We left Teboursouk at 6.30 A.M. on April 22. The road led at first through a magnificent grove of olive-trees, which evidently constitute the principal wealth of the country. Still, we saw but few young ones, and I am tempted to believe that the system of taxing these precious trees conduces to their destruction.
Each one, after the age of ten years, pays an annual tax of half a piastre, or threepence, without reference to the amount of fruit it bears, and as trees are rarely productive before fifteen years, the owner of a new olive grove would have little or no return for his money during this period, and a certainty of taxation during the last five years of it. Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising, that he does not feel called upon to make an unremunerative investment of his money for the ultimate benefit of his posterity; he cuts down unproductive trees for the sake of their timber, but takes no steps to replace them. If some system could be devised for taxing the produce instead of the tree itself, the déboisement of the country, which is going on at an alarming rate, might to a certain extent be arrested.
About a mile beyond the town the road emerges into open ground, and for a short distance follows the course of the Oued Khalad, which is crossed and recrossed many times. The alternation of hill and dale is most picturesque, and the great want in Tunisian landscape, the absence of wood, is to some extent supplied by the unusually fine tamarisks which fringe the river’s banks. The water was low during our visit, but evidently the stream never becomes actually dry, as it was full of little fish. Quantities of blue jays and blackbirds added their share of attractions to the scene.
This is the Oued el-Asood, or valley of lions, of which Sir Grenville Temple remarks: ‘As the surrounding country abounds in lions it is not prudent to remain here after sunset. Sixteen of these animals had been seen together here four evenings before.’
At seven and a half miles from Teboursouk is Ain Tunga, a delightful roadside fountain, near which is a venerable old olive-tree affording an impenetrable shade. We met here a party of the Oulad Ayar, who had been to Tunis to sell their produce and were returning to their homes in the neighbourhood of Mukther; they travelled like the patriarchs of old with all their belongings about them, houses, wives, children, cattle and sheep. They were busy washing their clothes at the spring, an operation which did not tend to increase its purity. But questions of cleanliness are the last that ever enter into the consideration of modern Arabs; they think nothing of drinking the water of a source, which they are in the very act of polluting, and it is no uncommon thing to see what appears to be a clean bed of sand covered with water, but if a little of the gravel is turned over, a layer of black putrescent mud is seen to exist below it.
Plate XXVI.
J. LEITCH &. Co. Sc.
THEATRE OF THIGNICA (AIN TUNGA)
FAC-SIMILE OF ROUGH INDIAN INK SKETCH BY BRUCE.