I was now arrived upon the Lesser Syrtis, and continued along the sea-coast northward to Inshilla without having made any additions to my observations.
I turned again to the north-west, and came to Tisdrus, as it was anciently called, now El-Gemme.[277]
This was the last ancient building I visited in the Kingdom of Tunis, and I believe I may confidently say there is not, either in the territories of Algiers or Tunis, a fragment of good taste of which I have not brought a drawing to Britain.
I continued along the coast to Susa, through a fine country planted with olive trees, and came again to Tunis, not only without any disagreeable accident, but without any interruption from sickness or other cause.
During my journey through Tunis, I made frequent inquiries regarding the custom of keeping tame serpents, and the reply was invariably the same: ‘No one here keeps them, but the tribes further south are said to do so.’ I mentioned the subject to M. Vignard, of Algiers, who has travelled extensively in Africa, and he assured me that on one occasion when he entered a native hut in the island of Goree, near Cape Verd, he saw the mistress of the house sitting on a mat with a tame snake coiled beside her, and he was informed that it was a very common custom to keep such animals, in order to kill rats and mice. They even asserted that the young shepherds took them to the fields with them, and that the tame serpents watched over them while they slept under the shade of a tree, lest their masters should be bitten by poisonous snakes.
M. Repin[278] gives a curious account of the manner in which large quantities of these reptiles are kept in houses built expressly for the purpose, in the kingdom of Dahomey, and guarded with the utmost care and veneration, exactly as Bruce describes them to be by the inhabitants of Djebel Abeide; enough, however, has been stated to prove that this story is not one of the traveller’s tales which Bruce was for so long a time accused of fabricating.
FOOTNOTES:
[248]Bahiret el-Arneb, or plain of the hare.
[249]Bruce is at fault here. Feriana is probably the ancient Thelepte of the Itinerary of Antoninus; Thala has been identified with a village of the same name ten miles north-east of Haidra.
[250]Two words illegible in MS.