1894] The Gabez Oasis 161. 



French colonists have tried to buy them out but they will not go. There 

 is a bitter feeling here against the conquerors. According to my 

 Jew acquaintance, Braham ben Gabrail Mazuz, there are a thousand 

 houses of Jews in Sfax, probably an exaggeration. These are di- 

 vided in opinion about the French occupation, but most are in favour of 

 it, as they were badly treated by the Moors. They are mostly very 

 poor, the richer ones doing trade as middle men between the Moors 

 and Franks. Young Braham came on board again to wish me good- 

 bye, and brought some cake and roast chestnuts and bread for me, but 

 he could not resist asking me for the fare of the steam launch he had 

 taken passage in from the shore, and a franc over. 



" Our party on board is reduced to the captain, the doctor, and two 

 cabin passengers, so I have the ship practically to myself. There are 

 very few European colonists in these parts except the small population 

 of drink sellers and restaurateurs. The Arabs refuse to sell their good 

 lands, and the bad are not worth buying, nor has the French Govern- 

 ment yet found an excuse in rebellion to confiscate these as has been 

 done in Algeria. The taxes are low, no land tax in coin but the old 

 tenth of the gross produce and a poll tax of, I think, twenty-five francs 

 levied on rich and poor. This last presses on the poor and causes dis- 

 content because in the old time it was not levied in extreme cases of 

 poverty, whereas now under the French no one is exempt. Civilized 

 governments always commit this injustice in Eastern lands, falsely 

 pleading immemorial custom. 



" $th Nov. — Arrived by daylight at Gabez, a palm oasis watered by 

 a small river which rises some five miles inland, they say in several 

 hundred springs. This feeds the gardens, the rest of the country 

 being desert. I found a ramshackle carriage with an Arab driver 

 from Tripoli, who took me round and explained everything. There 

 are but few Europeans here, some warehouses on the shore but nothing 

 inland. The native population is Arab, not Berber. Under conduct 

 of my Tripoli driver I visited the barrage, where there is a run of 

 water about the size of our Mole at Leatherhead, much overgrown with 

 reeds and weeds, an oozy unwholesome haunt of frogs and snakes. 

 Then to the mosque and tomb of Abdul Barber, a pretty place on a 

 hill, and so round. There was a tame gazelle running in the desert 

 outside the villages, for there is no town of Gabez. My driver told 

 me that before the French occupation this was a dangerous neighbour- 

 hood, as the Bedouins were always marauding. There is a certain 

 trade here of half a grass, which they bring from two or three days' 

 journey inland, worth, my driver said, five francs the camel load. 



" We left at noon and arrived at sunset off Jerba, a long, low island, 

 wooded with olives and palms, the water so shallow that our steamer 

 had to lie six miles from shore, so that we only saw it as an outline 



