 21 Amid the Ruins of Old Carthage I have spent the whole of today among the ruins of Carthage. The French have excavated them and made many valuable discoveries. Lying on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, beyond the lake on which Tunis is situated, the ruins cover some thousands of acres. The center of Old Carthage was about 12 miles from Tunis and the Phoenician capital reached even to Tunis itself. To defend its landward side, the city had a wall 23 miles long. In the height of its glory it is said to have had more than a million inhabitants and even when it was destroyed after its long war with Rome, it contained more than 700,000 people. During that war, it furnished armies of enormous size. When Hannibal went from Spain to invade Italy, he took 90,000 men and 40 elephants with him over the Pyrenees and the Alps. And during the First Punic War, a fleet started out from Carthage with 350 ships of a capacity of 150,000 troops. Each of the ships had an iron beak to ram the boats of the enemy and was manned by sailors who were the best of ancient times. That was during the closing days of Carthage the Mighty. Shortly afterward the Romans destroyed it and plowed up the ground upon which it stood. Later still they founded another city upon its site, which they made their capital of Africa and which was for a long time the third city of the world. The ruins of Roman Carthage are still to be seen here, but far more interesting to me is Carthage the Mighty, that famous city favored by Juno, Jupiter's hen-pecking wife and founded, tradition says, by Dito, the Semitic princess of Tyre. After Dito's husband had been assassinated by her brother Pygmalion, she fled to this part of North Africa. Like Jessica, old Shylock's daughter, she did not go away empty-handed. Her ship was loaded with her treasures from the royal palaces of her brother and herself and she took enough people to found a new empire. When she first set foot on African soil, Queen Dito bought land of the natives and by a real estate trick obtained for a song, this big tract upon which Carthage stood. When our forefathers purchased the site of New York from the Indians, the price was a pep of glass beads and brass buttons. It is said that all Chicago was once offered for a pair of old boots and that the ground upon which Melbourne, one of the richest cities of Australia, now stands, was sold for two old woollen blankets. The thrifty Dito bought the site of this greatest city of antiquity at a somewhat similar rate. According to tradition, she told the natives that she wanted only a patch of land big enough to be enclosed in a bull's hide and they made a contract of sale on those terms. But Queen Dito cut the bull's hide into leather shoestrings and tying them together took in what seemed to the natives all out of doors. The tract ran around a beautiful harbor enclosing the whole peninsula between the lake and the sea. It was gently sloping with a little hill here and there with great rocky mountains in sight in the rear. The land itself was exceedingly rich and the country about it produced so abundantly that it was for centuries one of the world's great wheat lands. As I drove out to Carthage today, I saw American windmills on great towers of steel, agitating the air inhabited by the ghosts of the old Carthaginians. The windmills came from Chicago, but the city on whose site they now stand once ranked as far greater than Chicago. Punic Carthage was the chief business center of the old world and its captains of industry and trust magnates were as powerful as those of Chicago now are. Founded in 822 BC, it was prominent when Athens was young and long before Rome had begun to be. The Carthaginians had their colonies throughout the known world. They owned the greater part of Sicily and many other Mediterranean islands and had large settlements on the Spanish peninsula. More than 2,000 years before Bartholomew Diaz or Vasco de Gama started out to explore Africa. Hanno, the Carthaginian, had sailed out of the Strait of Gibraltar with 60 ships and some 30,000 men. He made his way down around the west coast of this continent to the Gulf of Guinea bringing back stories of the ebony negroes, the mighty elephants and the gorillas. For centuries thereafter many tales of his were thought to be lies, but they have since been proved true. The Carthaginians established colonies on the west coast of Africa. They sent their ships to Great Britain. They had commercial centers everywhere. They were among the richest people of the world and about the best traders. They carried on business as a close corporation allowing no foreigners to deal with their colonies. Such as dare do so were captured and drowned. As time went on they sent caravans across the Sahara to the Sudan and over the Libyan desert to the valley of the Nile. Lying before me as I write is a picture of old Carthage, the Carthage that Rome conquered, reproduced by a French antiquarian. The city, which was a vast extent, was somewhat like the great Oriental capitals of today. Its buildings were white and flat roofed. Throughout it was a wall 20 miles in circumference and loftier than the Great Wall of China. It was over 50 feet in height while the towers at regular intervals upon it were many feet higher. This wall was used for defense as well as for barracks to contain the army. Built into it were stalls for 300 war elephants and 4,000 war horses, storage places sufficient to supply them all with food and quarters for tens of thousands of soldiers. Old Carthage had a forum, a marketplace and magnificent public buildings. It had an artificial harbor restored in miniature by the French, which was so arranged that the entrance could be shut at night by chains. The door leading into it was only 60 feet wide, but this admitted the ships to two ports so connected that the vessels could sail from one to the other. It was a city of fine houses and cultured people who owned quantities of gold and precious stones, their jewelry being equal to any sold in our best stores today, as one can easily see from the collection in the museum, which stands on its site. The Carthage I have described was utterly destroyed 146 years before Christ, an almost a century past before another city began to rise on its ruins. This was the Carthage fostered by Julius Caesar and Augustus, which in time became the Roman capital of North Africa. It had many theaters, the remains of which stand today on the ruins of the old Phoenician city. It was a city of gladiatorial shows where Christians were eaten by lions, gored to death by wild bulls and slaughtered by gladiators. On the hill where the museum is now, I saw the tombs of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, two young women who were killed in the arena. Later yet, when Rome was converted, Carthage, still holding its place as one of the great ports of the world, became the chief Christian city of Africa. Here, St. Augustine studied and preached, while near here, St. Cyprian, the martyr, was killed. When the vandals invaded Africa, they made Carthage their capital. It remained a great city until the seventh century, when the Mohammedan Arabs came in and destroyed it. Since then, Carthage has been a quarry for the artistic material of all the palaces along the Mediterranean Sea. In the great mosque of Santa Sophia at Constantinople, I saw marble columns that came from here. Many of the wonders of architectural Rome originated in Carthage, and shiploads of its ruins have gone to Palermo and other Italian cities. The palaces of the Bay of Tunisia are built of punent marble, and, as I have noted, the bazaars of Tunis are flanked with Carthaginian marble columns, which the Arabs have painted over in red, yellow, and green stripes, so that they now look like barber poles. Many of the houses of Tunis contain materials from the same source, and the ruins here have been furnishing building stone of all sorts for more than a thousand years. During recent centuries, the various museums of the world have been robbing this ancient city. Even travelers have been allowed to pick up and carry away what they pleased. This is no longer permitted. The French have established two great museums, one on the site of old Carthage and the other at the Bardo, in the palace of the Bay, and are trying to preserve what is left. Some books about Africa will tell you that there is nothing of Carthage now to be seen, except a few broken-down cisterns which once supplied the city with water. This is not so. The French have made excavations ever since they have had Tunisia under their control. Not only here, but in all parts of the country. They have unearthed ruins that will compare with those of Athens and Rome. Suppose you could blot from the face of the United States, either Boston, Philadelphia, or St. Louis. Suppose you could destroy all the buildings and cover them with earth, then let them lie for decades and build other great cities on top. Then destroy those cities and let the storms and dust of a thousand years settle upon them. You may have some idea of the condition of the ruins of Carthage. You must add, however, the tombs in which the ancients were accustomed to put jewelry and other relics, and imagine that the destruction was such that many of the belongings of the people were left in the debris. It is now more than 