CHAPTER VIII 



A VISIT TO TUNIS AND TRIPOLI 



My winter's journey this year began with a visit I had long designed 

 to pay to my cousin, Terence Bourke, in Tunis, where he had bought 

 land in the neighbourhood of Bizerta, and had made his home, having 

 also the position there of unpaid British Vice-Consul. He was a 

 younger brother of my old ally, " Button," who figures so conspicuously 

 in my former volumes, and, like him and all the Bourkes, was gifted 

 with extreme natural ability for dealing with men and generally for 

 affairs. Terence, by this special quality, had made for himself an ex- 

 ceptional position in the regency of Tunis. He had learnt to talk 

 Tunisian Arabic perfectly, and had acquired an influence with the na- 

 tive Tunisians of all classes, unrivalled by any other European. Of 

 all the men I have known who have had dealings with the East, and 

 whom I have seen engaged with them in conversation, I place him first 

 in his power of making friends with them, for he has what Englishmen 

 so seldom possess, an inexhaustible patience equal to the Oriental's own, 

 which enables him to sit as they do, hour after hour, conversing with 

 them, and show no weariness however dull their talk. This is a great 

 power, and through it he has always been successful in acquiring their 

 attentive sympathy, and in obtaining from them their confidence and 

 help. I have often thought that if our Foreign Office had had the wit 

 to name Terence its Ambassador at the Sultan's Court, Abdul Hamid 

 would have remained to this day the ally of England, instead of its 

 obstinate enemy, but that is a kind of intelligence seldom found in 

 Downing Street. This is my diary of my time with him. 



"21st Oct. (Sunday). — Arrived after a smooth passage at Tunis. 

 The weather still very hot here. Terence met me on the quay, and we 

 came straight up to his house in the Moslem quarter, a lovely old tile- 

 encrusted bit of bric-a-brac as one would wish to live in. One enters 

 by a side door in an arched passage, through which the street passes, 

 and by a steep, tortuous stair to the upper floor. One has to stoop to 

 pass into the apartment, and finds oneself in a marble patio with four 

 pillars, supporting a dome open from above, the walls partly tiled, partly 

 in white marble, and the woodwork of the roof painted in red and green. 

 From this central hall, which is about 20 feet square, the rooms branch 

 off, the house being roughly speaking, though not exactly, cross-shaped, 



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