Tunisia is a sheep-rearing country--there are sixty thousand sheep in the
_controle_ of Gafsa alone--but you may live there a lifetime before seeing
a leg of mutton at a country table d'hote. For all the "gigots" that ever
appear at my host's entertainment, one might really think that the muttons
of Africa were a peculiar species, a species without legs: crawling,
maybe, on their bellies, like Nebuchadnezzar.
"Je m'en f--de vot' bon-homme," said one of these gentlemen to me,
referring to Baedeker, with whose sacred pages I had threatened him. "And
as for the tourists, they'll come just the same."
And so they do! But they all end in discovering that even the worm will
turn, when suffering from the torments of _dyspepsia tunesina veridica
sine qua non_ ...
A good deal of amateurish talking is done, in Gafsa, in regard to the
profits that would be gained were the oasis to be given over to Sicilian
cultivators. Apart from the fact that the wealthy Kaid of Gafsa, who is
the chief owner of it, would have something to say on the subject, these
advantages would be limited to pruning the trees and grafting some of
them; introducing, possibly, a few more vegetables, and having the ground
more parsimoniously tended than at present.
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