Chapter VI: A Day at Carthage

The pious Æneas — A street scene — A nondescript vehicle — The road to Carthage — A wayside tragedy — Bedouin children — _Delenda est Carthago_ — An Empire’s dust — Dido’s Palace — The cisterns of Carthage — A lovely situation — The College of St. Louis — English ladies in Tunis.

_Tuesday, October 18th._—A trip to Carthage is an event which recalls one’s earliest memories of classic lore. How many years, I wonder, is it since I was tearfully engaged in construing the well-thumbed pages in which the adventures of the lovely Dido and the “pious” Æneas are recorded? And wherefore, I wonder, _was_ Æneas pious? So far as schoolboys are concerned, that marvellous faculty of blubbering at will over his own misfortunes which this particular hero possessed has caused him to be generally regarded as something very like a milksop. But there has never been any doubt in the schoolboy’s mind regarding the beauty of Dido. Has he not had a due sense of it flogged into him in his very earliest struggles with the Latin tongue? I vow that when I got out of bed this morning and prepared myself for a trip to Carthage, a slight sensation of alarm troubled me. The names of Dido and Æneas recalled quite too painfully the memories of good Dr. Birch, and of the times when I was at the mercy of his stern assistants. Little did I dream in those days of ever seeing Carthage itself. Yet here I was, just on the point of starting for the place where the wonderful city once stood; and that being so, why should I not find my lovely Dido still sitting there, watching with tear-dimmed eyes the flying bark of her faithless lover? I had left the world of sober realities behind me at Marseilles, and had come into a sort of Arabian Nights’ country in which anything might happen, and in which it was one of my main duties to be astonished at nothing.

The big airy bedchamber was hot enough when I awoke, albeit the heavy wooden shutters were closed and the light excluded. A detestable mosquito had been buzzing about my ears all through the night, and now there were certain small swellings on my neck which told where he had feasted upon my blood. The faithful Afrigan appeared upon the scene with the welcome tub, a small cup of particularly bad coffee, and a roll that was supposed to represent the nearest approach to Parisian bread to be obtained in this quarter of the world. Happily, he spared me the sight and the smell of the garlic-drenched oily abomination which passes here for butter. A cigarette, however, put matters right, and before my not very elaborate toilette was completed, I found myself standing upon the balcony outside the window surveying the brilliant street below me. Brilliant, indeed, it is; not only in the sunshine that lights up everything with an illumination the startling vividness of which no dweller beneath the murky skies of England can understand, but in the splendidly picturesque costumes and figures which go flitting past the house in an endless procession. There was not a single person in European costume to be seen in the street when I looked out this morning; but a hundred Arabs were going to and fro. There were men vending water, and fruit, and cakes; there were wonderful little shoeblacks, all aglow with scarlet garments; there were black mule-drivers trudging onwards with impassive faces, and scores of sleek Moors in ghostly white marching slowly up and down the broad road regardless of the terrible sun which was pouring its fiercest rays upon their turbaned heads. Now and then some camels went past heavily laden; then a beggar trudged along, in rags and sores, raising a cry for pity in the name of Allah; then a stout old Jewess and her handsome daughters waddled slowly past, the latter with strange unwieldy gait, but flashing eyes and rosy lips; and then our sweet European civilization made itself visible in the shape of a detachment of French infantry, briskly marching to the rub-a-dub of the drum.

But meanwhile Afrigan was awaiting me at the door of the hotel with a curious vehicle, not unlike a small four-post bedstead mounted upon wheels. Loose curtains hung all round the upper part of the framework, so that shelter could be obtained in any direction from the heat of the sun, whilst a pleasant draught of air could also at all times be admitted. A couple of good horses were attached to this nondescript conveyance, which was in the charge of a Maltese of most villainous aspect. Away we went, with much cracking of whips and jingling of bells, through the crowded streets of the native quarter; past the coffee-houses, each one of which, with its wonderful, sombre interior, and its group of dark and sullen faces peering out at us as we drove by, would have made a delightful picture; under the quaint arches of the great gateway, and so out into the open yellow plain beyond.

