But if a European wants a chill in the liver or any other
portion of the culinary or postprandial department, he need only wear one
for a few days on end; raise the hood, and you will have a headache in ten
minutes.
Nevertheless I have bought one, and am wearing it at this very moment. But
not as the poorer Arabs do. Beneath it there is a suit of ordinary winter
clothing, as well as two English ulsters--and this _indoors_. Perhaps this
will give some idea of the cold of Gafsa. There is no heating these bare
rooms with their icy walls and floorings: out of doors a blizzard is
raging that would flay a rhinoceros. And the wind of Gafsa has this
peculiarity, that it is equally bitter from whichever point of the compass
it blows. Let those who contemplate the supreme madness of coming to the
sunny oasis at the present season of the year (January) bring not only
Arctic vestment, eiderdowns, fur cloaks, carpets and foot-warmers, but
also, and chiefly, efficient furnaces and fuel for them.
For such things seem to be unknown hereabouts.
_Chapter III_
_THE TERMID_
The chief attractions of Gafsa, beside the oasis, are the tall minaret
with its prospect over the town and plantations, and the Kasbah or
fortress, a Byzantine construction covering a large expanse of ground and
rebuilt by the French on theatrical lines, with bastions and crenellations
and other warlike pomp; thousands of blocks of Roman masonry have been
wrought into its old walls, which are now smothered under a modern layer
of plaster divided into square fields, to imitate solid stonework.
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