The whole site is
owned by the company, and inhabited by its officials and overseers. It has
its own church, shops, schools, hospital, workmen's clubs, bakeries, and
its air of neatness and well-being contrasts pleasingly with the forsaken
landscape all around.
The higher posts are reserved for Frenchmen, but among the lower grades
you may find a number of other nationalities; Spaniards and
Sardinians--hardiest of white Mediterranean races--as well as some
Italians, and not a few Greeks. The manual labour in the mines is
performed by Africans.
Not along ago nearly every drop of water for this settlement had to be
conveyed from Gafsa on the backs of camels. But the company has now
captured a spring at the head of the Seldja gorge, about eight miles
distant, which brings a copious flow of water into the place. Thus they
have been enabled to plant a great number of trees, but I wish they could
be persuaded to adopt a little more variety in their choice of them. One
grows tired of the eucalyptus, that doleful and dismal growth, and even of
the eternal pepper trees, green as they are; and the results, in a few
years' time, would be far more charming if they would take the trouble to
copy some of the Algerian municipalities in this respect, or--better
still--obtain professional advice from the Agricultural Institute at
Tunis, which could furnish them with a large list of ornamental timber and
shrubs that would thrive equally well, and convert Metlaoui into a
veritable garden city.
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