Travels in the footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis

by Sir R. Lambert Playfair

April 9.—We started about seven o’clock. Our people were not well up to striking and packing the tent, and distributing the various loads; and there was a good deal of preliminary discussion, and much subsequent readjustment, to be gone through; but in the end it was tolerably well done. We worked as hard as the muleteers but our escort were far too superior beings to pull a strap, or tie a rope, or degrade themselves with any menial occupation. Our original intention had been to proceed due west from El-Djem, but we were assured on all hands that it was impossible. The country was without resources of any kind, and the only practicable route was by Kerouan.

We had not intended to visit the holy city—it was out of the track of Bruce, and had little connection with Roman archæology; but it is undoubtedly a most interesting place, and we were well pleased to have an opportunity of seeing it.

At about 7½ miles from El-Djem we passed the three Koubbas of Sidi Naser and his two sons, situated in a fertile and somewhat wooded depression. Except the gardens of this oasis, surrounded by cactus, and containing a few olive-trees, there was absolutely nothing to break the monotony of the day’s march. Four miles further on, and about eleven from El-Djem, is Akalat Heneshia, a small douar located near two wells of very brackish water. At 14½ miles is Henchir Merabba, a douar of the Souessi, where we found it necessary to pass the night. We could not reach Kerouan that day, and there is no intermediate place where we could hope to find provisions. But were any to be found here? Apparently not, for no sooner was our intention announced to the Arabs of the douar than yells and shrieks of remonstrance resounded from every direction. They swore by the life of the Prophet, and by our own heads, that there was not a grain of barley remaining in the country; they had still a few grains of wheat left, but if we took that for our animals their wives and children would die of starvation. Fowls and eggs had become quite a tradition in the country, and they were not really sure whether they could offer us a handful of dry couscoussou. Our escort were quite equal to the emergency. We were about to protest that nothing was further from our intentions than to inconvenience them in any way, and that we were quite ready to pay for anything they might supply to us; but they calmly told us to stand aside, and not to interfere. The Bey’s letter was produced, a good many expletives were exchanged, and our unalterable determination was announced to spend the night there, and to spend it comfortably. When our hosts saw us dismount and commence to unload our animals, they became assured that further remonstrance was useless, and very soon two black tents were pitched for our accommodation, barley and grass were brought for the horses, and an abundant dinner provided for the men. We very soon got on excellent terms, by the never-failing expedient of showing them our arms, compasses, &c., and when I subsequently asked them why they had created such a disturbance, they replied that such was the way of the Arabs—they would rather have our room than our company, but as we were here, we were very welcome. They have some show of reason for their objection to entertain travellers, as the Government Hanbas and Spahis pillage the people unmercifully, and I fear that our efforts to prevent them were not always successful. We determined however to provide our own dinner. A judicious combination of preserved meats and vegetables, to make a sort of solid soup, was put on the fire to cook. We were so hungry that we could hardly refrain ourselves till it was ready, but at last the supreme moment arrived, when, to our horror, we discovered that it had apparently been cooked in a strong solution of Epsom salts. In fact, the water of this place is so bitter as to be unpotable for a stranger; this is owing to the vicinity of the salt lake, or Gharra, of Sidi El-Henni, a few miles to the east—the water of which percolates into the wells—and to the large amount of nitre contained in the soil. So we had to do without our dinner, and even the traveller’s greatest solace, a cup of tea, and I am afraid that we were by no means in an amiable frame of mind when we went to bed.

April 10.—We started this morning at five o’clock, the features of the country being the same as since our departure from Susa—an interminable plain, in which here and there small patches of cultivation, and a few rare olive-trees, seemed to indicate the vicinity of inhabitants, but few or none were to be seen; they had probably migrated elsewhere for the cool season, and would return in summer to their now abandoned encampments, marked out with hedges of prickly pears. The cactus is a blessed plant for the Arabs; it not only affords an impenetrable barrier for the protection of the douar, but an abundant supply of delicious fruit without the disagreeable necessity of having to cultivate it.

Everywhere off the high road—if so the beaten track between Kerouan and Sfax may be called—the ground is perforated with rat and jerboa holes, which make riding sometimes rather dangerous. Swarms of beetles cover the ground, and seem to constitute the principal food of these rodents. It is the most amusing thing in the world to see these scarabæi rolling along, with their hind legs, a huge ball ten times as big as their bodies, in the centre of which their eggs have been deposited.

At 17½ miles from El-Djem we crossed the Oued Sherita, a salt stream which flows into the Sebkha from the south-west. At Bir Sedof (twenty-seven miles) are one or two wells of fairly good water, where we stopped to rest a few moments, and to water our beasts. Up to this point the road had been skirting the south-west shore of the Sebkha Sidi El-Henni, or lake of Kerouan, whence all the salt in the country is obtained. Soon after passing these wells it crosses a dried-up bay of the lake, on the opposite shore of which is another spring, called Aioun el-Hedjeb. The water here would be better than any other on the road, were care taken to preserve its purity, but it is permitted to flow unrestrained over a bog of black fœtid mud, caused by the passage of flocks and herds, and the decay of vegetable as well as animal matter. Even thus it is much prized by the few people in the neighbourhood, who have no other supply within a considerable distance.

A short distance to the south-west are the ruins called Kasr el-Aioun, Castle of the Springs, supposed by Davis to be the ancient Terentum.[139] It is evidently a Roman or Byzantine post, built on the edge of the Sebkha, in order to command the path across it. The foundations of a few buildings, and the ruins of a two-storied mausoleum, are all that remain, and these are of the most ordinary description of rubble masonry.

At forty miles the road crosses the sandy bed of the Oued Dellai, the lower course of the Oued Merg-el-leil, now like a piece of the Sahara transported here. It drains the country for many miles around, and its wide and deep sandy bed absorbs, and therefore stores up, a great part of the rainfall which would run to waste over harder and less permeable ground.

Long before reaching this the domes and minarets of Kerouan had come in sight, but mile after mile of hot dusty ground was traversed without the city becoming apparently any nearer. Here and there flocks of camels, either trying to pick up a scanty repast on this barren plain, or toiling dreamily and patiently along, served somewhat to break the monotony of the journey; but it was not for two hours, which seemed to us and to our jaded beasts like six, after first sighting the town, that we entered the gates of the Holy City. The whole distance of the route from El-Djem is about forty-one or forty-two miles.

Next to Mecca and Medina no city is so sacred in the eyes of Western Mohammedans as Kerouan. The history of its foundation is given by Ibn-Khaldoun.[140] In the fiftieth year of the Hedjira (A.D. 670) Moaouia ibn-Abi-Sofian sent Okba ibn-Nafa to conquer Africa. The latter proposed to his troops to found a city which might serve him as a camp, and be a rallying point for Islamism till the end of time. He conducted them to where Kerouan now is, and which was then covered with thick and impenetrable forest, the habitation of wild beasts and noxious reptiles. Having collected round him the eighteen companions of the prophet who were in his army, he called out in a loud voice, ‘Serpents and savage beasts, we are the companions of the blessed prophet, retire! for we intend to establish ourselves here.’ Whereupon they all retired peaceably, and at the sight of this miracle many of the Berbers were converted to Islamism; during forty years from that date not a serpent was seen in Ifrikia. No wonder that Okba is as much venerated here as St. Patrick is in Ireland.