It was a hot, a very hot drive of nearly two hours to Carthage. All the way our road lay across that sandy desert. The only things now growing upon it are the gnarled and twisted olive-trees, and enormous tangles of prickly pear, the leaves of which have attained so vast a size that if I were to venture upon figures I should no doubt have the eternal verities of Baron Munchausen flung at my head by the sceptical. But though the country through which we thus passed is so dreary just now, in the spring, when it is covered by a veil of living green, it must be wonderfully beautiful. And even as it is there are picturesque sights in abundance to compensate for the barrenness of the soil. Here we pass a kitchen garden. Perhaps a few stunted vegetables are growing in it; more probably it only shows you a few sticks rising two or three inches from the soil. But a couple of Arabs are hard at work gardening, and mark the cunning care with which they are constructing little canals of the loose soil, by means of which the water which the ox is pumping out of yonder well may be carried in any desired direction. Here a whole party of Arabs are engaged in building a wall round some native house that stands by the road-side, and even the bricklayers in this part of the world are picturesque. Then there are the carts, the mules, the camels without end which we meet upon the road. It is noticeable that no salutation is given as we roll past. A curious or sullen glance is the only intimation of the fact that we are seen by the wayfarers.

Up to this point we have been driving along the road which leads to Goletta, and the great lake has been glittering in the sunlight to our right. Now, however, we turn into the direct road for Carthage. There are few people to be met with here. A chance shepherd tending his flock, or a Bedouin man and woman resting beneath some olive or palm-tree, alone break the solitude of the scene. My companion points out to me a stately date-palm, with magnificent feathered top, standing a little away from the sandy track which serves as a road. It marks the precise spot where a couple of weeks ago a foul murder was committed. The victim was one of the unfortunate Maltese coachmen of Tunis; the murderer a major in the service of the Bey. The major engaged the coachman to drive him to Carthage, and when opposite this palm-tree shot him through the heart. There were plenty of Arabs upon the road at the time, but none of them interfered. It was only a wretched infidel who had met with his deserts: why should they trouble themselves in the matter? So the assassin got clean off, and has not since been heard of; nor does anybody believe that he is likely to be punished. As for his motives, they were apparently, as in the case of most murderers, a little mixed. There was a good deal of religious fanaticism and political hatred at the bottom of the crime; but there was also one ugly fact in connexion with it which tends to deprive the murderer of the crown of glory to which he would be entitled in the eyes of his co-religionists if he had taken the man’s life out of a pure hatred of the abominable Christian. That is the fact that he had previously shown himself not above borrowing money from the aforesaid Christian, and that he had forgotten to repay that money. Such is the tale with which Afrigan beguiles the way, as my carriage rolls rapidly onwards towards the hill once crowned by the towers of Carthage, and now marked by the imposing pile of the College of St. Louis.

As we approach that hill we have occasion to pass close to an encampment of Bedouins. The savage dogs from the tents rush out, barking furiously: the scarcely less savage children, tawny, naked, with long hair streaming in the wind, follow them, and fly towards us, shrieking out, “_Caroub, caroub!_” I fling them some small coins; they pick them up eagerly, and then, without a word or a gesture of thanks, but much after the fashion in which a hungry dog takes himself off with a bone, dart back towards their rude dwellings. And now the horses toil through a sandy cutting up a steep hill-side, and I find myself actually upon the site of Carthage. The impression which follows the first look round upon this spot, once so important in the world’s affairs and still so famous in the records of history, is one of intense disappointment. Remembering what I saw a year ago at Ephesus, I had hoped to find here, as on the site of the famous city of Asia Minor, some striking and extensive remains of the ancient town. But _delenda est Carthago_! The Roman’s wish has been fulfilled, and of the once glorious city of Carthage it may now be said with literal accuracy that not one stone remains standing upon another above ground. Yet you tread here, in no figurative sense but in very truth, upon an Empire’s dust. The whole site of the city is strewn with the broken fragments of pottery, mosaic, sculptured marbles, pillars, and tiles. Everywhere, too, huge fallen masses of masonry are lying prone upon the earth. The site of Carthage, I believe, has not yet been explored with modern thoroughness. Day by day men come here from the College of St. Louis or the neighbourhood and dig for an hour or two; and sometimes the treasures which they turn up as the result of their desultory labour are of great value. The best of these treasures have been carried away to enrich the museums of Europe; but no one can doubt that much still remains to be discovered, and I doubt not that thorough and systematic investigations carried on upon this spot would reveal many objects of value and interest which once adorned the streets and palaces of Carthage.

Stumbling over the broken blocks of masonry, among which the lizards, sole inhabitants of the city, were running swiftly, I walked a short distance seaward past the site of Dido’s palace, and came thus to the place where the only extensive remains of the greatness of Carthage are to be found. These are the cisterns which once furnished a portion of the water-supply of the city. Just as Professor Owen can reconstruct an extinct animal if only a single bone of its skeleton has been preserved, so it is an easy matter for those who have seen these wonderful cisterns to form an approximate idea of the grandeur of the city to which they belonged. They are vast subterranean structures, with heavy vaulted roofs, intended to shut out from the cool water in the mighty tanks the heat of the African sun. But time has made many a breach in these great arches, and the light of day in consequence streams in upon corridors and chambers which eighteen hundred years ago were jealously shrouded in midnight gloom.

