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Updated: May 9, 2025
God alone, who numbers the stars, can keep count of their legions. A person unacquainted with tropical vegetation would be amazed at the prodigality of the oasis of Nefta; in point of exuberance it is as superior to Tozeur as that to Gafsa.
The houses of Nefta are built generally of brick; some with taste and luxury; the interior is ornamented with Dutch tiles brought from Tunis. Each quarter has its mosque and school, and in the centre of the group of villages is a place called Rebot, on the banks of Wad Nefta, which serves for a common market.
What nights of brooding stillness in summer, under the palms, when those leaves hang motionless in the steaming vapour as though carved out of bronze, while the surrounding desert exhales the fiery emanations of noontide, often 135 degrees in the shade. For the heat of Nefta is hellish.
The duties of the "Bey of the Camp" is to visit with a "flying-camp," for the purpose of collecting tribute, the two circuits or divisions of the Regency. I now introduce to the reader the narrative of a Tour to the Jereed, extracted from the notebooks of the tourists, together with various observations of my own interspersed, and some additional account of Toser, Nefta, and Ghafsa.
The Boo-habeeba. A Domestic Picture. The Bey's Diversions. The Bastinado. Concealed Treasure. Nefta. The Two Saints. Departure of Santa Maria. Snake-charmers. Wedyen. Deer Stalking. Splendid view of the Sahara. Revolting Acts. Qhortabah. Ghafsa. Byrlafee. Mortality among the Camels Aqueduct. Remains of Udina. Arrival at Tunis. The Boab's Wives. Curiosities. Tribute Collected.
To a sensitive Christian this cemetery of Nefta must be a sad and a scandalous sight; no humble nomad's tomb on the bleak hillside is more neglected than these memorials to his fellow-believers who have died, far from their homes, under the flaming sun of Africa. From this point you can see the tail-end of the oasis. It lies in the Zafrana region, and is the worst nourished.
Your Arab often has a love of nature which is none the worse for being wholly unconscious. At Nefta there is no impure region, properly so called.
This marvellous palm-embroidered rift sunders Nefta, seated on the arid sand-hills overhead, into two distinct towns or settlements. The eye follows the stream as far as the low-lying plantations and into the Chott beyond, resting at last upon the violet haze of its mysterious southern shores.
The imagination of an Edgar Poe might picture these Nefta gardens as the reverse of those of Semiramis sunk, that is, further into the profundities of the earth than the already existing Sahara plantations with this difference, that here, to obviate infiltration from the ooze of the Chott, sturdy walls must enclose them.
They cannot comprehend how European tourists can undertake such long journeys, merely for the purpose of examining old heaps of stones, and making plans and pictures of such rubbish. When any person attempts to convince the Arabs that this is the sole object, they only laugh with incredulity. Went to Nefta, a ride of about fourteen miles, lying somewhat nearer the Sahara than Toser.
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