From Sfax I went by train to Gafsa, an inland oasis town lying most picturesquely in a sandy plain, surrounded by rocky mountains that rise sheer from it. It is about three miles from the station of the same name, and the drive to it leads from the bare plain to the thick olive groves and the clustering palms that form the oasis. It is just a little Arab town, with the usual handful of French government offices and the fort. There are several mosques, and from the minaret of one I watched the magnificence of the sunset across the plain. There are more than thirty-eight springs about here, so the place does not lack water, and every stream is full of small water tortoises. The remains of the Roman baths are still to be seen. A group of village women were washing their jars in the clear blue-green water, whilst small boys offered to dive for coins.

The cultivation of olives is the chief industry of the place and I went to see a native olive press in the evening. The air was thick with the heavy cloying smell of oil, and in the long low building men were turning a press from which oozed a dark fluid. A smoky lamp was the only light, and their dark glistening arms and faces showed up fitfully as they moved. In the dim light they might have been denizens of the nether regions, busied over some horrid rite. From the shadows came the sound of muffled feet, where the gaunt pale figure of a camel circled interminably, turning a stone mill that crushed the fruit. Huge barrels, shining greasily, stood about filled with pure oil. The ground was slippery and uneven, and a heap of the crushed skins and pulp lay in the yard outside, staining the earth a dull crimson.

I seemed to be the only European traveller in the little town, and my first attempt at finding a hotel had not been very happy. There had been a doubt as to which to recommend me, and I had engaged a room by telegram in advance, but my heart sank as my dilapidated carriage drew up at it. It looked like a small drinking booth, with a floor of beaten earth and a few ricketty tables. From the background appeared a sodden-looking old man, who had evidently been sampling the hotel wine freely. He took me across a muddy yard inhabited by dejected hens and showed me through a rough room full of women ironing clothes, into a dreadful bedroom strewn with untidy garments. Out of it opened another which he offered me. But one glance was sufficient for me and I fled.

The next attempt turned out to be another little cafÉ place, but it had a block of buildings down the street where guests were put up, and which was clean and neat. No one else, not even a servant, lived in it. I was given two enormous keys, one for my bedroom and one of the front door, and after dining in the little cafÉ, where a wooden screen separated me from the Arab clientÈle who were drinking coffee and playing cards, I returned to my fastness. It struck chill and bare as I locked myself in. Not a sound. Luckily the furniture was too meagre to give cover for thieves. There were about ten other rooms in the building, all empty ... no servants and no means of calling one. I woke late in the night, thinking I heard a sound in the passage. The night was pitch dark and silent, and the village seemed dead. From somewhere came the drip-drip of water. I listened, but could hear nothing else, and when I woke next, daylight was struggling through the curtains. All the accessories for a splendid ghost story had been there, but fortunately there was no actor for the chief part.

The oasis is very beautiful and my guide said that in the time of orange blossom one is forced to muffle one’s face because of the overpowering scent. It may be true. He was a sallow melancholy Arab youth, who had served at Salonika and had lost an arm there. He did not talk much, but warmed up on the subject of his wound and gave me a horribly realistic account of it. “And why,” he asked, “were the English fighting the French?” I tried to enlighten him, but with little success. He had been well cared for in hospital at Salonika by a lady who was very good to the wounded. French? He did not know. Perhaps she was, or English or German. Anyway she talked French and she had wept over his wounds and had given him chocolate and had taught him to write with his left hand. So her memory is still cherished in this remote little town of Tunisia. His cousin had also been sent to the War and they were always together. They had not then felt so alone. His cousin had made him promise that if he were killed Yousuf must see he was buried as a good Moslem, and must write and tell his family. Should it be Yousuf who fell, then Ali would carry out the same good offices for him. They were together when there was a loud explosion and his cousin fell upon his face. The boy ran to pick him up and found him dead, and casting up his hands in despair, at that moment he himself was struck and his arm torn off. When he came to himself the stretcher-bearers were carrying him away. And he said “Take also my cousin, for I must see that he has proper burial,” but they answered “We must take you first,” and so he was carried into the darkness and never saw Ali’s body again. “What could I have done? They would not listen to me, and I know not how my poor cousin was buried. Ah! he knew that he would not live,” said Yousuf. “When we first put on gas-masks, then Ali wept, for he felt Death touch him. And so it happened.” He was silent.

As we rode, a sudden storm of rain came up. The mountains were blotted out, and a tiny marabou stood out startlingly white of a sudden against the blue black of the clouds. Two pigeons flew across them looking like bits of white paper, a heavy drop or two fell, digging deep into the loose sand, the palms stood motionless waiting, and then with a great rush came the rain.

