in the immediate neighbourhood of Gafsa. Not so; that from the low
hills behind Sidi Mansur, with the stony ridge of Jebel Assalah at your
back, surpasses it in some respects. Through a gap you look towards the
distant green plantations, with a shimmering level in the foreground; on
your other side lies the Oued Baiesh, crossed by the track to Kairouan,
where strings of camels are for ever moving to and fro, laden with
merchandise from the north or with desert products from the oases of
Djerid and Souf. The dry bed of the torrent glows in hues of isabel and
cream, while its perpendicular mud-banks, on the further side, gleam like
precipices of amber; the soil at your feet is besprinkled with a profusion
of fair and fragile flowerlets.

Here stand, like sentinels at the end of all things living, the three or
four last, lonely palms--they and their fellows lower down are fed by a
silvery streamlet which is forced upwards, I suppose, by contact with
Professor Koken's conglomerate; above and below this oasis-region the
river-bed is generally dry. It must be a wonderful sight, however, when
the place is in flood--a deluge of liquid ooze careering madly southward
towards the dismal Chotts amid the crashing of stones and palm trees and
the collapse of banks. For the Oued Baiesh can be angry at times; in 1859
it submerged fifty hectares of the Gafsa gardens.

Instead of returning by the main road from Sidi Mansur, one can bend a