160 An Adventure at Sfax [1894 



we arrived at daylight next morning, 4th Nov., I had an odd adven- 

 ture. Having made acquaintance with a respectable looking man in the 

 boat which took us to the shore, I was glad to accept his invitation that 

 he should show me round the town, which he did with all politeness, 

 and then invited me to his house. This was in a by street of no very 

 reputable appearance, the entrance being by a low door where a donkey 

 stood tied, and on entering I saw at once that it was no Moslem house, 

 as I had supposed my friend to be, for there were women there un- 

 veiled, and it flashed on me what was the truth, that they were Jews. 

 This became clearly the case when they set a meal of greasy bread 

 before me, and tried to make me drink absinthe, and I had some dif- 

 ficulty in finding excuse to get away and to explain that I was not 

 myself a Jew, for my conductor had come to the conclusion that I 

 must be one, for my having condescended to speak to him and enter 

 his house, for in these North African towns the Jews are treated as 

 pariahs by the Mohammedans, and he did not understand it as possible 

 that I could be other than one of his own nation treating him with the 

 politeness I had shown. It is no less characteristic of the position 

 Jews hold in Tunis that as soon as I had explained to him the mistake 

 he had made, his manner at once became changed from one of hos- 

 pitable anxiety to please, to one of undignified begging for a bakshish, 

 which I was of course only to glad to give, feeling that the fault had 

 been mine. 



" Sfax is an interesting, and except for the Jew quarter, a wholly 

 Moslem town, inhabited mostly by Sherifs, every other man wearing 

 the green turban. It was bombarded and barbarously treated by the 

 French in 1881. The captain of our steamer, the Ville de Tunis, tells 

 me that this was in some measure a mistake. When the town was 

 summoned by the French fleet to capitulate, it happened that, being 

 the 14th of July, in the interval before the answer was received, a 

 salute was fired in honour of the day, and the people of Sfax, think- 

 ing it an attack and that the shots had fallen short of the town, 

 refused terms of unconditional surrender offered to them. The town 

 was then bombarded in earnest, two breaches were made in the walls, 

 and the place was stormed. The French lost 700 men and gave the 

 Moslem quarter over to sack for twelve hours (this the captain denies, 

 but it is historical), during which the houses were broken into and 

 the women ravished ; the broken doors were long left unmended in 

 token against them, and I noticed when I walked through the Moslem 

 quarter in the morning that many doors showed new locks recently put 

 in and new panels not yet painted. The city walls have been mended, 

 but the town inside and the bazaars look poor compared with Sus. 

 The wealth of the town lies outside in the gardens, several hundreds 

 of which surround it, all belonging to the Moslem inhabitants. The 



