The Souks.
Perhaps you do not know what a "souk" is?
Imagine yourself in a long, narrow tunnel lit with skylights here and
there, with small open shops along either side. That is what one of
the "souks" or bazaars in Tunis is like.
There are miles of them, and they are generally crowded from end to
end with the white-cloaked Arabs and shrouded figures of women with
black masks over their faces, all busy shopping, buying or selling.
Each trade has a souk to itself. Thus, in one souk you will find
nothing but shoemakers' shops one after another, in the next will be
all coppersmiths, in another the cloth merchants, and so on.
There still stand the "Bardo" or Palace of the "Bey" or King of Tunis,
and the "kasbah" or castle in which the Tunisian pirates of old days
used to imprison the Christians whom they captured at sea; and there
is still the old slave market where they used to sell them.
Many an English sailor has been lost for ever to his home and friends
in that dismal place.
But on one occasion the prisoners got the better of their captors. As
many as ten thousand of them had been collected, and they made a plan
to escape, and, rising against their captors, they overwhelmed them by
force of numbers and got away.
"Home, Sweet Home,"
An interesting spot in the city is the old Christian cemetery, in
which lies buried the man who wrote the well-known song, "Home, Sweet
Home." Most people think that it is an English song, but the composer
was in reality an American--a clerk in the Consulate--named John
Howard Payne.
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