Gafsa is a rallying-point, and must
be prepared for emergencies. Here, too, lie the cemeteries: the Jewish,
fronting the main road, with a decent enclosure; that of the Christians,
framed in a wire fence and containing a few wooden crosses, imitation
broken columns and tinsel wreaths; Arab tombs, scattered over a large
undefined tract of brown earth, and clustering thickly about some
white-domed maraboutic monument, whose saintly relics are desirable
companionship for the humbler dead.
The bare ground here is littered with pottery and other fragments of
ancient life testifying to its former populousness: flint implements,
among the rest. Of the interval between the latest of these stone-age
primevals and the first Egyptian invasion of Gafsa we know nothing; they,
the Egyptians, brought with them that plough which is figured in the
hieroglyphics, and has not yet changed its shape. You may see the
venerable instrument any day you like, being carried on a man's back to
his work in the oasis.
Athwart this region there runs an underground (excavated) stream of water,
led from Sidi Mansur to nourish the Gafsa plantations.
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