Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 13, 2025
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.
The element wells out hot, from under the neighbouring Kasbah, with a pestiferous mineral aroma. Hither comes, at fixed intervals, my friend Silenus, the water-carrier, on his philosophic donkey; nearly all Gafsa draws its supply of cooking and drinking water from this fetid and malodorous mere. A fine example of French inefficiency, this "abreuvoir."
Whether it be due to the incessant cold and dry winds, that parch the more genial humours, or to some other cause, there is certainly a tone of exacerbation, at this moment, among the European residents at Gafsa.
The chief attractions of Gafsa, beside the oasis, are the tall minaret with its prospect over the town and plantations, and the Kasbah or fortress, a Byzantine construction covering a large expanse of ground and rebuilt by the French on theatrical lines, with bastions and crenellations and other warlike pomp; thousands of blocks of Roman masonry have been wrought into its old walls, which are now smothered under a modern layer of plaster divided into square fields, to imitate solid stonework.
I rode, for a farewell visit, to the small oasis of Leila, or Lalla, which lies a few miles beyond the railway station. It is one of several parasitic oases of Gafsa: a collection of mud-houses whose gardens are watered by a far-famed spring, the fountain of Leila.
I shall be glad to leave for Metlaoui and the Djerid. Gafsa is losing its flavour; the novelty and pungency are gone. The same old faces, the same old bouts de conversation; quickly, indeed, does one live oneself into a place and learn, or think to learn, all its little secrets. The hotel, too, has suddenly become an insufferable menagerie.
As luck would have it, another train was just then approaching Gafsa. They collided with terrific force and, telescoping being out of the question since both were loaded with minerals, escaladed each other in Eiffel-tower fashion.
An Arab geographer of the eleventh century says that there are over two hundred flourishing villages in the neighbourhood of Gafsa; and Edrisius, writing a century later, extols its prosperous suburbs, and pleasure-houses. Where are they now?
It was the Kaid of Gafsa, a wealthy man of incalculable political influence both here and in Tunis. It is even whispered But no; one must not repeat all one hears.... With the proprietor's permission I went over a young plantation of trees and vegetables that has sprung up near the railway line, about halfway between Gafsa and Leila.
He further says, what is more intelligible to the uninitiated, that a bed of hard conglomerate which crops up at Gafsa on either side of the Oued Baiesh, has been raised in days of yore; it was raised so slowly that the river found time to carve itself a bed through it during the process of elevation; nevertheless, a certain class of these artificial implements, embedded since God knows when, already formed part of this natural conglomerate ere it began to uplift itself.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking