From the hilltop outside the walls is a superb outlook over the city, and also across the salt lake to the mountain of Zaghouan, though for pure charm it is outdone by the view from the park-like grounds of the Belvedere, some distance out of town through the curious double gate of El Khadra.
Only a few years ago the barren hillside was skilfully laid out and planted with trees, and already the ground is carpeted with wild flowers, and the eucalyptus has reached a respectable height. The delicate grace of the pepper trees and the silvery grey of the olive mingle with masses of mimosa and acacia, Judas trees, and many flowering shrubs, to give their own brightness, and fill the air with perfume. So once more the country has a chance of returning to its earlier aspect before the Arabs cut down forests and olive groves for firewood, after their usual extravagant custom.
It is a pleasant place truly in spring and in summer, and the nearest refuge from the heat. Here many jaded Tunisians linger in the comparative freshness till long after midnight, though, being French, they must needs have a theatre and casino to amuse them. They have also transplanted and restored two Moorish pavilions that were falling into ruins, owing to the curious local custom by which no Bey, or exceptionally rich man, may dwell in the same house in which his predecessor died, but has to abandon it entirely. Probably a survival of ancestor worship.
THE FRITTER SHOP, TUNIS
Whether the Arabs appreciate the ever-changing beauty of their country or no, their descriptions never vary. Tunis incontestibly merits the title of the “white” as it stretches across the isthmus dividing the stagnant lake of El Bahira from the salt lake, Sedjoumi. It certainly might be “a diamond in an emerald frame,” though a pearl would express the white wonder amongst the green with more precision. As for the familiar “burnous with the Casbah as the hood,” surely they might have invented a new simile, though it is apt enough.
The forts on the hills are no concern of theirs, for, like the aqueduct in the plain, they are picturesque legacies of Charles V. The harbour full of shipping is a thing of to-day, and so is the modern town. La Goulette (Halk el Oued, or the throat of the canal), glittering at the further side of the lake, is of yesterday; its importance gone with the new canal, but its Venetian charm happily undimmed. Carthage and La Marsa, a third lake towards Utica, El Ariana, the village of roses, the holiday resort of the Jews, are all visible from the gardens, the whole held tenderly in wide-reaching embrace by the mountains and the sea.
The new town, which starts from the Porte de France in such imposing fashion, a wide, straight avenue bordered by flowering acacias, reaches its finest point where the Residency fronts the Cathedral across some gardens, then gradually diminishes in grandeur till it ends in a collection of huts, cabarets, and warehouses standing on untidy wharves.
Twenty years ago, so an old officer told us, the land was a desolate morass, unspeakably dirty. Now it is a flourishing city, and though fault may be found with the style of the building on account of the want of shelter from heat and glare, and the unsuitability of such high houses in case of earthquake, these are minor details. The great need now is for some system of draining the Bahira, which has received the filth of ages, and takes its revenge in sending in hot weather and in certain winds a truly terrible smell to torment the city. It is an unaccountable fact that some perfect quality in air or soil fights against this evil and overcomes it, keeping the city free from epidemics and noted for its general healthiness.
The harbour has as yet a very unfinished appearance. The native boats with lateen sails are its great attraction, though ships of all nations and considerable tonnage can now approach the quays. Gay little scenes occur when the fish comes in, or when timber is being landed by gangs of Arabs wading in the still water; for all that is evil in this remarkable lake is hidden by the calm loveliness of a lagoon.