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Updated: April 30, 2025
So the French found them in 1881. There are, however, a few decent houses, two-storied and spacious; in one of them, I am told, lives the family of Monsieur Dufresnoy, to whom my fellow traveller at Sbeitla gave me a card. He is absent at the Metlaoui mines just now, and his wife and children in Paris.
You will do well, in every case, to ride as far as the bordj, or rest-house, that stands near the entrance of the cleft, since there are about four wearisome miles of level country to be traversed after leaving Metlaoui.
Metlaoui is the name of two distinct villages which have been conjured out of the waste by the discovery of its phosphate deposits the station village and, a mile or so further on, Metlaoui proper, with its big establishments for working the minerals.
They further honoured him by changing the name of the station-settlement of Metlaoui into "Philippe-Thomas." "It's very economical," Dufresnoy observed. I am glad to think that another place of that name, the mining village, will continue to exist; it would seem a pity to erase from the map the tuneful word Metlaoui, which contains the five vowels in a remarkably small compass....
In Gafsa, for example, where the summer temperature is 100, no ice can be procured unless you drive to fetch it from the station settlement where the phosphate company has its servants; if you want good vegetables, you must telegraph inland for them to Metlaoui, whither they are brought from the sea-coast, via Gafsa, for the consumption of the "company"; fresh fish, which are caught in fabulous quantities at Sfax, and could be transported by every over-night train, are hardly ever visible in the Gafsa market.
Some defalcation or forgery? Likely enough. But I think he lacks the cleverness requisite for a habitual criminal. Perhaps he is only a poor survivor, drifting about in lonely and distracted fashion while waiting for the inevitable end. Others may solve the enigma, but not I; for to-morrow we go to Metlaoui.
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