I
I was fortunate in my first landfall at Tunis. It was a fine sea
picture framed in that chill November dawn. On my left, over the
rippling watery gold to the few pink clouds eastward, lay the great
blue mountain headland, stretching far behind. In front, a little to
the right, was Goletta, the port, hard by; and ranging off northward
the line of the ocean beach ran stern and solemn, with the lighthouse
above. That rise, there, was the hill of Carthage. Westward over
the hollow space of waters swept the crescent horizon inland, low
and misty, centred a little to the south by the obscure white of
far Tunis. Carthage is the first thought of the traveller; his
instant memory is of Phoenician ships, and his imagination is of
Scipio and Regulus—these are the sights they saw.
The steamer plied up the long canal that makes the shallow, broad
lake navigable to the docks some miles beyond; flamingoes flew to the
right and left over the level lapping waters, fresh in the raw, damp,
almost rainy air; and gradually Tunis drew in sight, like a great
white flower on the bosom of the sloping uplands, strange, solitary,
unexpected, with minarets and the island look of a Moslem city.