Among the _colons_ of Tunisia you may find a home
establishment of the most comfortable type, but Government employes regard
the Regency in the light of an exile; they never try to make their life
more endurable, as they easily could do, with a little co-operation.
In Gafsa, for example, where the summer temperature is 100, no ice can be
procured unless you drive to fetch it from the station settlement where
the phosphate company has its servants; if you want good vegetables, you
must telegraph _inland_ for them to Metlaoui, whither they are brought
from the sea-coast, via Gafsa, for the consumption of the "company"; fresh
fish, which are caught in fabulous quantities at Sfax, and could be
transported by every over-night train, are hardly ever visible in the
Gafsa market. There is no chemist's shop in the place, not even the
humblest drug-store, where you can procure a pennyworth of boric acid or
court-plaster. So they live on, indulging all the time in a luxury of
lamentation.
There would be better shops in places like Gafsa if foreign commercial
settlers were not discouraged from establishing themselves.
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