2700 years since the first buildings of Carthage were erected, and many of the objects I have seen here are over 2,000 years old. Since I went over the ruins, I observed the Arab farmers turning up fragments of pottery and pieces of marble, which were parts of houses 20 centuries ago. And I have been bothered all day by dark-faced Mohammedans begging me to buy Carthadunian coins in use long before Christ, and cameos the size of my fingernail, which were probably worn in the rings of Punic maidens when all the world was young. I cannot begin to describe the extent of the ruins. By this I do not mean the remains of great temples and palaces of theaters and tombs. These are comparatively few, but there are vast tracks covered with scraps of pottery, pieces of broken marble, half-ground-up bricks, and bits of mosaic. The sheep and goats feed among them, and they are plowed and harrowed and pulverized by cultivation to fertilize the crops of the present day. My trip to Carthage was over an excellent road which runs around the bay. The scenery is beautiful, and the flamingos wing over the water, showing their pink plumage as they doubtless have done for centuries. All along the roads we saw Arabs cultivating their little farms. Here and there was a camp of Bedouins watching their flocks, and when we left the road and drove across the plowed fields, we passed through a lot of fat-tailed sheep and black goats driven by natives. Nearly all our way was over the ruins of Carthage and part of it through what was almost the heart of the ancient city. The ground was so covered with marble and pottery that we felt like getting out and looking for relics, and indeed during the whole day my eyes had been searching among the stones in the hope of finding treasure. We have had opportunity to purchase all sorts of coins and clay lamps, some of the time of the Romans and some dating back to the days of the Phoenicians. We first visited the amphitheater where the gladiatorial shows were held. It lies near an Arab village, and as I stood in it I heard the shrieking of a spanked baby filling the air, which once resounded with the cries of the Christian martyrs. The cages for the wild beasts can be plainly seen, also the great vaults below in which the martyrs waited. The arena, which is elliptical in shape, covers more than an acre. I pasted it from one end to the other, and according to my estimate it was about 300 feet long and 200 feet wide. This space now lies about 25 feet below the level of the ground. It contains marble columns, broken and battered. Some of the seats and a few of the arches are still to be seen. This theater was described by an Arab historian who was here 800 years ago. According to his account, there were five galleries and the building was the most beautiful of its kind ever known. Today, I saw sheep and goats feeding on the edge of what must have been at one time the second gallery, and a donkey was braying while I paced the arena. The oldest and best known of the Carthaginian ruins are the great cisterns built to supply the city with water. They were vast dimensions, enormous barrel shaped caverns, 443 feet long and more than 80 feet in diameter. They were surmounted by cupolas and were connected with pipes for distributing the water. The largest of these cisterns are near an Arab village and are now used as stables and dwellings. They number 24 and cover many acres. I went down into some of them. In one, I found a tiny gray donkey with a little Arab girl standing beside it. And in another, an old hen with a flock of small chickens feeding about her. A part of one cistern has been walled off as a haimo. Another is now an Arab house, and in a third I saw a Bedouin woman grinding meal upon two stones that rested on the floor. The dust of ages has filled these great caverns, which now make an excellent protection from the weather. As I made my notes within them, I heard the cry of prayer from a Mohammedan tomb nearby. There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet. As I listened, I thought of the people who drank the water from these cisterns 500 years before the Christian era, and more than 1,000 years before Mohammed first saw the light of day in the deserts of Arabia. Later in the day, I visited the reservoirs on the other side of the town. They are 2,500 years old, but the French have repaired them, and they now supply water to the villages and towns about. The water, which comes from Tunis, is pumped in by steam engines. The cisterns are 30 feet deep and something like 600 feet long. The engineer told me that he had about 6 million gallons in them at the time of my visit. These cisterns, as used by the Carthaginians, were first filled with rainwater, but later on they were supplied by an enormous aqueduct erected by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. This brought the water from Duga about 80 miles away. It carried 6 million gallons a day, and the water passed through underground canals and over valleys on magnificent arches to Carthage. The remains of this aqueduct can be seen in many places, and at present parts of it have been so restored that it now supplies Tunis with water. The restoration, which cost millions, was done by a French engineer. Iron pipes have been used instead of the arches, but the old masonry still upholds much of the works. The water supply is far greater than it was in the days of the Romans. I have spent considerable time wandering through the old Carthaginian cemeteries. Many tombs have been excavated, and the dead of a dozen generations have been taken from their graves to be shown to us, the heathen tourists of the present. Some of the tombs were far below ground, and others almost at the surface. From one cemetery they have taken 289 epitaphs, and from another 800, including the names of librarians, schoolmasters, doctors, soldiers, nurses, answers, and slaves. Some of the oldest tombs are triangular in shape. Others contained marble sarcophagi, and in some were bodies of men and women loaded with jewels. During my visit to the museum, I saw many little stone boxes which were found full of charred ashes and bones. They date back to the days of Carthage the Mighty, and are supposed to have contained the ashes of children sacrificed to Moloch. This brazen, punit God was made red hot at the times of sacrifice, and the children were placed in his arms. It was the custom to give him not only little children, but also young men and maidens. The victims rolled down from his searing arms into the blazing furnace below. The museum at Carthage is filled with treasures which have been found in the ruins. There are dice, razors, spectacles, surgical instruments, and thousands of clay lamps and casks of all kinds. As far as ancient Phoenician exhibits are concerned, it is, I doubt not, the greatest storehouse of the world. And in its relics of the Roman period, it compares favorably with many others, more famous. I was especially interested in the jewelry and other things which once belonged to the gay girls of the Carthage of 2,500 years ago. There is a lock of hair from the head of a fair punit maiden. There is a box of rouge with some of the paint still in the bottom. And there are alabaster cases holding perfume and also pins, mirrors, trinkets, and other gigas. There are golden necklaces of beautiful workmanship and hundreds of gold rings of all sizes, from one small enough for a two-year-old baby to some which may have been wedding rings for 12-year-old brides. Many of these rings are set with cameos and stones. There are gold earrings by the hundreds and beautiful they are. As I looked at them, I asked the Catholic white father beside me about the maidens who wore them so many centuries ago, mentioning the mortality of all things earthly. In reply, he pointed to the shelves under the cases. I looked and saw skulls and bones in great quantities, remains of men, women, and children all mixed together. Then, taking me to a marble sarcophagus nearby, he showed me the bones of a young punic beau who lived centuries since. I measured his skeleton and found it was six feet, two inches, and length. On the finger of one hand, there was a beautiful ring evidencing the vanity of its owner. He may have been a friend of Hanno or Hannibal, or perhaps only some newly rich man of the time. Who knows? End of Chapter 21, Chapter 22 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Betty B., where the women wear trousers. According to the Koran, every Muslim has the right to four wives upon earth, and when he goes to heaven, he will receive in addition 72 black-eyed hoories, ever beautiful and ever young. There he will have children or not according to his wish, and the offspring will grow in an hour to the stature of their parents. The prophet himself is said to have had about 20 wives while on earth. When he died, he left nine, each of whom had her own house, not far from the mosque at Medina. Muhammad started out by marrying a widow named Khadija, whose money gave him his first boost into prominence. He was about 25 years old at the time, and one of the finest-looking young beau of Arabia. Khadija was 40, and it is alleged that it was she who popped the question. He lived with her for 25 years, during which time he took no other wife. A month after she died, however, he was betrothed to a girl of seven