A heavy and continuous shower would be the ruin of
Gafsa; the structures would melt away, like that triple wall of defence,
erected in medieval times, of which not a vestige remains. Yet the dirt is
not as remarkable as in many Eastern places, for every morning a band of
minor offenders is marched out of prison by an overseer to sweep the
streets. Sometimes an upper room is built to overlook, if possible, the
roadway; it is supported on palm-rafters, forming a kind of tunnel
underneath. Everywhere are immense blocks of chiselled stone worked into
the ephemeral Arab clay as doorsteps or lintels, or lying about at random,
or utilized as seats at the house entrance; they date from Roman or
earlier times--columns, too, some of them adorned with the lotus-pattern,
the majority unpretentious and solid.
[Illustration: A Street in Gafsa]
What do the natives think of these relics of past civilization? Do they
ever wonder whence they came or who made them? "The stones are there,"
they will tell you. Yet the wiser among them will speak of _Ruman_; they
have heard of _Ruman_ moneys and antiquities.
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