I gently insisted, pointing out that I did not care for a walk across the
wind-swept desert only to dip myself into a pool of lukewarm and
pestilentially sulphureous water. But "the key" was evidently a sore
subject.
"There is no key, Monsieur"; and he accompanied the words with a
portentous negative nod that blended the resigned solicitude of an old and
trusted friend with the firmness of a Bismarck. This closed the
discussion; with expressions of undying gratitude, and a few remarks as to
the palpable advantages to be derived from keeping a public bathing-room
permanently locked, I left him to his well-earned slumbers....
It is hard to understand what the guide-books mean when they call the
market of Gafsa "rich and well-appointed": a five-pound note, I calculate,
would buy the entire exhibition. The produce, though varied, is wretched;
but the scenery fine. Over a dusty level, strewn with wares, you look upon
a stretch of waving palms, with the distant summit of Jebel Orbata shining
in the deep blue sky. Here are a few butchers and open-air cooks who fry
suspicious-looking bundles of animal intestines for the epicurean Arabs; a
little saddlery; half a camel-load of corn; a broken cart-wheel and
rickety furniture put up to auction; one or two halfa-mats of admirable
workmanship; grinding-stones; musty pressed dates, onions, huge but
insipid turnips and other green things, red peppers----
Those peppers! An adult Arab will eat two pounds of them a day.
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