As I came out into the open I noticed two lines of figures coming across country in opposite directions like people returning from church. They were Mohammedans and Jews, each walking from their respective cemeteries which lay not far away. I thought it was a typical and happy scene of two religions dwelling together in unity and peace. The general appearance of the people was much the same, humbly prosperous and contented, and they were dressed alike. The Jews here are completely Arabized, except in the point of their religion, and it was interesting to observe how much they had become assimilated to the soil. The women especially looked to me like Bedouin women, and I was obliged to scrutinize their features to detect their race; but no burnoose nor haik can disguise the superior vitality and intelligence of the Jews. On my return I stopped to stroll through the market, and there they were much to be seen. It was an abundant market with the usual heaps and collections on the ground—grains, vegetables, utensils, and special quarters for wool, meat, and fish. It was a lively and thronged scene. An auction of donkeys and camels was going on in one place. My eyes were especially attracted by the piles of sheepskins and wool, and the men and boys lying lazily on them waiting for custom, their dark faces and bodies oddly relieved and picturesque on the wool. There were heaps of black sponges, too; and I noticed a curious white kilted costume which I had not seen on these shores, lending a new element to the crowd. Here, too, wandering about, I experienced the smallness of the world anew; for I fell in with some travelling merchants who had come to buy burnooses and blankets of Djerba, and who remembered me from Tunis; they were plainly pleased to find me in such a remote corner of their own country. I myself became sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the place to buy a few dates and figs, and more particularly some dried orange-blossoms, which were sold by the pound. I had never seen such a thing in Italy, and it gave me a lively idea of the orange gardens to the east of the island which were said to be so luxuriant.
As the day wore idly on, I explored the town, Houmt-Souk, for I believe I have not yet named it, which has fine, broad, curving streets and large, open places, a mosque with many domes and a high, square minaret, a tall artesian well, and a public garden where the French government experiments with plants and trees. The proprietor of my hotel was the gardener, and took me about and told me stories of his garden, but the spring was not far enough advanced for the soil to tell the same tale of its luxuriance and rarity. I had to content myself with seeing various shrubs and exotic trees. Then I wandered down to the beach, like all ocean beaches, with heavy, loose sand and a considerable tide, the broad view, sights of the sea, and a ruined Spanish fortress; but I went especially to see the spot where stood for centuries the great mound of Christian bones, Skull Fort they called it, which the pirate Dragut raised after the victory in which he broke the Spanish fleet in this offing, in 1560, taking five thousand prisoners and massacring the garrison. I suppose he massacred the prisoners, too; and here the ghastly memorial of his victory stood nigh the beach, till in recent years the bones were removed and buried in the Catholic cemetery. Before that, Norman raiders and Sicilians, when they harried all these coasts, had temporarily held possession in the Middle Ages; and all over the island are Roman ruins, decayed causeways, baths, temples, the subsoil of all the Mediterranean world. But nothing now stands out in the historic memory of the old lotus land except Dragut’s grim mound.
IV
I had not forgotten the hunting of the lotus, but it was now more clearly defined as a search for the jujubier, which is identified with the ancient plant. Persistent inquiry revealed the probability of a lonely specimen some five miles off in the country. We set off by a new route to the southeast, and away from the more travelled roads. The track was rough, and the horses toiled through heavy sands. The farm we were seeking was not on the road, and we left the carriage standing and tramped for about a mile or more across ploughed fields, little ditches, and stretches of white sand more than ankle-deep, till, asking our way of the rare people in the fields, we finally found the house we sought. It was a simple building of one story, with white walls about it, and the little dome at one end; a rustic garden of humble cottage flowers was before it, bright with spring blossoms, and here my guide introduced me to the proprietor, a thin old man with a boyish figure, keen blue eyes, and great alacrity in his motions. He led me in through the courtyard, which was of considerable size, to the house, which consisted of one very large room, with smaller apartments at the further end under the dome. The room was a surprise to me; it was a marine room, all the walls being loosely covered with sailor objects. The old man had followed the sea all his life, and served many years in the French navy; now, with his pension, he had found his snug harbor in this remote peaceful island as a colonist. It was an ideal place for a sailor’s retirement, with its flowers at the door, its profound country peace, and its relics of the sea. It had a Crusoe look, and so did the old man; and I gathered heart, thinking that here at least was a mariner, like the companions of Ulysses, who had found the port and elected to remain in the land. There were bones of fishes on the walls, implements from the South Sea islands, colored prints tacked all about, the curious things that sailors make, African oddities, a gun hung over the mantel, barbaric spears in corners; and the little collection was displayed and arranged with that neatness and order, almost pattern-like, which is a sailor instinct.
Yes, there was a jujubier in the neighborhood. The old man, who had an alert, breezy way about him and was full of vigor, seemed to wonder that I had come to see it, but said nothing; he was for the time more intent on rites of hospitality, and I went about examining the curiosities. His wife and a little girl came in with a great pitcher and tall glasses and set them down before us, and the old man poured out generous draughts of bright-brown cider. I smiled to think into what a vintage my dreamed-of juice of the “enchanted stem” had resolved itself—a glass of russet cider! But I took the blow of fortune, as I have taken others, and tried to find its soft side, which is a good rule. It was excellent cider, and I took a second tall tumbler. On inquiry I found it was not even of the fruit of Djerba, but brewed from a preparation made at Paris, somewhat as root beer is with us. Meanwhile we had tales of the sea and old adventures on “the climbing wave,” pleasant talk, till I brought the conversation round to the jujubier. It bore a hard, brown fruit, I learned, sweetish, and a drink was made of it, like lemonade; and, yes, it had a sleepy effect. My hopes sprang up anew. No, it was not bottled. So, talking incidentally of many things, my host showed me the rest of the house, the little bedroom with his photograph of other days, and with a last health we went out into the garden, where the little girl was waiting with a bunch of the spring flowers, and we walked off to see the jujubier.
It was at the end wall of a small, shut-up Arab house near by, against which it was trained. It was shoulder-high, and grew in stout, hardy stocks. The blithe old man told me it must be more than two hundred years old. I said it was very small for its age; but he added that its growth was very slow, almost imperceptible. It was just showing signs of leaving out; a naked, rough, shrub-like tree, with neither leaf, nor flower, nor fruit; but it was alive, and I still have hopes that in the case of a tree so long-lived I shall some time find it in its season, and eat of it, and perhaps drink its sleepy soul. I went back to the garden and said good-by to my kind and gentle host, and I was really almost as glad to have had this tranquil hospitality and Crusoe memory as if I had met with better luck in my search. I walked back over the rough fields content; and as we drove slowly through the sand in the wide prospect of scattered palm and olive, with the little white domes, quiet in the universal sun, I thought the lotus land was very good as it was.
V
The marvellous boy was waiting at the pier; the sail was set; the steamer, a distant film of gray smoke on the horizon, was sighted; and we cast off. It was a pleasant sail but without the romance of the landing. The boy, almost in my arms, sat steering the boat, and conversed with me with glances of his brown eyes; the sad-faced father amidships gazed vacantly over the sea. We laid a straight course, and it was too soon finished. The embarkation was easy. The old man gave me his benediction with humble eagerness and dignity, and the boy followed me aboard with my things. In the saloon he put his little hand in mine, then to his lips with head bowed, and touched his heart, looked up, smiled, and ran off. I went on deck in time to catch the last wave of his brown hand, and, leaning on the rail, watched them sailing homeward to the palm-set strip of pale orange sky on the long horizon rim.