who became his wife two or three years later. This second wife was the beautiful Aisha, whom to the day of his death he preferred above all others. These facts form the basis of the Muhammadin's idea of marriage. He believes that the prophet had the right to more wives than his followers because he was favorite of God, and there was a chance that he might generate a race of prophets to succeed him, though this chance failed. The Muslim still sticks to the limit of only four wives, and the Arab judges of Tunisia and Algeria will not recognize his legal any more than that number. The French in Algeria, who are now trying to cut down the size of the harem, will not allow such of the Arabs as become naturalized to have more than one legal helpmate. I heard of a young man in Oran, the son of a sheik, who thought that it would be fine to be a French citizen. He took out his papers and shortly thereafter wanted to marry. As he already had one wife, the license was refused. Upon this he became disgusted and said he wanted to be a pure Arab once more. Down in Fagig, on the edge of Morocco, I was told that it is the custom for the more of that region to marry at 18 or 20 years of age, taking a wife of 13 or 14. About 10 years later, he adds another young maiden of the same age to his household. When he gets to be 40, he takes a third spouse and at 50 a fourth, so that he always has one young wife to wait upon him throughout his earthly career. As the new wives come, the older ones step back and act as their servants. But with the advancement of modern civilization, these plural marriages are steadily decreasing in number. This is true in all Mohammedan cities. Here in Tunis, most of the natives have but one wife. While in all the cities of Algeria, monogamy is becoming the rule. One reason for this is the fact that the cost of living is always increasing and the women demand more and more. They are patterning after the French ladies in their tastes until now it is only the rich man who can keep more than one wife. Moreover, where several wives are thrown together under the same roof and in the same quarters, they are sure to be discord so that it means both peace and economy to have only one. The Arab women of the better classes are a dead load on their husbands, for they are seldom more than children and character. They have no real education and they must have servants or slaves to wait upon them. The husband is expected to furnish a dowry for each wife and if he is rich he must give from two to ten thousand dollars to get her. This money goes to the girl's family and a quartet of wives thus paid for requires a large sum. With people less rich, the dowries are smaller, but every husband must pay something for his wife even down to the porter, although the latter may get his bride for five or ten dollars. As a rule, the Mohammedan husband makes his matrimonial investments after the old fashion of buying a pig in a poke. Marriages are made at an early age, girls wed at fifteen or sixteen and young men at twenty or twenty-five. There is no such thing as courtship. The match is being usually arranged by the parents of the respective families. In a marriage among wealthy families there are always preliminary presence and rights. The groom sends dates and other fruits to his sweetheart and the prospective bride puts herself into training in order that she may look her best at the wedding. She takes frequent steam baths and for a week before the marriage has one every day. At the same time her cheeks are painted with rouge and her fingernails, toenails and even her feet and the lower parts of her arms and legs are decorated with henna, a red coloring matter in common use throughout the Orient. While I was in Tangier I saw a number of wedding processions. The ceremony usually takes place on Friday, the Muslim Sabbath and consists chiefly in the couple's joining hands while prayers are said over them. On her wedding day the bride is carried about in a covered chair or box on the shoulders of the slaves amid music and dancing. Her girlfriends keep her company and there is a wedding feast which lasts almost all night. This is followed by other feasts throughout the next week or more. I am told that a Moorish husband's first duty is to unbray his wife's hair and that thereafter she puts on the special dress of the married woman. The ordinary Mohammedan marriage is, I understand, moderately happy. It is said that the stronger character usually rules the household. Divorces are easily accomplished in all Mohammedan countries where a man can get rid of his superfluous wives far more easily than the American can divorce his only one in Idaho or Nevada. There are now in Algeria every year almost half as many divorces as there are marriages. All that a Mohammedan has to do to secure a separation is to point his wife to the door and say I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you and out she goes. It is not much better with the Tunisian Jews the chief difference being that the Muslim has the right to four wives while the Jew can have but one. There is no place on earth where the females are so much secluded. There are millions in North Africa who are never seen by any other men than their husbands. In the city of Tunis the ladies of the wealthier classes never go out on the street except in closed carriages. They know nothing about shopping and never visit the bazaars or stores. The carriages are brought into the courtyard of their homes and after they have been put in by their servants and the doors tightly closed the grooms come out and hitch up the horses. If they are calling upon a lady friend the carriage is taken into the courtyard restricted to the women of the household where the horses are unharnessed so that the men may take them away before the ladies step out. Every fine Mohammedan house has its harem. The rooms are built around courts there being usually one court for the men and another for the women. In the latter only the master of the house is permitted to enter and in less pretentious homes a male visitor will always make himself heard before he comes in so that the women may flee. The women have their own private staircases to the roofs which are their special quarters. These are usually flat and form the loafing and gossiping places for the feminine part of the household. They are surrounded by walls so that one cannot see the girls at all from the street. In Tunis the women of the middle classes go out so wrapped up in veils that not a bit of their faces is to be seen. Over their heads they have long scarves that fall to their knees. These scarves are black embroidered with red and white stripes and so thick that it is impossible to see through them. The wearers hold them up with their hands as they walk looking out for a step at a time. They sometimes wear shawls over the veils. As such women seldom visit the stores if they are seen on the street they are probably on their way to the mosque or to the cemeteries or to visit their friends. The women of the poorer classes look stranger still. They dress in white garments of cotton or wool which cover the whole of their persons accepting their faces. The latter are wrapped around with a thick black crepe in which two holes are cut out for the eyes. In the distance they look like the blackest of negroes with features wrinkled like a washboard. As they come closer their veils are seen to be masks and their bright dark eyes shine out of the surrounding blackness. The woman of Algiers generally wears a wide white band across her face to conceal it. Sometimes the veil of white is fastened tightly over the bridge of the nose, the upper part of the face being hidden by the bayek or blanket like shawl common all over the country. In Morocco and in western Algeria the woman holds her bayek tight over her face leaving a little three-cornered hole not much bigger than a finger ring out of which one eye peeps as she goes waddling along. It is impossible to see how the fair sex is dressed in Morocco. When they go out in the streets they bundle themselves up in blankets so that they look like bags walking on slippers. In Algeria and Tunisia nearly every female wears trousers of some kind with the overgarments so arranged that the pantaloons can be easily seen. They are worn enormously full and are tied in at the instep or at the calf. The bayek or head shawl does not fall far below the waist and these trousers are one of the features of the afternoon parade in the Rouh Bab Azoun. The breeches of the Arab women in Tunisia are somewhat more hidden but those of the Jewesses are always in evidence. It is only for the streets that the Arab woman dons these very full trousers which are removed as soon as she comes home. In the house she affects loose knee pants made of silk or china crepe. In addition she has on a chemise which is tucked into her trousers and above this a jacket of brocaded silk. She wears a silk sash wrapped about her waist and may have several vests of gay colors fastened with bright buttons. Her headdress consists of a small velvet cap which comes to a point over the crown and on her feet are slippers embroidered with gold. All African women are fond of jewelry and the well-to-do Mohammedan girls have their necklaces of pearls, earrings of precious stones and bracelets and anklets of gold. The poorer