From there I was going on to Tozeur, and the only train left at the dreadful hour of 5 a.m. Motors were non-existent, so I had to start for the station soon after 4 a.m. in a cross between a hearse and a bathing machine known as the hotel omnibus. I shared it with various muffled figures who emerged sleepily one by one from blank shuttered houses on the way. Usually they first had to be wakened by loud thumps on the door and shouts that we could not wait for them. It felt like a dream, and I wondered if perhaps I had got into some enchanted place which I could never leave again. Supposing we were to miss the train, how often might not this performance be repeated? I became aggressively English and determined. At the last stopping place I declared if I were kept waiting any longer I should complain to the ContrÔle Civile. I was rather vague as to the power I was threatening to unleash, but the mere thought of it roused the driver and Yousuf to a frenzy of action. They rushed simultaneously upon the barred door and kicked and knocked to such purpose that the last traveller appeared blinking and still arranging his turban. And then when we got to the station, the train was late and we had half an hour to wait.

As I steamed away across the wide stretches of tawny plain with the dark blur of the oasis of Gafsa in the distance and the mountains already turning purple in the sickly dawn, the unreality of the place seemed to accentuate itself in my mind. Had I really been there? Really wandered through the oasis, and watched the troops of camels coming along the dried river bed? Really heard the call of the muezzin across the sleeping Arab town? Or had it all been a dream? I scarcely knew.

It was wet when I reached Tozeur, and I stumbled down sandy roads in a chill rain, to the hotel. It was more the oasis of one’s imagination than anything I had yet seen. Beyond the thick grove of palm and fruit trees and the little native town built of earth bricks there stretched a great waste of yellow sand, in which the modern station buildings stood absurdly by themselves. To the east there glistened the vast Shott, a kind of quicksand with a salty crust. There are safe tracks across it for camels and mules, but a step to right or left may engulf the unwary traveller. In the distance it looks like an immense lake, the salt surface shining like water, and after rain it does become a shallow lake in places. It has been a terror to travellers for many generations, and rumour exaggerated its dangers. One of the earliest accounts of it was written in the fourteenth century, by Abou Yaga Zakkaria, who told terrible stories of hundreds of camels being swallowed up and leaving no trace, through straying from the safe path. All round it stretches a sandy solitude, broken only by the dark palm groves of Tozeur, and far away, those of Nefta.

All this part is called the Djerid, and here one feels the intense solitude of the desert. It is on the edge of the Sahara. In summer the heat is terrific, and the air vibrates as above an oven. The small town is surrounded by a sea of sand; the streets are ankle deep in it, and it stretches as far as one can see. It is picturesque, the houses built of earthen bricks set in patterns and with arched and tunnelled passages. ‘Town’ is rather a misleading term; it is just a collection of buildings clustering round a market-place, the roads wandering off vaguely from it into the desert.

The oasis is beautiful, streams of blue-green water everywhere, and a tangle of fruit trees amongst the slender trunks of the palms. It is about 2,500 acres in extent, the dates being renowned for their flavour. Alas! all were exported, and as unprocurable as fresh fish at a seaside resort. A minaret near a door covered with green tiles caught the eye, but most of the buildings were low and only remarkable for the picturesque way in which the bricks were set, forming attractive designs. The grain market was held under a modern roof, but the rest was in the open air, and the wide space was covered with an immense crowd. The women dressed in dark blue cotton with one white stripe the length of it, and they held the head covering across their faces. There is a large admixture of negro blood, which has spoilt the Arab type.

The population is occupied almost entirely in the care of the date palms. When first planted the small tree is watered once a day and sheltered from cold winds. It begins to bear a little when 10 or 12 years old. From the age of 20 it produces an annual harvest of fruit and at 30 it is at its greatest vigour and continues in full bearing for another 30 years or so. Then its produce lessens by degrees and it is used for the extraction of palm wine or nagmi as it is called; but this is only practised on trees whose yield is poor, or which are already worn out.

Truly the palm is the Arab’s friend. The fruit is his staple food; its leaves are made into baskets and panniers, or serve as hedges, its stem for gate posts and the beams of houses; while the fibrous stuff that is near the root is made into rope, mattresses and a sort of cloth. Even the date stones are eaten by camels. The Arabs have a saying that were a camel to walk into a palm grove, he could come out completely equipped with bridle, saddle and panniers and even with the palm leaf stem as a whip. It is in a palm-leaf cradle that the desert Arab is rocked to sleep as a child; his life passes below its shade, and it is under boards of its wood that he takes his last rest.

