I
I WAS fortunate in my first landfall at Tunis. It was a fine sea picture framed in that chill November dawn. On my left, over the rippling watery gold to the few pink clouds eastward, lay the great blue mountain headland, stretching far behind. In front, a little to the right, was Goletta, the port, hard by; and ranging off northward the line of the ocean beach ran stern and solemn, with the lighthouse above. That rise, there, was the hill of Carthage. Westward over the hollow space of waters swept the crescent horizon inland, low and misty, centred a little to the south by the obscure white of far Tunis. Carthage is the first thought of the traveller; his instant memory is of Phoenician ships, and his imagination is of Scipio and Regulus—these are the sights they saw.
The steamer plied up the long canal that makes the shallow, broad lake navigable to the docks some miles beyond; flamingoes flew to the right and left over the level lapping waters, fresh in the raw, damp, almost rainy air; and gradually Tunis drew in sight, like a great white flower on the bosom of the sloping uplands, strange, solitary, unexpected, with minarets and the island look of a Moslem city.