THE GATE TO BARBARY
Bizerta, the great naval base and fortress on the northern coast of
Tunisia, is a French pistol aimed straight at the head of Italy—or
perhaps it would be a closer simile to say the toe. It commands the
narrowest part of the Mediterranean, where the Middle Sea contracts to a
width of less than four score miles. In fact, were the French to mount on
Cape Bon a gun having the range of the one with which, in the spring of
1917, the Germans shelled Paris, they could drop their projectiles on the
shores of Sicily.
It will be remembered that when, in 1881, the bey of Tunis was forced
to acquiesce in a French protectorate, the most violent resentment was
aroused in Italy, which had long regarded Tunisia, with its large Italian
population, as within her own sphere of influence and was only awaiting a
propitious moment and a plausible pretext to bring that country under the
rule of Rome. Even to-day, indeed, after more than a third of a century
of French occupation, Mussolini and his fellow-imperialists regard
Tunisia as a sort of African _terra irredenta_, which, when a favorable
opportunity offers, they purpose to “redeem.” So, when the French began
the construction of an impregnable stronghold at Bizerta in 1890, they
made no secret of the fact that it was intended as a warning to Italy
that the tricolor which had been raised over Tunisia nine years before
would not be hauled down, and as a reminder to Britain that, Gibraltar,
Malta, and the Canal notwithstanding, the Mediterranean was not a British
lake.
During recent years the French government has poured out money like
water in the development of Bizerta until to-day it is one of the
strongest fortresses in the world. The Lake of Bizerta, which forms the
inner harbor, accessible through the outer harbor and a canal, is nine
miles from the sea and contains fifty square miles of anchorage for the
largest vessels. A great arsenal has been created at Sidi Abdallah, at
the southeastern extremity of the lake, with dry-docks for repairing
the largest battle-ships, wharves, workshops, and warehouses, while at
Ferryville, a few years ago a sandy waste, a modern town with well-built
dwellings for the thousands of laborers employed in the dockyard has
sprung up as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. Barracks have been
built for the housing of the garrison, and the muzzles of long-range guns
peer menacingly from the elaborate chain of fortifications which encircle
the approaches to the harbor and the town. If, as has been hinted,
Mussolini occasionally turns an acquisitive eye toward Tunisia, he should
not overlook Bizerta. It would be a hard nut to crack.
* * * * *
My daughter, Bettie, had never been to Africa before, and so, when the
steamer docked at Bizerta, she was naturally eager to go ashore and see
the sights despite my warning that it was a colorless, uninteresting
town, and that, as her first glimpse of Africa, it would be a
disappointment. Now it is a curious fact that new-comers to a country
frequently have more thrilling experiences in the first few hours of
their visit than befall old-timers in a lifetime. For example, Sir
Theodore Cook, editor of the “Field,” once told me that during his first
day in New York, while drinking a glass of beer in a saloon in Park Row,
the glass was shattered in his hand by a gangster’s bullet intended for
the bartender.
It was a Sunday morning when we went ashore at Bizerta, and the town was
as peaceful as a rural community in France. But as we were strolling
through the tortuous byways of the picturesque Andalusian quarter—founded
by the Moors driven from Spain—a pistol barked in a doorway, and
the report was echoed by a woman’s scream. French gendarmes, native
_goumiers_, and military police came on the run, followed, it seemed, by
half the population of the town. In less time than it takes to tell about
it the narrow thoroughfare was packed from wall to wall with an excited
mob.
“What’s the trouble?” I inquired of a zouave who emerged from the press
about the doorway.
“_N’importe, m’sieur. N’importe_,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.
“A rascally Senegalese has just murdered an Arab woman.”
“And you told me,” my daughter said reproachfully, “that I wouldn’t find
Bizerta interesting!”
* * * * *
The dense gray fog, which had hung like a pall over the wintry
Mediterranean since shortly after our departure from Marseilles, abruptly
lifted as we left Bizerta, and thence onward to La Goulette the Tunisian
coast unrolled its panorama bright and clear under the February sunshine.
As I leaned on the rail, my glasses trained upon the shore-line, which
slipped past as on a motion-picture screen, a White Father emerged from
the smoke-room and joined me.
[Illustration: LO, ALL THE POMP OF YESTERDAY....
“Delenda est Carthago!” cried Marcus Cato, and so efficiently was
his command carried out that two small lagoons—the one at the left
corresponding to the ancient military harbour, the other to the
commercial port—are almost all that remain of the great city founded by
Dido]
Shortly he tapped me upon the shoulder.
“Look, my son! Look! Over there....”
