UNLADING WOOD
What is known to the Tunisians as les chaleurs, or real summer heat, sets in towards the end of May or beginning of June. With the heat come many changes. The town Moors drop their many cloaks and display the wealth of silk and embroidery usually hidden. The men from the country wear yard-wide steeple-crowned hats over their turbans; for if the burning sun is trying in the city, what must it be in the country, where no cool shadows offer shelter? The Europeans, soldiers and civilians alike, appear in white, and the tyranny of the shirt collar is ended with the coming of sun helmets and umbrellas. Ladies don their thinnest muslins, and do not venture out before the evening. Everyone seeks the shade except the Italian women, who will stand bareheaded, idly swinging their closed parasols, where no Arab would keep them company.
A scirocco or wind from the desert intensifies the heat to an unbearable degree, night brings no relief, and this burning blast may last three, five, or nine days; and a nine days’ scirocco is an experience to be remembered. A resident gave us this warning encouragement: “If you stay till June and come in for a bad scirocco you will think you will die, but you won’t.” The sensation of misery could hardly be better expressed: one gasps for breath, sleep is impossible, and the only tolerable moments are those passed quite close to an electric fan. Plants and trees shrivel up, so that the gardens look as if they had been actually burnt. The country is scarcely cooler than the town, and at the seaside there is little relief, as four or five degrees’ difference does not help much when the thermometer is once over 100° Fahrenheit.
CHAPTER XI
CARTHAGE
The realm of the Queen of the Seas is now desolate—desolate, but untouched by sadness. Tragedy and doom are hidden beneath the brightness of summer flowers and the promise of an abundant harvest. The ruins that remain are not fine enough in themselves to call forth memories of a glorious past. The greatness is gone. Nothing is now left to speak of bygone ages with an insistent voice; nothing strong enough to break down the dulness and create an interest in ancient history. Those who expect to have their historic sense awakened and quickened by the sight, turn empty and disappointed away, for all enjoyment rises from the dreams and imagination born of some knowledge or wide reading, and not from what Carthage can now show; for the Phœnician city was so utterly destroyed by the Romans under Scipio in the year 146 B.C. that the plough was driven over the site. Subsequently city after city rose from the same ground to be destroyed almost as entirely. Columns and capitals from the Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine cities may be seen in Tunis, Kairouan, and Sicily, and even so far away as Italy and Spain. Here there are few left.
Traces of the original city are still harder to find, and must be sought far below the earth’s surface under successive layers of ruins and soil. Three mosaic pavements of different periods have often been discovered one below the other, whilst the foundations of Punic temples and inscriptions in that language thus buried still show signs of fire. The story of Carthage is also shrouded in mystery; even the date of its foundation is uncertain. All that is known is that in the dawn of history, when the Israelites took possession of Palestine, the Canaanites retreated to Tyre and Sidon, and there built up a mighty state. From these two cities daring mariners set forth in frail coasting vessels to found settlements in Asia Minor, Greece, Africa, and Spain, extending their voyages of discovery in later times, gathering riches and treasures from the distant ends of the then known world.
One of the earliest of these colonies was the city of Utica, and probably when Dido arrived in Africa (if she ever did), after her flight from the cruelty and treachery of the Tyrian king, there were already other cities on the plain. Her taste and judgment must have been equal to her beauty and artfulness when she chose this spot for her city of refuge, and beguiled the inhabitants into granting her the land that the traditional oxhide would cover; for the situation is as lovely as any on the north coast of Africa, the harbour good, and the country rich. The colony was known at first as Kirjath-Hadeschath, or New Town, to distinguish it from the older city of Utica. The Greek name was Karchedon, and the Romans called it Carthago.
THE ANCIENT PORTS OF CARTHAGE