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Updated: May 9, 2025
Walking from Nefta to the Chott, you will reach, on the burning plain, a maraboutic shrine that might serve as an asylum for some conscience-stricken, malaria-proof penitent. They go well together, maraboutism and the Chott two factors that make for barrenness in man and nature. And Nefta is full of such shrines.
How one longs to engrave certain memories upon the brain, to keep them untarnished and carry them about on one's journeyings, in all their freshness! The happiest life, seen in perspective, can hardly be better than a stringing together of such odd little moments. Hearing that there are few or no tourists in Nefta just now, I left Tozeur three days ago, an hour or so before sunrise.
Then came a wise man who cut up and ploughed the watery district of Gafsa, Tozeur and Nefta; he planted trees and all the other growths useful to mankind; he divided the land into patches, led the water through them, and apportioned them among certain families in short, he gave these oases their present shape, and did his work so well that up to this day no one has been able to suggest any improvements or to quarrel with his arrangement.
For it was my intention to go from England straight down to the oases of the Djerid, Tozeur and Nefta, a corner of Tunisia left unexplored during my last visit to that country there, where the inland regions shelve down towards those mysterious depressions, the Chotts, dried-up oceans, they say, where in olden days the fleets of Atlantis rode at anchor....
The waters of the pool touched Nefta, whose Kadi gave Tissot a description of a buried vessel which, from its shape, could be nothing but a "galere antique" it was dismembered for fuel, and metal nails were found in its framework. Movers is probably correct in seeking at Nefta the Biblical Naphtuhim of the generation of Noah: an Egyptian document speaks of it as the "land of Napit."
Notwithstanding these difficulties, an enterprising Maltese runs a motor-car from Metlaoui to Tozeur and Nefta for all such persons as are prepared to pay his price, and I hear that the speculation has paid well.
So far as I can make out there is only pottery on this site, and none of it pre-Mohammedan; if a city ever stood here it has been completely entombed, or torn into shreds by the wind, the flying sands, and the heat. Nefta itself, built of soft loam, would crumble away in briefest time if left unrepaired. The acute Guerin was not more successful than myself at Zafrana, nor was Maltzan.
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.
Santa Maria arrived from Ghabs without accident, having scarcely seen a soul the whole of the way. He certainly was an enterprizing fellow, worthy of imitation. He calculated the distance from Ghabs to Toser at 200 miles. There are a number of towns in the districts of Ghabs better built than those of Nefta and Toser; Ghabs river is also full of water and the soil of the country is very fertile.
Here are quarters specially devoted to the aristocratic landed proprietors, and others to the busy merchants. The Shereefs are the genuine nobles, or seigneurs of Nefta, from among whom the Bey is wont to choose the Governors of the city. The complexion of the population is dark, from its alliance with Negress slaves, like most towns advanced in the Desert. The manners of the people are pure.
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