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The rails were laid simply on the sand, so that small locomotives could not be used, and were obliged to be replaced by Kirghiz horses, which drew with ease from 1,800 lb. to 2,200 lb. weight for 25 miles per day. In the Tunisian war this railroad of 20 in. gauge, 14 lb. rail, was replaced by that of two ft. gauge, with 14 lb. and 19 lb. rails.
This exploit induced the dey of Tripoli to purchase the forbearance of the English by an apparent submission; his Tunisian brother deemed it prudent to follow his example; and the chastisement of the pirates threw an additional lustre on the fame of the protector.
Boo Khaloom was mounted on a beautiful white Tunisian horse, a present from the bashaw, the peak and rear of the saddle covered with gold, and his housings were of scarlet cloth, with a border of gold six inches broad.
That is my quarrel with this Tunisian literature; many of the things that have been written about the country are not books at all; while others are full of mistakes. Look at these two volumes, for instance!
His reply was, "You also must one day dress in all your best clothes one day only one day." I replied, "I have no fine clothes;" at which he seemed puzzled. Turning the conversation, he said I must change all his Tunisian piastres into dollars; which I shall certainly not do. This Consul of the English is a tremendously grasping fellow. The Tanelkums all give the son of Shafou a good character.
The camp, as all camps ever were, was full of strange yarns "shaves" about what was going on at Omdurman, and the Khalifa's intentions. "Abdullah would fight? No, he would run away; he was laying down mines in the Nile to blow up our gunboats. A Tunisian had devised a torpedo, but as it was being lowered from a dervish boat, the machine exploded, and the engineer was hoisted with his own petard."
So Hammoudah Bashaw, the great Bey of Tunis, is called by a faithful Tunisian historian of that country, a جبّار. But, perhaps, in those remote times, the hunter and the tyrant, as in the Roman Commodus, were joined in one and the same person.
These two Sheikhs are objects of most religious veneration amongst all true believers, and there is nothing which would not be done at their bidding. Nefta, the Negeta of the ancients, is the frontier town of the Tunisian territories from the south, being five days' journey, or about thirty-five or forty leagues from the oases of Souf, and fifteen days' from Ghadumes.
The walls were hung with Tunisian silks and embroidered stuffs from the homes of Jewish families, where they had served as screens for talismanic words too sacred to be seen by common eyes; and there was drapery of ancient banners, Tyrian-dyed, whose gold or silver fringes had been stained with blood, in battle.
Under the green blinds was a glitter of jewels displayed among brocades and a tangle of old lace, or on embossed silver trays; and walking in at the door, out of the shadowy dusk, a blaze of colour leaped to the eyes. Not a soul was there, unless some one hid and spied behind a carved and gilded Tunisian bed or a marqueterie screen from Bagdad.
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