1894] • From Kerouan to Sus 159 



the whole prayer from the Minarets — and there is one just outside the 

 okeilah — beginning at four and going on more than half an hour, a 

 fine old-world ceremony, disappearing alas from Islam. Kerouan, 

 however, is a holy city, and preserves some at least of its traditions. 

 We were up with the first light, and having drunk coffee prepared for 

 us by our friend the hashishi, and induced his old companion to carry 

 our baggage, which he did with great unwillingness for he was still 

 drowsy with his opium, and paid our two nights' score at the okeilah, 

 three francs and a few coppers — it would have been the same if we 

 had taken our rooms for a month, and the proprietor was too sleepy 

 to get up and see to it — we went out through the half awake streets 

 to the Eastern gate, and the office of the new tramway, where we 

 waited an hour and saw the sun rise. Terence employed the time re- 

 peating to me a story told in the okeilah by the merchant of Sfax, which 

 is as good as most in the Arabian Nights. (It is too long to insert 

 here, and I reserve it for another occasion.) Then we took our places 

 in the tram, and went at a fine gallop across the desolate plains in four 

 hours to the sea at Sus, where we once more put off our Moslem gar- 

 ments and washed and dined at a Frankish restaurant. The tram jour- 

 ney between Kerouan and Sus is a curious mixture of old and new. 

 The coach runs on rails laid across the open fields, drawn by horses 

 running beside it with a long loose trace, so that when it crosses ravines 

 the horses gallop beside it up and down the steep places without check- 

 ing their pace. The track is all more or less down hill, so that once 

 started the coach goes by its own weight, and the horses have all they 

 can do to keep up with it in certain places, not being harnessed to any 

 pole, the only check on the coach being a brake worked by the con- 

 ductor in the steepest parts, a most exhilarating way of travelling, and 

 quite practical for that particular journey. 



" Sus is a lovely old battlemented town as yet little spoilt, though 

 the usual obscene French houses are springing up outside it. I walked 

 all over and around it and through its bazaars. There is a fine citadel 

 commanding the town on which a French flag is hanging half-mast 

 high. The Emperor of Russia is dead. 



" Here we both took ship, Terence to return to Tunis, I to go on 

 to Tripoli, touching at Monastir and Mehadir, two lovely mediseval 

 strongholds by the sea. In the latter I had the good luck to make a 

 friend. Seeing a nice clean Arab coffee-house in front of the mosque, 

 I sat down in it at the same time with a respectable Bedouin, whom I 

 saluted. He ordered at once two cups of coffee, and we talked and 

 made friends, he in good Arabic, a very worthy man, living, he told 

 me, some ten miles from the town, and he has promised, if he passes 

 through Egypt next year on the pilgrimage, to alight at Sheykh Obeyd. 

 I have seldom met a better bred or more kindly man. At Sfax, where 



