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And were it not for this railway the branch line to Tozeur would never have been contemplated; the oases of Souf and Djerid and Nefzaoua, with their teeming populations, would have slumbered the sleep of ages in their burning desert sands. And to realize what a change it has wrought in the appearance of the ports of Sfax, Sousse and even Tunis, one must have known these places in the olden days.
The gods willed otherwise. In pitch darkness, at the inhuman hour of 5.55 a.m., the train crept out of Sousse: sixteen miles an hour is its prescribed pace. The weather grew sensibly colder as we rose into the uplands, a stricken region, tree-less and water-less, with gaunt brown hills receding into the background; by midday, when Sbeitla was reached, it was blowing a hurricane.
One must reach Gafsa by way of Sfax.... But a fine spirit of northern independence prompted me to try an alternative route. The time-table marked a newly opened line of railway which runs directly inland from the port of Sousse; the distance to Gafsa seemed shorter; the country was no doubt new and interesting.
In January, 1883, an express was established, which leaves Sousse every morning and arrives at Kairouan a distance of forty miles in five hours, by means of regularly organized relays. The number of carriages and trucks for the transport of passengers and goods is 118.
The narrow-gauge railway was tested during the war in Tunis more than in any preceding campaign, and the military authorities decided, after peace had been restored in that country, to continue maintaining the narrow-gauge railways permanently; this is a satisfactory proof of their having rendered good service. The line from Sousse to Kairouan is still open to regular traffic.
On the horizon toward the coast of Sousse rested a low black wall of cloud. Lightning came out of it from time to time and ran up the sky, soundless, glimmering.... The cry of the morning muezzin rolled down over the town. The lightning showed the figure sprawled face down on the cool stone of the coping of the well.... The court of the house of bel-Kalfate swam in the glow of candles.
A cloud sailing lone and high from the coast of Sousse passed under the moon and everywhere men stirred in their sleep, woke, looked out from their tents on the cactus steppes, from fondouks on the camel tracks of the west, from marble courts of Kairwan.... The cloud passed on and vanished in the sky. On the plain the earth cracks crept and ramified.
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