little to the right and so pass the military hospital, a large
establishment which looks as if it could be converted into a barrack in
case of need. This is as it should be. Gafsa is a rallying-point, and must
be prepared for emergencies. Here, too, lie the cemeteries: the Jewish,
fronting the main road, with a decent enclosure; that of the Christians,
framed in a wire fence and containing a few wooden crosses, imitation
broken columns and tinsel wreaths; Arab tombs, scattered over a large
undefined tract of brown earth, and clustering thickly about some
white-domed maraboutic monument, whose saintly relics are desirable
companionship for the humbler dead.

The bare ground here is littered with pottery and other fragments of
ancient life testifying to its former populousness: flint implements,
among the rest. Of the interval between the latest of these stone-age
primevals and the first Egyptian invasion of Gafsa we know nothing; they,
the Egyptians, brought with them that plough which is figured in the
hieroglyphics, and has not yet changed its shape. You may see the
venerable instrument any day you like, being carried on a man's back to
his work in the oasis.

Athwart this region there runs an underground (excavated) stream of water,
led from Sidi Mansur to nourish the Gafsa plantations. Through holes in
the ground one looks down upon the element flowing mysteriously below;
figs and other trees are set in these hollows for the sake of the shade
and moisture, and their crowns barely reach the level of the soil. This is
no place to wander about at night--a false step in the darkness and a man
would break his neck. There was talk, at one time, of leading this brook,
which is sweet and non-mineral, into Gafsa for drinking purposes, but the
native garden proprietors raised their inevitable howl of objections, and
the project was abandoned.