Some of the cisterns are circular in shape, and look like nothing so much as enormous wells; the majority, however, are of oblong form. In every case the masonry is of the most substantial description, showing how well the Phœnicians did their work. Even more remarkable, however, than the quality of the masonry, is that of the lining of cement upon the walls of the cisterns. It is as perfect to-day as on the day, probably more than two thousand years distant, when it was spread upon these walls. The very marks of the trowels used in spreading it are quite distinct, and here and there may be seen the coarse imprint of some workman’s thumb—a sight to ponder over at one’s leisure. I had a strange “eerie” feeling upon me as I trod the long covered corrider that runs the length of the whole series of cisterns, and thought of the time when above where I now walked the tumultuous life of a great city had rolled in its majestic fulness of power. Most of the cisterns were half filled with rubbish that had fallen when the arches of the roof gave way; but presently I came to some which seemed to be comparatively little injured, and at last to one that—so far as I could tell—was as perfect as on the day when the Phœnician workmen left it and the cool waters were first allowed to flow into it. It was a beautiful, dimly-lighted chamber, with walls and roof and floor white and clean; and it contained pure crystal water to the depth of five or six feet. So bright and refreshing was that water, so delightful the contrast which this cool, shady apartment presented to the burning heat and glare outside, that I looked about to see if there were any means by which I could descend and bathe in this vast tank. None, however, were visible; and after a while I had to leave the arched corridor and to return to the blaze of the sunshine.

These cisterns of Carthage certainly suffice to give one some idea of what the great city must have been in its prime. Nor are these the only traces of the efforts put forth by the inhabitants to obtain a constant supply of good water. Other cisterns, similar to those I have described, lie at a short distance from the shore. They are now, however, occupied by a tribe of Bedouins, and it is dangerous to visit them without an escort. Then, again, for miles across the sandy plain between Carthage and Tunis, a crumbling line of huge blocks of masonry may be seen. These are the remnants of the aqueduct which in later days brought the water from the Zaghouan hills to Carthage. Nowadays the Tunisians are supplied with water from these same hills, and it was but the other day that the Arabs, in order to avenge themselves upon the French, cut the existing aqueduct, and for a time deprived Tunis of one of the great necessaries of life.

Upon one point nobody who has visited Carthage can be in any doubt, and that is as to the surpassing loveliness of its situation. I know of no city, with the exception of Constantinople, that occupies a site which can be compared with this. Even that of Ephesus is inferior in splendour, if not in interest. The great city occupied an amphitheatre sloping gently down to the edge of the gulf. The blue waters of the Mediterranean must have washed against the marble steps of its palaces. Indeed, looking down to-day from the spot where, according to tradition, Dido’s palace once stood, I could distinctly perceive beneath the surface of the sea the vast blocks which once marked out the site of the jetties and quays of the ancient port. Beyond the glorious expanse of sparkling waves, there were the fine masses of the Lead Mountains, encircling the gulf; inland could be seen the silver sheet of the Lake of Tunis, whilst in the dim distance the hoary crests of the ever-present Zaghouan range pierced the cloudless sky. Amid the lassitude produced by the intense heat which everywhere prevailed, both mind and body were refreshed by the exquisite loveliness of the scene, and by the delicious breeze which swept down from the mountains, and came to us laden with the briny odours of the gulf.

Absolutely desolate as is the particular part of the site of Carthage where the principal remains are to be found, it must not be supposed that the entire space once occupied by the great city now lies waste. On the top of the chief hill enclosed within the boundaries of the place stands the College of St. Louis, an establishment conducted by the Jesuits under the protection of the French Government, where the children of most of the European residents in the Regency are educated. Down below, on the edge of the shore, are the houses of some Moorish notabilities—beautiful water-palaces, reminding me by their situation and architecture of those which line the Bosphorus. In other directions a few Arab farm-houses are scattered, each enclosed in its impregnable hedge of prickly pear; whilst hanging on the sharp crest of the hill to the west, which once looked down upon Carthage, is the walled Arab town of Sidi-bou-Said, now occupied by men so fanatical that the life of no European who ventured within it would be safe. It was with real regret that I turned away from this beautiful scene—so striking in itself, so interesting in all its associations—and began the long drive back to Tunis. There were many interesting spectacles along the way, one of the most curious being the appearance of the Caid or Judge of Tunis, clad in gorgeous raiment, and riding in a handsome brougham, escorted by Arab outriders. But the effects of the heat and the fatigue I had undergone were too great to be resisted, and before half the distance had been traversed I was sleeping soundly, unconscious even of the terrible jolting of my carriage in the deep ruts of an African highway.

