"Good fellows," said Dufresnoy. "They will slit your throat for a you."
The surface phosphates having already become exhausted, the mineral is now pursued into the dim recesses of the earth. Tunnels are excavated, whence smaller ones radiate in definite directions—all of them sustained by wooden beams; the amount of material to be extracted from a given spot is scientifically fixed; it is shattered by minute blasts of dynamite and, once the trolley cars have carried it away, the wooden supports are removed and these cavities filled up by the collapse of the roof. By this means accidents are forestalled such as that which took place some years ago when, owing to an oversight of some subordinate left in charge, an immense mass of mountain fell in, entombing about three hundred miners, whose bodies are not yet recovered. The ill-fated engineer who was legally responsible for the mishap was in Paris at the time; he returned in all haste. After seeing the mischief, he tried to throw himself into an Arab well, and, baulked of this, lay down at night under a passing train and was decapitated.
They showed me a map of this subterranean world, variously tinted according to the regions already exploited and those yet virgin. It reminded me, with its regular streets and blocks, of some model city in the Far West.
The underground workings here are about thirty kilometres in length.
Beside these Metlaoui deposits, the company has begun to attack those of
Redeyeff, and will shortly open an assault upon the others at Ain
Moulares, which lie near Henchir Souatir, the present terminus of the
Feriana line. It employs six thousand men; some of the mineral goes as far
as Japan; the output of last year amounted to over a million tons.
One may well be interested in the discoverer of these phosphates, in the man who has revolutionized the trade of Tunisia. He is a veterinary surgeon in the French Army—Monsieur Philippe Thomas.
His record is of the best.
Born in 1843, he has taken part in twelve military campaigns, distinguishing himself particularly in the Franco-Prussian war.
But, above all, he is a savant.
He has written valuable treatises on the diseases of domestic beasts, describing, among other things, a hitherto unobserved infectious malady of goats. He is the author of a number of memoirs on the geology of Northern Africa, and has discovered no less than two hundred new species of fossil animals of that country; he has made numerous contributions to our knowledge of its ethnology, prehistoric tombs, and flint implements. Many of these writings date from the seventies and earlier; they have procured for him the membership of learned societies, as well as medals and decorations of all kinds.
A man of such distinction, one would think, coming to Tunisia in 1885 at the head of a scientific expedition sent by the Ministry of Public Instruction, would be received according to his merits. It was far otherwise. Whether from distrust of his capacities or some other cause, Monsieur Cambon, the Resident, assumed towards him a most chilling official manner, and the commanding military officer, General Boulanger, all but refused to grant the escort necessary for his expedition. In one of his papers he speaks of this reception as "several degrees below zero."