Twenty-four kilometres from Tozeur is the little town of Nefta. I motored there on a beaten road across the stretches of sand. To our left the Shott shone like a great lake, streaked with faint grey and purple. As far as we could see, the desert stretched away interminably till it met the horizon. The track followed the telegraph posts, and we passed a few groups of Arabs with their camels, plodding along at a pace which they can keep up for days at a stretch. One seemed to be moving for ever through an immense space, almost with a feeling of being hypnotised. Then, ahead, there was a dark blur in the expanse. “VoilÀ Nefta!” said the chauffeur.

It is entirely an Arab town, the flat-topped houses and the clothes of the inhabitants all of the same colour as the surrounding sand. Thick groves of palms cluster along the streams that flow from a quantity of springs. The oasis is called the ‘corbeille’ and is aptly named, for it lies in a hollow over which the village, straggling along two small heights, looks down. The palms grow all up the edges of this cup, and through their stems one sees the glow of sand against a pale blue sky. Springs of clear water bubbled up everywhere in the oasis and round the feet of the palms was the tender green of growing things. Bushes of white jasmine scented the air. And within a stone’s throw of this verdure is the vast emptiness and silence of the desert. Far, far on the horizon, like the tender tints of Venetian glass, was the pale blue and rose of distant rocky hills.

The tiny hotel was in the market-place, and from its verandah we looked down on an animated scene. Camels laden with firewood came in from the far country, driven by uncouth-looking men wrapped in ragged cloaks, their feet covered with rough shoes made of camel’s hide tied round the ankle. Tiny children, naked but for their one hooded garment, crept to warm themselves by the fires where cooking was going on. The people seemed very poor, their clothes tattered and scanty. Small booths were set up in the market-place, where unappetising meat was sold, and flat loaves of bread. One shopman dealt in primitive rings set with beads, sheathed knives and the flat mirrors that the Arab woman loves to wear hung round her neck. Far into the night I heard the sound of voices in the market-place below, and caught the occasional flicker of a fire.

Nefta seemed full of children, queer little elfin figures in their pointed hoods with their thin unchildlike faces. There had been three bad harvests in succession, and everyone was poor and hungry. I watched a tiny boy of about four years old who was left on guard over a heap of grass straw that his father had brought for sale. The little creature took his task very solemnly and hour after hour he sat there gravely, his trailing garment folded over his bare feet. It turned very cold as the sun went down, but still the small Casabianca stuck to his post. It began to grow dusk, and yet he sat there motionless, his eyes fixed on the bundles of straw. I thought how pleasant it would be to slip a coin or two into his frozen hands and started out full of this benevolent intention. But the sight of me was more than the poor little hero could stand. He had faced cold and hunger and the danger of possible thieves, but the terrifying sight of a white woman in strange garments was too much for him. He stood his ground bravely for a moment, but as it became certain I was coming straight to him, he fled, but hovered nearby in terror and perplexity like some shy bird whose nest is approached. I held up the money for him to see, but he did not understand. It proved useless to try to coax him back, and I went away, watching from a distance for his return. Like the bird, he slipped back to his post in the dusk as soon as he thought me safely gone, and now I waited till his father had appeared and then tried again. Again he wavered and turned to run as I drew near, but the father understood my gestures and caught him, smiling, by a flying end of his cloak. And so he stood, frightened but valiant, whilst I closed his tiny cold hand over the coins. I left him still bewildered, and could only hope the money served to buy a hot supper and perhaps firewood for the family.

Next day I rode along the route to Tougourt, in Algeria, a nine days’ journey by caravan. There seemed nothing to mark the road from the ocean of sand. It was edged in some places with a low parapet of banked sand and dry grass. Far below us was the dark mass of the ‘corbeille’ and above it the village of Nefta with its irregular line of houses, pricked here and there by a minaret and dotted with the white bubbles of marabou. On the other side, desert. The red-roofed douane on the frontier between Algeria and Tunis, looked like a child’s forgotten toy. Far off the minute silhouettes of distant camels paced slowly across the immensity. The air was clear and thin. One seemed alone in the world.

And suddenly, there at our feet we saw the delicate faces of tiny crocus-like flowers gazing at us from the level of the sand itself. Flushed with a faint lavender, the slender stamens stained with orange, they seemed indeed a miracle. From what nutriment had they woven their frail loveliness? The sand was friable and bare, the cold winds of night must pass like a scythe over these lonely places. But mysteriously, defying the vast world, minute trembling roots must have crept from the small bulbs, mooring the little plants to a firm anchorage. And the first few drops of warm rain had brought them to a fragile flowering. Crushed by the spongy feet of passing camels, unregarded, ignored, they spread their delicate carpet, earnest of the later more bounteous gifts of Spring. And in this land of life reduced to bare necessities, of a people living from hand to mouth, of the harsh nomad existence led by Bedouin tribes, these little flowers seemed a message linking us to a more gracious existence, a land of kindlier aspect, of softer skies, with its largesse of blossoms of which the desert knows nothing.