“Adventures,” says Lord Beaconsfield, “are to the adventurous.” I have often consoled myself with the saying when, in the course of my little wanderings, I have met with personal adventures of a trying character. But really I have the strongest objection to being troubled by the adventures of other adventurous people. Like every other properly constituted tourist, I look down with a certain measure of contempt upon all others of my tribe, and am only anxious to give them the widest possible berth. Imagine, then, my feelings when, upon alighting at the Grand Hotel on my return, hot, hungry, dusty, and thirsty, from my trip to Carthage, I was coolly informed by the manager that he had been compelled to turn me out of my big, airy room, in order to make way for somebody else. “You see, monsieur, it was a double-bedded room,” he observed, in answer to my first expostulations. “And where, then, am I to be put?” “Ah well! monsieur, we cannot say at present; but you shall have a room before bed-time.” This was a particularly pleasant announcement to be received by a weary traveller who was anxious to refresh himself by plentiful ablutions. I kept my temper, however, until I had asked another question: “Where are my things?” My “things” were, of course, the contents of my two portmanteaus, which I had left scattered about my apartment in the early morning. In reply, the manager pointed to a heap in a dark corner of the dusty corridor. There were my books, my writing materials, my linen, my coats, my toilette apparatus, all heaped up together, promiscuously. Then—the storm broke. I was convinced that I had been treated in this infamous manner for the benefit of some French general. It was too much to be borne. I had just five minutes of it without interruption in the hall of the Grand Hotel—as good a five minutes of free, unlimited, polyglottic deliverance of one’s mind as I had ever enjoyed in the course of my life. I had, of course, the greatest personal satisfaction when I expressed myself in English; a double satisfaction, because not only had I the fullest command of words in that tongue, but I could use the strongest epithets with impunity, as neither the manager, who stood pale and scowling, receiving my outpouring of wrath with deprecating gestures, nor the attendants understood a syllable of what I said. But I was pleased to find that my French also was admirably adapted to convey some idea of the state of my mind on this occasion; and I chuckled inwardly as I reflected upon the fact that I had not mastered the _argot_ of Paris uselessly.

Suddenly the door of the room from which I had been so summarily expelled was opened; I turned with a frown to see the man by whom I had been supplanted. O, horror! It was no man at all. There stood a woman, middle-aged, gentle, refined, evidently somewhat alarmed, and behind her a pretty young girl of seventeen, who was apparently more amused than frightened by the altercation. What did it mean? From what quarter of the world could this unexpected apparition in Tunis have sprung? The frown disappeared with marvellous rapidity from my face; I took off my hat and began to explain to them volubly that I was delighted to think that they had got such a good room, that I hoped they had not been disturbed by my scolding of the servants, that I should be only too glad to be of service to them, &c., &c. I said anything I could think of, in fact, to cover my shame at having been aroused to a somewhat unusual ebullition of temper by the sacrifice of my comfort to that of a couple of women, whilst at the same time I rejoiced to think that at least they did not understand the English I had been pouring out upon the devoted heads of the people around me. Alas! my confusion was made complete when the elderly lady said to me, “But you are an Englishman, are you not? And we are Englishwomen!”

There was nothing for it but to make an ample apology to them in my native tongue. They received it with the best possible grace, protesting, indeed, that it was they from whom apologies were due. And then the elder lady explained to me how it was that she and her daughter found themselves in Tunis. They were on their way from Genoa to Malta, where they meant to pass the winter, and they thought they would like to take Tunis on the way, “it was such a romantic place.” “But do you not know, madam, that the country is in a state of war? that the Arabs may rise at any moment, that even in Tunis one’s life is not safe?” No; they knew nothing at all upon that subject. They had simply seen that they could get a steamer from Genoa to Tunis, and another after an interval of twenty-four hours from Tunis to Malta. So these two unprotected Englishwomen had coolly come into Tunis, and were quite prepared to go for a walk by themselves into the very midst of the native quarter, if they were not warned of their danger! I enjoined upon them the necessity of taking their meals in their own room, “and a very comfortable room you’ll find it, ma’am,” I said, with the best smile I could summon up for the occasion; and then as I was to dine out by arrangement, at the Hôtel de Paris, to meet B———, M. Camile Pelletan, the French Deputy, and one or two other gentlemen, I lent Afrigan to them for the remainder of the day, warning them that they must upon no account disobey any orders he might give them. It was really wonderful how my righteous wrath had subsided when I found that it was for no French general, but for a couple of English ladies, that I had been turned out of my room. And yet what madness on the part of Englishwomen to come touring in Tunis at this moment!