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I announced my intention of leaving shortly for Tozeur. "So you have not yet taken your fill of dirt and discomfort in Tunisia, Monsieur?" asked one of the clients.
Tozeur must have looked well enough under the later Empire. And now, sand-heaps and a brood of young savages, shouting at their game.
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.
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.
All too soon, I fear, the railway to Tozeur will have done its work; dusty boulevards, white bungalows, eucalyptus trees and bureaux de monopoles will profane its strangely wonderful beauty, its virginal monotone of golden grey. Nefta will become a neurasthenic demi-mondaine, like Biskra. Such, at least, is the prognosis.
Tozeur, he thought, was all very well, and so were Oudiane and all the rest of them, but Eloued was fairer by far. And only three days' journey! Why not leave this country and go to the Souf, to Eloued, instead? Sacre nom! I could return by way of Biskra if I liked. And if I paid him five francs for a camel he would accompany me the whole way, like a brother.
This fair land seems like the realization of some old, dimly remembered dream of mine. How does it all come about, I wonder?" Sultan of Tozeur that gave me the cue, and I hazarded the guess that he had inherited his tastes from certain old rovers and conquerors of the northern seaboard. "True," he said, "our family comes from Normandy, though we have lived in Paris for two generations.
The faces that one sees are less friendly than those at Tozeur, and they were noted, in former days, for their vehemence in religious matters. I am sorry to hear it, but not surprised.
But he thought that a grave error had been committed in selecting the narrow metre gauge; it was all very well for phosphate transport, but once the line over Feriana and the branch to Tozeur are completed, they would have to deal with other material, such as tourists, that require fast services. They had an accident last year.
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....
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