ones wear silver while those who have nothing will load themselves down with brass. Indeed I am surprised at the number of ornaments which even the common Arab girls wear. Little tots of six and seven have heavy silver rings on their ankles and gold rings as big around as the saucer of an after-dinner coffee cup not only in the lobes of their ears but also in the ear rims all along to the top. The Bedouin girl especially adorns herself lavishly and frequently carries the wealth of her whole family on her person. The Cabal woman covers her breast with jewelry and often wears enormous earrings and anklets and pins which will weigh a pound or more each. One reason why the women are so bedecked is the fact that the men don't like to put their money in banks preferring to turn their surplus into ornaments for their wives and daughters. During my trip into the western desert I had to spend a night in a first-class car with a rich Arab chief and his wife and their two little girls. When the woman came in she was so bundled up that one could tell nothing about her clothes. As the night wore on however her overgarments were thrown back and I observed that she dressed like the Queen of Sheba in her glory. She had half a dozen bracelets on each of her arms her fingers sparkled with diamonds and there were great gold rings in the sides and lobes of her ears. On her head was a little cornucopia cap of red velvet embroidered with gold and she wore a spangled shirt waist over white chemise of fine wool. She was tattooed on chin forehead and cheeks. Her lips were painted with rouge her fingers stained red with henna and her eyelids blackened with coal. I have spoken already of the fair skinned cabal women of eastern Algeria. As a rule the cabal husband has but one wife and the women are allowed to go about as they please. Their ordinary dress is a gown that reaches from the neck to the feet and is fastened at the shoulder with a great pin of silver or white metal. On ceremonial occasions they wear gowns of bright red and yellow stripes strapped in at the loins with belts of bright colored leather. They sometimes wear a headdress of black silk but their feet are usually bare. Since the Jewish men think a woman beautiful according to her amount of flesh a likely Hebrew girl of 300 pounds or so has no trouble in getting a husband. As a maiden approaches the marriageable age she is stuffed much after the manner of a Strasbourg goose destined for paté de foie gras. The Jews have their own way of eating to increase their fat and their own foods for putting on weight. One of our agricultural department experts tells me that they use a certain grain which surpasses any that we have in fattening qualities and also that the department expects to introduce this grain into the United States. If so it will be a boon to our thin scrawny girls who worry because they cannot rise in Avoir du Pois. I have before me a photograph of the two biggest Juices of Tunis who are simply mountains of flesh one of them weighs more than 400 pounds. These Juices have the homeliest costumes I have ever seen upon women both on the street and at home. They wear breeches over which are short loose sacks falling to the waist. Some of them have their trousers loose about the hips and tight at the calves and others wear them equally full all the way down loading them with embroidery of silver and gold. Some pairs of breeches are made entirely of gold thread and I hear of money lenders daughters who have trousers that cost $200 a pair. As such garments are reserved for home use they are not to be seen on the streets. Other girls have pantaloons of velvet loaded with bands of gold and silver a girl thus carrying a whole fortune on her trousers. They all wear jewelry coming out on public occasions or fent days in pearls and diamonds and gold without limit. The Jewish men dress like the Arabs the majority of the women have what we call brunette complexions although there is no sign of the mulatto about them. They have black hair beautiful eyes and not infrequently prominent Hebrew noses. Some of them are pretty but more are not and with their outlandish costumes the homely ones are about the ugliest of their sex. The Jewish is Mary young a girl is often wedded at 12 and she becomes a mother at 14 or 15. Marriages are usually preceded by a contract in which there is often a forfeit put up against divorce. If the man does not carry out his contract he has to pay damages while in the case of divorce he usually gives back half the property which his wife brought him. A divorced wife also gets an allowance. If his wife has no children the Tunisian Jew has the right to add a second wife to his family and a dead man's brother is expected to marry his sister-in-law even if he is married already. I am told that marriages sometimes occur between uncles and nieces and that families combine to keep the fortunes in their own clan as far as possible. About a week before the wedding the public festivities begin and from that time on the girl has to go through a number of ceremonies without power of resistance the older women of the family take possession of her. They first put her in a bath where her body is covered with an ointment which when dry is peeled off leaving the skin perfectly clean and as soft as when she was born. Her hair is then anointed with gent black pomadum which gives it a gloss. Her eyelids are blackened and her eyebrows are penciled and joined by a thick line of red paint. At the same time her fingernails are covered with henna and even her toenails are made red. These Jewish marriages are usually made by the rabbis at the house of the bride. Here the rabbi puts the young couple under a veil and directs the groom how to put the ring upon the bride's finger. After marriage the woman becomes to a large extent the servant of her husband. If she is poor she cooks the meals and no matter how well off her husband is she is expected to make his bed and wait upon him. She always eats at a second table for in the ordinary Jewish household of Tunis there are always two meals the first of which is for the men. Notwithstanding these customs the course of true love runs as smoothly over the caravan tracks of Sahara as it does along the automobile roads of the United States. I am told that many of the marriages of Mohammedans, Kabals, Jews and Bedouins are happy ones and the literature of all of them has its love stories and its love songs. One of the most beautiful poems written by Bayard Taylor was the love song of a Bedouin. Whether or not it was an English rendering of something he heard in his travels I do not know. It reads from the desert I come to thee on a stallion shod with fire and the winds are left behind in the speed of my desire under thy window I stand and the midnight hears my cry I love thee I love but thee with the love that shall not die till the sun grows cold and the stars are old and the leaves of the judgment book unfold look from thy window and see my passion and my pain I lie on the sands below and I faint in thy disdain let the night winds touch thy brow with the heat of my burning sigh and mouth thee to hear the vow of a love that shall not die till the sun grows cold and the stars are old and the leaves of the judgment book unfold my steps are nightly driven by the fever in my breast to hear from thy lattice breathe the word that shall give me rest open the door of thy heart and open thy chamber door and my kisses shall teach thy lips the love that shall fade no more till the sun grows cold and the stars are old and the leaves of the judgment book unfold the jews here are very particular in their religious observances their shops are shut up on saturday and their wives do not cook or sweep on that day they are also devoted to one another and a jewish funeral with its accompanying mourning is one of the remarkable things to be seen in tunas the jewish cemeteries are nothing like ours they have no tall monuments the vaults which are dug out so that the tops rest even with the surface of the earth are covered with marble slabs of the same size and height so that the whole surface of the cemetery appears to be one great marble floor upon each slab are carved hebrew characters giving the names and ages of those who lie below when the women go out to mourn they sit down on the slabs over their dead and bob up and down as they wail out their grief i visited one of the largest of these cemeteries this afternoon its marble floor seemed to be spotted with white tents but as i got closer i could see that each of these was a jewish woman shrouded in white mourning her dead there was a chapel at one end of the graveyard from which came a great noise i entered and found that a funeral was being conducted in one room was a coffin standing upright against the wall and beside it on the stone floor lay the corpse of a man covered by a sheet of bright red silk about him were a number of jewish men in arab clothing weeping softly while in the next room were the hired mourners who were brought in for such occasions at so much per whale these mourners were jewish women ranging in age and size from a plump maid of 18 to a weighty old lady of 60 or more they numbered 15 and i ventured to say they would pull down the scales at a ton and a half they sat on the marble floor with their feet under them and swaying