Decidedly, things were beginning well.

"If you go to Gafsa," he resumed, "--if you really propose going to Gafsa,
pray let me give you a card to a friend of mine, who lives there with his
family and may be useful to you. No trouble, I assure you!"

He scribbled a few lines, addressed to "Monsieur Paul Dufresnoy,
Engineer," for which I thanked him. "We all know each other in Africa," he
said. "It's quite a small place--our Africa, I mean. You could squeeze the
whole of it into the Place de la Concorde.... Nothing but minerals
hereabouts," he went on. "They talk and dream of them, and sometimes their
dreams come true. Did you observe the young proprietor of the restaurant
at Sbeitla? Well, a short time ago some Arabs brought him a handful of
stones from the mountains; he bought the site for two or three hundred
francs, and a company has already offered him eight hundred thousand for
the rights of exploitation. Zinc! He is waiting till they offer a
million."

Majen....

A solitary station upon the wintry plain--three or four shivering Arabs
swathed in rags--desolation all around--the sun setting in an angry cloud.
It was a strong impression; one realized, for the first time, one's
distance from the life of civilized man. Night descended with the rush of
a storm, and as the friendly train disappeared from my view, I seemed to
have taken leave of everything human. This feeling was not lessened by my
reception at the funduk, whose native manager sternly refused to give me
that separate sleeping-room which, I had been assured, was awaiting me and
which, as he truthfully informed me, was even then unoccupied. The