With my glasses I followed the direction of his outstretched finger. But
all that I could discern was a range of distant violet mountains and in
the middle foreground, rising somewhat abruptly from the plain which
sloped down to meet the shingled strand, a low, isolated hill. Its lower
slopes were clothed with vegetation—fields of barley, vineyards, patches
of cactus—broken here and there by what appeared to be huge rubbish-heaps
and excavation mounds. Higher up, amid dark clumps of cypress-trees,
I could make out some scattered, white-walled buildings, one of them,
judging from the gilded cross which surmounted it, a church. At the foot
of the hill, near the margin of the sea, the sun was reflected dazzlingly
from the surface of two small, curiously shaped ponds.
“_Delenda est Carthago_,” quoted the priest.
“There is all that remains,” he continued, “of what was once the most
famous and powerful city in the world. The horseshoe-shaped lagoon with
the island in its center is a vestige of Hamilcar’s military harbor,
where the war-galleys were moored. On the summit of yonder hill Dido’s
palace is believed to have stood. On that narrow neck of land to the
eastward the army of Regulus was annihilated by the Carthaginians under
Xanthippus, and there, a century later, the victorious forces of Scipio
Africanus pitched their camp. The white chapel atop the plateau marks the
spot where St. Louis died while leading the Last Crusade.”
It was as though he had uttered an incantation. At his words the scene
seemed to change before my eyes as one stereopticon picture dissolves
into another. The fog-banks which had lifted were the mists of
centuries. Now I was looking down the vista of the ages. In my mind’s eye
a mighty, glittering metropolis crowned that green and russet hill. A hot
African sun beat down upon its massive ramparts, upon the gilded roofs of
its towers and temples, upon its marble palaces and porphyry colonnades.
Brazen chariots tore through its narrow, teeming streets; squadrons
of horsemen maneuvered on the plain; elephants with jeweled trappings
rocked and rolled along. The smoke of sacrificial fires rose from the
altar before the great temple, where stood the statue of the horned
god Baal. Relieving the masses of masonry here and there were patches
of verdure, the sacred groves dedicated to the worship of the goddess
Tanith. A vessel with billowing sails of Tyrian purple slipped along the
shore. Out from the harbor-mouth shot a file of lean, long triremes,
ostrich-feathers of foam curling from their bows as they leaped forward
at the urge of the triple banks of oars. I was looking on the city which
had been mistress of the Mediterranean for upward of half a thousand
years; whose argosies had explored the unknown coasts of Africa and Gaul
and Spain, venturing even beyond the Pillars of Hercules in their quest
of the Hesperides; the city whose name is still synonymous with pomp and
pride and power—Carthage, which had disputed the Empire of the World with
Rome!
But the vision faded as abruptly as it had appeared when a French
destroyer, inky clouds belching from her slanting funnels, fled across
our bows. A sea-plane, bands of the tricolor painted on its under wings,
went booming overhead. Fishing-craft with ruddy lateen sails appeared,
swarthy, red-fezzed fishermen hauling at the nets. A puffing tugboat
bustled officiously alongside, and the pilot nimbly climbed the swaying
ladder. Bells jangled in the engine-room. And the _Duc d’Aumale_, slowed
to half-speed, swept past the thickets of bristling masts which fringe
the wharves of La Goulette and entered the throat of the buoyed channel
which leads through the shallow lake of El Bahira to Tunis.
Though a seaport, Tunis, it should be understood, is not on the sea
itself but some seven miles inland. The Tunisian capital occupies a most
peculiar site, being built upon the narrow isthmus which separates the
stagnant waters of El Bahira, “the little sea,” from the salt lagoon of
Sebkhet es Sedjoumi. Notwithstanding the fact that, next to Algiers,
Tunis is the largest and most important city in French Africa, it is only
within recent years that it has been directly accessible to ocean-going
vessels.
The project of creating a port at the very doors of Tunis was first
entertained by the late bey, who in 1880 granted a concession for the
purpose, but with the reorganization of the country after the French
occupation the contract was canceled. Some years later, however, the
enterprise was revived, the task of constructing the harbor, and of
connecting it with the sea by dredging a canal, seven miles in length,
through El Bahira, being undertaken by a French company.
