FKENCH IN TUNIS 273 



for a pack better than for riding, but it will serve a turn 

 at that. An Arab saddle is uncomfortable enough ; to 

 ride a pad is the height of misery. As a rule, it has no 

 stirrups, but they are occasionally present, and then not 

 fastened but thrown loosely across the pad, which is very 

 thick, extremely wide, and frequently has no girth what- 

 ever. It runs up over the withers and back beyond the 

 coupling. A habit of balancing keeps the rider and pad 

 both in place. With a horse of any spirit girths are in- 

 dispensable ; still, a horse will give a good deal of a shy 

 vrithout throwing either man or pad, if the man has caught 

 the balance-trick. 



Since the French assumed what they call " financial 

 control " of Tunis, the roads have been improved j9a7•^ 

 passu with the rest of matters. Most of the roads before 

 they came were only worn saddle or camel paths ; in the 

 interior there is still nothing else. On the coast were a 

 few mud roads, able to accommodate the rough vehicles 

 occasionally owned by the natives. Along the road there 

 is uniformly a mud-bank thrown up from the ditch dug 

 on either side to drain it ; a similar bank, for irrigating 

 purposes, is put around every enclosed field, and each one 

 is crowned by the Barbary fig or prickly-pear cactus. This 

 plant grows everywhere, is killed only by frost which al- 

 most never comes, and bears in abundance a watery fruit 

 almost as big as an apple. This is the one means of stav- 

 ing off starvation which the Arab possesses when his crops 

 fail, as they sometimes do in seasons of drought. No care 

 need be given to the plant, which often grows to be ten 

 feet high. 



The Arab's cultivation is the barest apology. All he 

 does is to sow his seed in December or January on the 

 untouched soil, in among the stubble of last cro23, then 

 scratch it in with what he calls a plough, but what is only 



18 