back and forth bowed their heads to the ground as they fairly howled out a course for which the fat old lady kept time as the mourners saw me making a note the wailing subsided for a moment but when one of the bereaved family came in it burst out louder than ever such mourners are common in all oriental countries and they are employed here by the Arabs as well as the jews end of chapter 22 chapter 23 of from tangier to triply by frank g carpenter the sleeper vox recording is in the public domain recording by betty b kairuin the holy kairuin is the mecca of north africa and one of the holiest cities of the mohammedan world it was founded by the famous general city akba in 669 ad and until 1881 when the french took it no christian had ever gone into it and come out alive a half century since it would not have been safe for any foreigner to enter it in 1830 when sir grenville temple came here by permission of the bay of tunis he had an escort of soldiers but was allowed to go out only after sunset in the disguise of an arab it was not until after its conquest by the french the kairuin was open to christians and even today they are looked on with hatred the town is in charge of french soldiers and as a french controller to direct the sheik's how to govern by means of a card from him i am able to make my way about and visit the mosques the fact that christian dogs and infidels may enter the mosques of this the holy city of north africa is said to be due to a curious bit of tunisian history it was taken by the french without the firing of a single shot because the famous holy man had prophesized years before that the city would be taken by the french and the people believe that its conquest was pre-ordained when they entered the city the french needing a clean place for a hospital took for the purpose the chief mosque of kairuin the grand mosque of city akba once that had been profaned by the presence of infidels it did not matter if they continued to come to see it and if they entered the grand mosque they certainly could go into the others the city is so sacred in the minds of the mohammedans that they make pilgrimages to it just as they do to mecca and medina there are now pilgrims scattered through the various mosques and one may see them praying in the desert not far away many of them come for hundreds of miles to worship at the shrines here they sleep in the mosques and during certain seasons they overflow the city and their tents are to be seen covering the country outside the walls the kairuin of today has 22 mosques and many tombs of muslim saints in the middle ages it had 300 mosques 900 baths and 600 hotels where caravans could stop and it was celebrated all over the world as a seat of religion and learning its population then numbered a million now it has only 25 000 inhabitants and some of the greatest mosques are outside the present limits of the city kairuin is situated on a hill and surrounded by walls as high as a two-story house entering through the gates one finds a town of mohammedan architecture with typical flat roofed buildings of one or two stories standing along streets so narrow the few of them are accessible except on foot on horseback or on donkeys the business is done in covered bazaars and the people are dressed in turbans and gowns and the strange costumes worn by the Arabs the women are closely veiled when they are on the street it being no uncommon thing to see one draped in black from head to foot her face so covered that not even an eye can be seen i have gone through the principal mosques one of the most interesting is that of the barber of the prophet mohammed the saintly man is buried here and with him three hairs of the prophet's beard which make the mosque especially holy these hairs were secured by the barber one day when he had shaved mohammed and he carried them about with him for the rest of his life one he kept under his tongue another over his heart and the third pasted on his right arm the mosques revere anything that comes from their prophet particularly the hairs of this beard i remember when i visited the mosque of jama mojid in delhi india that the greatest curiosity shown me was a hair from mohammed's mustache it was kept in a crystal box inside a safe and i was able to see it only by bribing the officials the hair was half an inch long and bright red in color the mosque of the barber of kairun is outside of the city it is entered through a vestibule lined with tiles and lace like carvings the minaret is faced with tiles and the court is surrounded by arcades of white marble columns the barber's tomb is covered with black velvet while hanging about it there are ostrich eggs bags of earth from mecca and other offerings given by the pilgrims the grand mosque of city akba is situated just inside the walls it is one of the largest mosques of north america and is imposing and beautiful the building is of rectangular shape with a great minaret at one side it has arcades upheld by massive marble pillars running around a court of more than an acre with an immense hall at one end the ladder has a ceiling of many arches supported by a forest of columns of marble and porphyry the walls are decorated with mosaics of marble and lapis lazuli and with moorish plasterwork so carved that it looks like lace the pulpit which is of wood from bagdad has its panels chiseled with texts from the quran many of the columns of this building were brought here from the ruins of carthage which city was taken by city akba just before he built kairuin this is a good place to learn something of the mohammedans and their religion in north america and europe where one sees mostly christians it is hard to believe that there are millions upon millions who look upon us as heretics and think we are on the straight road to hades every man i see here considers me already damned and for the last three months i have been traveling among people who in their souls call me a christian dog and feel that they would have a sure passport to heaven if they could put me out of the way i have before me the figures representing the religious divisions of the world and i observe that more than one seventh of all the people on earth are mohammedans here is the account in round numbers total world population one billion seven hundred million mohammedans two hundred twenty one million christians five hundred sixty three million confusions and towers three hundred million brahmins two hundred ten million buddhists one hundred thirty eight million jews twelve million other religions two hundred forty seven million this means that if all the people on this big round globe could be brought together in one place one person in every three would be a christian either protestant catholic or greek catholic one in every five would be a confucian or Taoist a china man with yellow face and almond eyes out of every eight one would be a dark skinned brahmin from india and one in every seven would be a mohammedan the rest would be made up of pagans jews or the numberless small sets the mohammedans are scattered all over north africa they form the bulk of the population of morocco algeria tunisia triply and egypt and there are millions of them in the sudan there are more than 60 million mohammedans in india arabia is populated by them they form the predominating influence in persia asia minor and turkey there are more millions in china and the islands of the western pacific ocean we have a degraded mohammedan sect in the sulu islands and mindanao in the philippines and there are many in borneo java and in other parts of the dutch east indies jerusalem was held by these people for many centuries and they now outnumber the christians in the holy land mohammedanism as a religion is increasing rather than decreasing whole tribes are being converted at one time in this african continent there is no doubt that the mohammedans believe in their religion they teach charity and brotherly love they preach against avarice and the lending of money at interest and the orthodox muslims do not drink intoxicating drinks their faith is quite as strong as ours and they practice it more religiously i see men at their prayers here every day they pray in their shops or out in their fields and in going through the bazaars one often observes the merchants studying the karan nearly every turban and gowned man i meet carries a rosary on which he counts his prayers as he goes over his beads five times every day i hear the shrill cry of the musin or mohammedan priest as he stands on the minaret of a mosque high over the city and calls the people to come to pray the hours of prayer begin at daybreak the second call is at midday and the third at about three o'clock there is a fourth call at sunset and a fifth in the evening the words of the call which is in arabic are somewhat like these a la is great i testify that there is no god but a la and mohammed is the prophet of a la come to prayer come to worship a la is great there is no god but a la another call is prayer is better than sleep come to prayer come to prayer as these calls ring out one sees the mohammedan men on their way to the mosque some of them carry prayer rugs under their arms while others go without them lying on the matting or carpets which are usually on the mosque floors to protect their clothing they take off their shoes before they enter