With the completion of the port and the canal, La Goulette—or Goletta,
as the English call it—lost its former importance, declining from a
busy harbor, its roadsteads crowded with the ships of many nations, to
a sleepy fishing-village. During the summer months, however, it regains
a certain measure of its old-time activity, its population being almost
doubled by the Tunisians who, unable to get away to Europe, go there for
the sea-bathing and the breezes. Though La Goulette is of yesterday,
its Venetian charm happily remains undimmed. Its houses, built with the
stones of ancient Carthage, have been mellowed by time and the sun to
ivory and terra-cotta; a reminder of its tumultuous past is provided by
the fortress of Barbarossa, from which thousands of Christians taken
captive by the red-bearded corsair were released when Charles V carried
it by storm in 1535; the encircling waters of the Mediterranean and El
Bahira are of a glorious blue, flotillas of fishing-barks with painted
sails dot its placid surface and flocks of pink flamingos stalk sedately
along its shores.
Darkness was close at hand when we steamed past La Goulette, and the
purple African night had descended upon the land when we entered
the harbor of Tunis. Dimly the old, old city loomed before us, its
proportions clearly defined by twinkling street-lamps which grew fainter
as they climbed the hill surmounted by the _kasbah_ and the palace of the
bey; while in the foreground danced the reflection of the riding-lights
of the vessels in the harbor. I have always maintained that there are
certain cities at which, in order to obtain the full flavor of their
mystery and charm, one should arrive after nightfall, and Tunis is one of
them.
While the steamer was being warped with aggravating deliberation into her
berth, I looked down from the rail upon the picturesque scene and gave a
sigh of contentment. It was good to sniff again the smell of Africa, to
be back in the Orient once more. I breathed deep of the soft night air,
laden with the fragrance of orange-blossoms, jasmine, and bougainvillea.
After the glare of the sea, my eyes were rested by the dim outlines of
the buildings, garish enough by day but of ivory and amber loveliness
when bathed in the light of the moon. I reveled in the color and
picturesqueness of the throng waiting on the wharf below.
Ranged along the edge of the quay, very gorgeous and self-important in
their gold-laced jackets and voluminous trousers, were the dragomans and
runners from the various hotels and tourist-agencies; alert, energetic
fellows, speaking a smattering of many tongues, who spend their lives on
steamship-wharves and railway-station platforms, welcoming the arriving
and speeding the parting guest. Beyond them was a little group of wealthy
young Tunisians, in immaculately ironed tarbooshes and spotless burnouses
of the most delicate colors, one of them with a crimson blossom worn
behind his ear, come to welcome some friend returning from Paris or Monte
Carlo. A pair of bearded, hawk-nosed spahis paced slowly up and down,
their enormous white turbans bound with ropes of camel’s-hair, long
scarlet cloaks hanging to their booted and spurred heels. And well at
the back, kept in their place by the whip of a native _goumier_, was a
vociferous throng of Arab and negro porters, shouting and gesticulating
for the first chance to make a franc by carrying ashore our luggage, and
waiting, like sprinters on the mark, for the lowering of the gang-plank
to storm the ship as their ancestors, the Barbary pirates, did of old.
Drawn up beside the customs shed was a powerful car of American make with
a uniformed kavass from the residency and an alert-faced chauffeur in
trim gray whipcord standing beside it.
“For Colonel Powell?” I asked the chauffeur in French as we set foot
ashore.
“Yes, sir,” was the reply, in the unmistakable nasal twang of New
England. “But you needn’t speak to me in French unless you want to. My
name is Harvey Wilson and I’m from Providence, Rhode Island.”
Wilson, it developed, was a former member of the A. E. F. Instead of
returning to America with his regiment after the Armistice, he had
married a French girl and settled in Algiers as a motor mechanic and
chauffeur. He drove us for upward of six thousand kilometers over
desert roads, mountain roads, and across regions where there were no
roads worthy of the name whatsoever. He had a profound knowledge of the
idiosyncrasies of a motor; under the most trying conditions he never lost
his patience or his temper; and his unfailing good humor won him the
friendship of Europeans, Arabs, Berbers, and Moors alike. When we parted,
months later, on the frontier of Morocco, I told him that it would give
me genuine pleasure to recommend him to any one who contemplated motoring
in North Africa, and I am now keeping that promise.
Mrs. Powell and I had been in Africa so many times that for us the drive
through the brilliantly lighted streets to the hotel held little novelty.
Our chief concern was whether we should find awaiting us a room with
bath, for the hotels of Tunis are limited in number—the good hotels,
I mean—and during the tourist season they are always overcrowded, so
that it is the part of prudence to reserve one’s accommodations well in
advance.
