"Gafsa ... Gafsa," he began, in dreamy fashion, as though I had proposed a
trip to Lake Tchad. And then, emphatically:

"_Gafsa?_ Why on earth didn't you go over Sfax?"

"Ah, everybody has been suggesting that route."

"I can well believe it, Monsieur."

In short, my plan was out of the question; utterly out of the question.
The road--a mere track--was over sixty kilometres in length and positively
unsafe on a wintry night; besides, the land lay 800 metres in height, and
a traveller would be frozen to death. I must go as far as Majen, a few
stations beyond Feriana; sleep there in an Arab funduk (caravanserai), and
thank my stars if I found any one willing to supply me with a beast for
the journey onward next morning. There are practically no tourists along
this line, he explained, and consequently no accommodation for them; the
towns that one sees so beautifully marked on the map are railway
stations--that and nothing more; and as to the broad highways crossing the
southern parts of Tunisia in various directions--well, they simply don't
exist, _voila_!

"That's not very consoling," I said, as we took our seats in the
compartment again. "It begins well."

And my meditations took on a sombre hue. I thought of a little overland
trip I had once undertaken, in India, with the identical object of
avoiding a long circuitous railway journey--from Udaipur to Mount Abu. I
remembered those "few miles of desert."