the mosques and generally prostrate themselves as they pray in every mosque there is a fountain or washing place where the korean requires that one wash himself before he goes in to pray he cleanses his feet hands face and other parts of his body and he goes through the motions of doing so whether he has water or not it is often impossible to get water in the sahara and it's such times the faithful use sand as they pray the moslems always face toward mecca they have their fixed motions for praying they begin by raising their hands to the lobes of their ears they next hold them a little below the girdle and then bow their heads over after this they get down on their knees and touch their heads to the floor and then sit up and pray muttering the words laid down in the korean they have numerous prayers but one of the shortest and most common used as we use the lord's prayer is as follows in the name of god merciful and gracious praise be to god the lord of creatures the merciful and gracious the prince of the day of judgment we serve thee and we pray thee for help lead us in the right way of those to whom thou hast shown mercy and who go not astray amen the mohammedans believe in one god and in an infinite number of prophets they have altogether more than 200 000 prophets but the greatest of them all are adam noah abraham jesus and mohammed it rather surprised me to know that they believe in jesus but i am told that they consider him one of the best of their prophets although the greatest of all is mohammed who is also the last they believe in a future state and that christ will unite with mohammed on the day of judgment in sending mankind to heaven or hell on the judgment day there will be a wire rope as fine as a hair running across from salamans temple in jerusalem to the mount of olives upon that hair all mankind will have to walk the good will be upheld by angels and will go on to paradise while the wicked will drop into hell the faithful believe also in angels they have their gabriel who writes down the decrees of god their michael who fights the battles of the faith and their israfil who will sound the trumpet on resurrection day there are a multitude of secondary angels whose business it is to watch over mankind every man has one of these angels on his right hand and another on his left who keep a record of his every word and action at the close of each day they fly up to heaven to file this report in the great ledgers there kept for the time when man comes to judgment at the end of every prayer the mohammed and always turns his face to the right and then to the left reading his recording angels who are supposed to be watching him and by his motions suggest to them that they do not forget to put the prayer to his credit these people have also their lucifer and great hordes of bad angels who are always trying to pry into the secrets of heaven to prevent their learning them whenever they try to enter heaven the good angels pelt them with falling stars predestination is a tenet of the mohammedans they think that every event which will take place was written down by god at the beginning of the world and that no man can change his destiny for this reason they are strong in war the soldier believing that he cannot be killed until his time comes and that it is already determined whether he is to die in his bed or on the field of battle besides he is convinced that if he dies fighting for the faith he will go straight to heaven the Quran is full of descriptions of heaven and hell according to its authority mohammed went to heaven during his lifetime and when he came back he gave the full story of his adventures there and told how things looked he was called up by gabriel who brought him a white steed with a human face and a body was splendid with gems and precious stones it had wings and when mohammed mounted it it soared with him through the skies with the rapidity of lightning by and by the gate of the first heaven was reached this was a pure silver and the heaven had a sky in which the stars were suspended by chains of gold it contained a mighty rooster so tall that his comb reached the second heaven this bird crows every morning and all mankind is awakened by him the cocks below beginning to crow when he opens his mouth mohammed met our first father adam in the first heaven noa in the second and moses and erin in the fifth noa hailed him as the greatest of the prophets while moses shed tears at the side of him in the seventh heaven mohammed was received by abraham and met the deity himself at this time many of the doctrines of the quran were given to him among others the command that 50 prayers should be made daily by all true believers as mohammed dropped down from the seventh heaven he met moses who asked him what the lord had required the prophet replied that god wanted mankind to make 50 prayers every day moses told mohammed that this was impossible as he knew from his own experience with the children of israel and that he had better return and asked the lord to reduce the number the number was cut down to 40 moses sent him back again and again until at last it was made only five moses thought this was too many but mohammed replied that he had already asked the lord's indulgence until he was ashamed and so the prayers made by mohammed's remain five to this day in the moslem's heaven the ground is of the finest wheat flour strewn with pearls and hyacinths instead of sand and pebbles the air is fragrant with perfume and cooled by sparkling fountains some of the streams are pure water running between green banks enameled with flowers while others are of milk and honey flowing over beds of musk among the trees is one the boughs of which are laden with every variety of fruit and the shade of which spreads so far that a horse might run for a hundred years and not cross it the inhabitants of heaven are clothed in raiment sparkling with jewels they have sumptuous palaces and voluptuous couches every believer will have hundreds of servants who will bring him the most delicious food and drink in dishes and goblets of gold and he will eat as long as he wishes without being full and drink without growing drunk for society he will have the learned of mankind to talk with him and the great of all time to amuse him you will have the wives he had upon earth in their full beauty when they were brides and will also be allotted 72 black-eyed hoories by whom he may have children or not as he wishes as the mohammedans are fond of children this is an important part of their heavenly dreams another of their curious ideas concerns the age of men when they reach heaven as they rise from their graves they will regain the prime of their manhood everyone will be 30 and will have the stature of adam who according to their belief was over 50 feet high and perfect in form the mohammedans hell is as horrible as his heaven is beautiful it is composed of seven stages one below the other varying in the intensity of their torments the first is devoted to atheists the second to the idolaters of the time of mohammed and the third to the brahmins the jews have their quarters in the fourth hell we christians are confined to the fifth while in the seventh and lowest of all are those hypocrites who profess religion but practice it not the moslem sabbath is on friday at which time every good believer attends mosque on that day the bazaars are nearly all closed there is a sermon by the imam or priest and the people go out during the day to the cemetery and pray at the graves the mohammedans have their lent which is known as ramadan it lasts for a month during which time a strict fast is observed the faithful then eat nothing at all from daylight until it is so dark that they cannot distinguish a white thread from a black one they will not drink or smoke and the most saintly of them will not even swallow their saliva i had a drago man at constantine who was keeping ramadan some of our days were full of hard work and he spoke again and again of how tired and hungry he was and how glad he would be when the night came at the end of ramadan is by ram or the time of rejoicing this is a great festivocation corresponding somewhat to our christmas or new year parents give presents to their children and friends may calls upon one another everyone comes out in new clothes and the whole mohammedan world gives itself up to holiday feasting end of chapter 23 chapter 24 of from tangier to triply by frank g carpenter this labor vox recording is in the public domain recording by betty b to the coliseum of l jim by motor across africa in an automobile snorting and puffing through the silent deserts of eastern tunisia dashing along in the back of a yellow devil through crowds of superstitious mohammedan Arabs scaring the people routing the donkeys and the camels and turning the caravans into flying hordes of men and beasts these are some features of my 80 mile journey from seuss to sfex by automobile from tunis to seuss we came by train the journey which is less than 100 miles and all the way along the Mediterranean sea took us nearly six hours seuss lies on the Mediterranean away off here on the edge of north africa it is an old walled city of 27 000 mohammedans made up of snow white flat roofed buildings the men in the streets are dark skinned Arabs while the black clad women are closely veiled a town of few