But my daughter Bettie was fascinated by the unfamiliar street scenes:
the ceaseless stream of men wearing every form of head-covering—hats,
helmets, hoods, tarbooshes, turbans; the stately Arabs, the elders
looking for all the world like Old-Testament patriarchs; the bare-legged
Berber porters in ragged garments of coarse brown camel’s-hair, sacks
drawn over their heads to be used as sun-shades or overcoats according
to the weather; the gaudily uniformed soldiers of the Beylical Guard,
who might have stepped straight from a comic-opera chorus; the veiled
women slipping silently along like sheeted ghosts; the groups of natives
squatted about their cooking-pots, from which strange smells assailed
the nostrils; the files of swaying, supercilious camels laden with the
products of the South; the droves of patient little asses trotting
demurely along beneath enormous burdens; the high whitewashed walls of
the houses, broken by mysterious latticed windows, from which the eyes of
unseen, jealously guarded women were peering down, no doubt; the fleeting
glimpses caught through doors ajar of Oriental courtyards filled with
color—to her this was one of the Thousand and One Nights. Ah, me ... what
wouldn’t I give to again be seeing Africa for the first time through the
eyes of youth!
Notwithstanding the French occupation, Tunis remains distinctly Oriental.
The town is like a veiled woman of the harem wearing a pair of European
shoes, incongruous and clumsy. And it is the shoes which the visitor
arriving by sea sees first. For the district bordering on the harbor is
Italian—an unlovely, odoriferous neighborhood of mean streets lined with
squalid hovels where dwell some fifty thousand Sicilians and Maltese,
who outnumber the French by more than two to one—while the quarter
bisected by the Avenue Jules Ferry is characteristically French, with
spacious, tree-planted boulevards, enticing shops, banks, theaters,
cinemas, and electric tram-cars. This really imposing thoroughfare,
with its fine stores and crowded open-air cafés, might be, indeed, a
sort of continuation of the Cannebière in Marseilles interrupted by
the Mediterranean. Its principal mercantile establishment, the Petit
Louvre, is a creditable imitation of the mammoth Magazins du Louvre in
Paris, with which, incidentally, most American women appear to be better
acquainted than they are with the palace of the same name on the other
side of the Rue de Rivoli. But all this, I repeat, is only that portion
of Tunis revealed below the hem of her enveloping Eastern garments.
The old Tunis, with its mosques and palaces, its labyrinth of bazaars
rising gradually to the _kasbah_, is as Oriental as the Baghdad of
Harun-al-Rashid.
Most Europeans seem to be under the impression that Tunis is a modern
city—modern, at least, in comparison with Carthage. As a matter of fact,
however, Tunis (or Thines, as it was originally known) had probably been
in existence for some three or four hundred years when the fugitive Dido
landed on the shores of the Gulf of Tunis and on the little hill of Byrsa
founded Carthage. This view is accepted by no less an authority than the
historian Freeman. But for centuries Tunis was overshadowed and eclipsed
by the magnificence of her younger sister, sinking to the position of
a poor relation, a country cousin, a mere dependency. Yet she had her
revenge. Not only has she outlived her haughty neighbor, but she has
incorporated her very bones, for there is hardly a column or capital in
Tunis which is not of Carthaginian origin. Here, indeed, we see a ghost
of Carthage, for the native city must very closely resemble what the
commercial quarter of Carthage was five-and-twenty centuries ago.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE COUNTRIES OF BARBARY
MOROCCO, ALGERIA AND TUNISIA]
The car came gently to a halt before the Hotel Majestic, a spacious
hostelry whose architect had sought, without conspicuous success, to
graft the Moorish style on the European. An Arab chasseur in red and gold
flung open the door. A swarm of servants in green baize aprons hurled
themselves upon our luggage. We were greeted by the director, a suave
Frenchman, who might have been an undertaker, judging from his somber
garments and excessive dignity. Rooms had been reserved for us by the
residency, he said. I remarked that I hoped that we were to have a bath.
_Mais certainement, un grand bain—un bain de luxe._ Would we ascend and
view it? We crowded, the four of us, into an _ascenseur_ which could not
possibly have been intended to carry more than two, and the Arab lift-boy
squeezed himself in after us. It creaked, groaned, hesitated, almost
stopped, but finally drew level with the floor which was its destination.
I gave a sigh of relief, as I always do upon completing an ascent in a
French elevator. We were ushered down an echoing, marble-paved corridor,
chilly as a tomb, to our rooms. Mrs. Powell tried the hot-water faucet
and inquired about the voltage for her electric curling-iron. I sent the
maid scurrying for extra blankets and softer pillows, and ordered a drink
of Scotch. But my daughter Bettie stood on the balcony in the moonlight,
looking out upon the white city and inhaling the subtle fragrance of the
orange-blossoms. You see, she had never been in Africa before.