1894] With Terence to Kerouan 157 



ago. It used to be a paying concern, but the new diligence service has 

 spoiled its trade, the respectable keeper of it told us. These fondouks 

 are like the khans in Turkey, a number of little empty rooms paved 

 with tiles, where the traveller pays a few piastres for his night's lodg- 

 ing and provides his own food. We paid five francs, which included 

 a franc for stabling. I should be glad to be always as well lodged in 

 Europe. The road passes over a series of plains, partly cultivated in 

 the summer, but all bare now, the hills beyond very beautiful. 



" $ist Oct. — Another long drive, crossing the Enfida estate. This 

 caused at one time a political question between England and France, 

 the facts of the case being these: Kheireddin Pasha (the same who was 

 afterwards Grand Vizier at Constantinople) having got together this 

 immense property sold it to a French land company, whereupon a right 

 of pre-emption was claimed by a Jew, a protected British subject, as 

 neighbouring proprietor. It was before the French Occupation, and 

 both governments backed their own clients for political reasons. The 

 Jew's claim, however, was a rather doubtful one, and as the French 

 company gave more than the land was worth, he was in fact no loser, 

 and the British Government gave way. The estate consists of a vast 

 tract of plain, most of it capable of cultivation, but exposed to the 

 south winds. The company has planted many hundreds of acres with 

 vines, but on the whole Terence says it does not pay. The high road 

 passes for several miles through it, and through the chief farming es- 

 tablishment of which they are trying to make a town of the usual 

 French kind, with poplars and eucalyptus trees. 



" Beyond this there is nothing more in the shape of a house until 

 one gets to Kerouan. We were so pleased with our night at the fondouk 

 that we determined to go to another at Kerouan instead of to the 

 French Hotel. (We were both travelling in Eastern dress.) And so 

 after some wandering in the streets, it being already dark, we have 

 taken up our quarters at a house of reception, which is entirely Arab, 

 and entirely Moslem, about the centre of the town. It is an okeilah 

 or lodging house, where merchants hire rooms by the month in which 

 to deposit their goods and sleep. We pass in it for an Indian Moslem 

 merchant and his friend, a Syrian, from Damascus. 



" 1st Nov. — The okeilah is a poor place. We have one little room 

 between us like a prison cell, opening on to a balcony which runs round 

 the inner court, open at the top. It is dirty and bug ridden, but decent 

 and essentially Oriental. The proprietor is a respectable merchant, 

 originally from Sfax, who sits all day in a room on the ground floor, 

 which is his shop and counting-house. His trade is to buy wool and 

 other desert produce from the Bedouins, and to sell them linen cloth. 

 A number of them have been all the morning in the courtyard, very- 

 noisy in their bargainings, most of them of the Slasi tribe who have a 