foreigners seuss has all the aspects of the days of haroon al-rashid its streets resound with the tales of storytellers with the high thin voices of arab schoolboys as they sing out the korean they are trying to learn and with the shrill cries of the imams from the minarets of the mosques as they call the faithful to prayers it seems queer to see anything so modern here as an automobile seuss is one of the oldest cities of the world having been founded by the finnishans 28 centuries ago it existed before carthage itself and was an imperial roman city in the days of the emperor trehan under the Arabs it was for a long time the stronghold of pirates and corsairs a strange picture was presented at the time of our departure with the crowd that gathered outside the walls to see the yellow devil start off the devil is a great golden automobile imported from paris to carry first-class passengers from seuss to sfex it is shaped like an old conquered coach with three seats on the top six inside and one in front for the chauffeur take a seat with me on the top and ride through the wild scenes of northeastern africa we are higher than the roofs of the huts by the roadside and away above the motley crowd of Arabs watching the start the chauffeur pranks our yellow devil now he blows his horn honk honk we are off men and beasts in the road run to get out of our way we pass an encampment of Arab soldiers the men are drying their wash and wave their wet garments at us as we go by now we have left the suburbs of seuss and are far out on the plains traveling through olive orchards they cover the country for miles seuss makes salad oil for shipment all over the world and has been noted for its olives ever since the days of the carthaginians indeed most of the trees look old enough who have been planted long before the time of Christ they are knotted and gnarled but their widespreading branches are loaded with fruit the orchards are interspersed with grain fields and pastures and the automobile startles the men at the plows and the animals that feed near the roadside see those black sheep their fat tails flopping as they gallop over the fields the ewes are running as fast as they can with the little lambs tagging behind now we are passing a flock where the rams are budding the ewes to make them get out of the way see the camels cantering over the plain they look like interrogation points on legs nearer the road are some harness to the forked stick plows of the region their backs are turned to the automobile but they see us and break away in a panic dragging their rude plows after them we meet others on the road carrying great burdens which they almost lose as they gallop out of the way we see them hobbled in the fields and standing out like great yellow ostriches against the horizon farther on we reach the edge of the desert we pass arab encampments the low black tents become alive as we approach better when women clad in turkey red gowns crawl out from under the tent curtains and gaily dressed children loaded with jewelry stand and stare at our motor car there are better when girls whose silver anklets flash in the sun and whose enormous earrings gleam out against their rich copper faces now we are passing the cemetery it is filled with Arabs and white gowns and there's evidently a funeral going on they rise from the ground about the tombs to gaze at us as we fly by the tombstones are mirror boxes of clay each has a stone at the head and one at the foot upon which the guardian angels of the deceased are supposed to sit watching they're dead notice the road it is as smooth as a park drive in any american city and harder and better than most of them from our seats on top of the automobile we can see it stretching on and on for miles through the desert narrowing down to a pinpoint in the distance tunisia and algeria have thousands of miles of well-kept highways and one can travel from Morocco almost to Tripoli in a motor car our journey of 80 miles is everywhere equally good as dusk comes on we fly along with the yellow devil's eyes blazing forth their glare and have no fear of bursting tires or of ruts that may cause a breakdown it is pitch dark as we make our way into Svax and pull up in front of a french hotel where we stay for the night comparatively few people ever have heard of eld gym it is the site of one of the most wonderful of all roman ruins surpassed in size only by the coliseum at roam itself the great amphitheater situated about 20 miles from the sea stands on a plane rising high above its surroundings the coliseum at roam is dwarfed by other buildings eld gym stands out in the open and say for a little air of village of mud huts 10 feet high there are no other buildings in sight from the top of the automobile one can see the ruins long before one comes to them at first they look like a mighty bluff a fortification or the walls of a fortified town nearer we observe that they are a huge amphitheater as we get closer still the walls rise above us to the height of a 12-story apartment house one side of the amphitheater has been torn away but the greater part still stands climbing up from gallery to gallery i wandered through the arcades where men and women promenaded in the days of imperial Rome while waiting for the gladiatorial shows to begin in the arena below the outlines of the arena are plainly marked they enclose an ellipse of almost an acre and according to my paces they actually measure about 200 feet long and 175 feet wide the walls of this mighty structure most of which still stand are 120 feet high and it is said that they were one story higher but the upper story has been torn away there are three galleries rising one over the other under the lowest gallery are the cells where the wild animals were kept and the rooms in which the gladiators waited until called into the arena to fight with beasts or murder the early Christians this theater saw the massacre of thousands and was even more noted for its lions than that of Rome the wild beasts were brought from the atlas mountains nearby the coliseum at Rome seated 87 000 spectators it is estimated that elge gem was about three quarters as large and had seats for 60 000 looking at its galleries i should say that this is undoubtedly true the building has a ground floor of five or six acres and with the galleries it could have accommodated an enormous number of people the circumference of elge gem is only 200 feet less than that of the coliseum while its width and breadth each measures within 100 feet of the same dimensions in the roman amphitheater elge gem as it stands is a little lower than the coliseum but with the missing story added the two amphitheaters would be of about the same height the romans had an old saying while stands the coliseum Rome shall stand when falls the coliseum Rome shall fall and when Rome falls with it shall fall the world i doubt not the roman citizens of northern Africa thought the same of elge gem but who can tell us anything of the people who sat in that mighty playhouse we know only that there was a great metropolis here in the time of imperial Rome that it was called this dress and that it must have been of enormous size to have required a theater like this during the third century it was one of the richest cities of northern Africa and the capital of a thickly populated country there were other big cities close by about eight miles away was one which had also a theater in which still shows the remains of huge cisterns built for its water supply this dress remained great up to the time of the arab invasion but the people around it were then governed by a berber queen known as kahina the country was so rich that it was attacked again and again in kahina thinking the matter over came to the conclusion that the wealth of her people was the cause of the numerous invasions and that if she destroyed her cities her country would be let alone she there upon called her mountain tribes together and ordered them to cut down the orchards and level the towns this was done all over the country vast territories being reduced from riches to poverty it had however the opposite effect to what she intended the people who had lost their property sided with the invaders and kahina was defeated her last stand was made in the amphitheater of elde gem the battered walls of which still show the effects of that siege since then it has been robbed by the generations which followed it has been a quarry for both Arabs and Christians and the french have uncovered its mosaics and carried them off to their museums today efforts are being made to protect what is left i found parts of the ruins shut off by doors and wire fences and masons were at work here and there repairing the damages of the vandals the day will come when northern africa will be thronged with tourists and others studying the relics of its historic past most of the ruins here have until now been allowed to remain as they were while those of italy greece and egypt have been carted off to fill the museums of the world there are acres of mosaics to be seen in the museums of tunisia which will compare in beauty with india and italy the arena of this great amphitheater was one solid mosaic which is now a part of the wonderful collection in the bay's palace in the city of tunis there are other mosaics almost as wonderful in the museum of seuss