156 Tunisian Horses [1894 



nest, now becoming little by little invaded by Europeans, but still in- 

 teresting, and stopped to drink coffee with a fat citizen, one of Terence's 

 friends. In the evening we rode down into the village and talked again, 

 but I am confounded to find that I understand hardly a word of what 

 is said. Terence is happy and at home with everybody and has a 

 fund of good humour which makes him everywhere le bienvenu. We 

 played chess in the evening. 



" 26th Oct. — We have had much talk all day on Oriental and re- 

 ligious subjects, and I find Terence to have ideas not unlike mine on 

 these matters, and we have made a plan of going in the Spring to visit 

 the Senussi in the Tripolitan desert and perhaps making profession 

 of Islam, at least I hope some day to do so. I think a hermitage of 

 the kind I have been seeking might be found in the country near Cyrene. 

 In the evening we made a round of the eastern shores of the lake in 

 a steam launch belonging to the Harbour Company. 



"28th October (Sunday). — Back to Tunis. Terence tells me the 

 agricultural colonists here are of a superior class to those of Algeria, 

 there being some young Frenchmen of good family among them. 

 These are opposed to annexation, and take the part of the natives as 

 against the encroachments of the officials, but the town colonists are 

 for making Tunis a French province. The worst of all are some from 

 Algeria, where they are all rabid against ' les Arabes.' 



" 2gth Oct. — Once more in Terence's delightful house in Tunis, 

 Rue des Silots, 41. A young Tunisian came in to-day to play chess 

 with me and I won two games of him, but he has considerable ideas 

 of play on the Arab lines, which I fancy were once also those of 

 Europe. The principal differences in rule are that the pawns cannot 

 advance two steps at a time at their first move and that castling is 

 performed in three moves, the king having the right on the second 

 occasion to manoeuvre like a knight. This young man, who is well 

 educated, talked a quite comprehensible Arabic, and I am beginning to 

 understand the others. 



" We went in the morning to see the cavalry remonte and were 

 shown sixty or seventy stallions, half-a-dozen of them Arab, none 

 good, except one old horse said to be a Shouey-man from Nablous. 

 The best were four white barbs from the province of Oran, thick set, 

 short legged, which would be handsome if they had less drooping 

 quarters. The native Tunisians unfit to breed from in any country. 



" 2,0th Oct. — Started with Terence for Kerouan by road with four 

 horses abreast in a landau, very like the old vetturino travelling in 

 Italy of fifty years ago, very slow but pleasant in fine weather. We 

 rested two hours at midday on the road under a Carob tree, and stopped 

 for the night at a fondouk, a clean airy place the property of a Sherifa, 

 a widow of Tunis, whose husband built it as a speculation forty years 



