They showed me a gold coin of the Emperor Gordian--the same who built the
amphitheatre of El-Djem--which was found here, as well as some lamps and
sculptured fragments of stone. Bruce speaks of cipollino columns; they are
still to be seen, if you care to look for them, split up, since his time,
to mend walls and doorsteps. Tozeur must have looked well enough under the
later Empire.
And now, sand-heaps and a brood of young savages, shouting at their game.
It is long since these people knew the meaning of refined things, although
some of the houses, their fronts decorated with gracious designs in
brickwork, testify to a not extinct artistic feeling--the citizens once
enjoyed a reputation for delicacy and love of letters. There is nothing
like systematic misgovernment for degrading mankind, and I think it likely
that the gradual fusion of the Arab and Berber races, so antagonistic in
all their aspirations, may have helped to abrade the finer edges of both
parent-stocks. But the native civilization was not remarkable at any time.
The climate, and then their religion, has made them hard and incurious; it
is a land of uncompromising masculinity.
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