and others of great value in the carthage museum a cemetery in seuss has been excavated which dates back to the time of the carthaginians in it are tombs that were built when hanibal was alive and i fingered the bone dust of some of these ancient heroes as i looked at the urns containing their remains even more wonderful are the catacombs of seuss now exposed to the light of modern times i had never heard of them until i came here they are not mentioned in the usual books upon africa and i doubt if they are known outside this part of tunisia nevertheless they are of enormous extent and of historic they lie a mile or so outside the walls with olive trees and other crops growing above them they are reached by stone steps which take one far below the surface and they extend over several square miles we walked along gallery after gallery cut out of the solid limestone lighting our way with candles now and then we had to stoop over and i was warned to keep close to the guide as there are so many cross passages that one might become lost and wander long before getting out the galleries are walled with tombs containing the remains of tens of thousands of human beings all lying in boxes cut out of the walls deep down under the ground the tombs are in fact a series of pigeonholes each hole containing a skeleton or bones and bone dust after the body was put in the front of the tomb was walled up and an inscription was carved upon it giving the name and sometimes the story of the deceased in many tombs gold and silver and precious stones have been found and in others articles which throw light on the life of the times gone by some of the tombs were those of little children in one i saw the bones of a woman the impression of whose buxom breast still showed in the plaster cast made by the soft limestone or clay upon a shelf over this i saw the bones of a baby perhaps two years of age and in the niche below the skull and foot of a man the rest of whose skeleton had disappeared i am writing at Svex the capital of southern tunisia and one of the rapidly growing cities of north africa the town lies on a harbor which can be entered by the largest of ocean steamers and it has a considerable trade it ships great quantities of phosphates and olive oil and millions of sponges gathered in the waters nearby the population of Svex is about 64 000 natives and 65 000 europeans most of whom are italians with a few maltese the european town lies between the arab town and the sea it contains a theater a post office several hotels and banks and a few business houses the native city like all those of tunisia is surrounded by an enormous wall and entered by gates the houses inside the walls are of arabian architecture and the torturous streets are too narrow for wheeled vehicles end of chapter 24 chapter 25 of from Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G Carpenter this labor box recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B Tripoli i write these notes in the city of Tripoli along the capital of that one of the old barbary states which lies between tunisia and egypt on the Mediterranean sea i came here from Svex passing around the gulf of gabis and skirting the libyan desert the greater part of the way our boat was a little italian steamer sailing from genoa to tunis and then going on to Tripoli and back to naples via sicily and malta we came to anchor in Tripoli harbor this morning and were brought ashore by boatmen as fierce looking as the pirates who fought here against our american soldiers over 100 years ago it was in this harbor that uncle sam had his first big naval engagement after the conclusion of the war which made him independent of great britain this town was then a great peratical stronghold it levied its tribute on all the ships of the mediterranean and its soldiers not infrequently captured christians and either held them for ransom or kept them in slavery they had committed outrageous upon our shipping during the last days of john adams presidency so in 1801 we formally declared war sending commodore decatur across the atlantic and through the mediterranean to punish the pirates decatur recaptured and burned the american frigate philadelphia in the harbor here in february 1804 thus teaching these semi savages that even though they took their toll from the nations of europe our own little republic across the atlantic must be left alone it was the same decatur who later on put the day of algears in his place tripoli or libya is for the most part nothing but sand it is as long as from new york to detroit as wide as from philadelphia to buffalo and contains all together an area nearly 10 times that of the state of ohio the only cultivated portions are a narrow strip of land along the mediterranean sea and the oasis scattered here and there through the desert of libya the population is about six millions the foreign trade of the country is with the sudan and europe tripoli is the chief starting point for the caravans crossing the sahara there are half a dozen routes over the desert from here to the rich lands of central africa and great quantities of ivory ostrich feathers and skins are brought to tripoli on camels from those regions the trip takes several months the caravans used to include in their freight female slaves for the barbary harems millions of them have been thus carried over the desert and vast numbers have been sent from tripoli to tunisia and turkey the caravan routes are lined with the bones of slaves who died on the way the city of tripoli lies in the libyan desert on the edge of the mediterranean sea it is not an oasis of mud houses surrounded by mud walls such as i have described in previous chapters on the sahara but is a great desert city of 70 000 inhabitants with great white buildings and walls of stone approached from the sea the town looks like a mighty fortification it is built upon a sloping peninsula the houses running around a beautiful bay guarded by rocky islands which rise like sentinels out of the blue mediterranean at one end of the bay is a huge fortification and at the other is the casbah a fortified castle containing the government offices between these two inside the horns of the crescent are white buildings mixed here and there with structures of green blue and rose pink which rise almost straight from the water and form a great bow with the forts at the end behind our other buildings of three and four stories while over them all may be seen the tall minarets of the mosques with green caps on their tops the houses are of arabic architecture and when one climbs to the highest roofs as i did today he sees that each house is built about a little court the walls facing which are painted bright blue as i stood on the housetop all tripoli lay below me it looked like a jumble of great goods boxes cast by the hands of the gods down into the midst of the desert there are a few trees in the town at the right facing the sea some distance away is an oasis of date palms but on the other side as far as the eye can reach there is nothing but the bare yellow sand of the desert of libya let us go down into the city itself and take a walk through the streets the time is midday and the sun blazes like a furnace in this tropical sky of the desert when we reach the open spaces it dazzles our eyes as the white buildings about us catch the rays and throw them back in an almost blinding glare but in the chief streets there is no sun at all or tripoli is a city of caverns most of the streets are either covered with matting or boards or are actually built over like great vaults and lighted here and there by holes in the roofs it is like going through half-lighted tunnels and we might wander about for hours bareheaded without fear of the sun this is true especially in the business sections the bazaars consist of streets 10 or 15 feet wide with white vaulted roofs the light coming through holes each of which is about the foot square now and then there will be a break in these roofs making a short open space where the sun shines but after that the vaults begin again so that one may keep undercover through almost the whole town the business streets are paved with stone while along the walls of the houses run ledges about three feet high upon which the shops face and where the customers sit as they haggle the chief shopping section of tripoli consists of a mighty grape arbor here the street is roofed over with the latticework upon which grape vines have been trained their cool green leaves tempering the rays of the burning sun this street is lined with shops some of which are about 15 feet square such shops are considered great business establishments and their turban owners are among the Nabobs of the city the average store is not as wide or as long as a library table while many are so small that the merchant within could not ask a friend to enter without moving his goods there are very few streets through which wheeled vehicles can go and some will not admit even donkeys or camels most of the freight is carried by porters who go about with great loads on their backs or heads in the wider streets little donkeys are the chief beasts of burden with camels carrying the heavier cargos one of the most interesting features of tripoli is connected with its water supply which comes entirely from wells in or near the city some of it is carried in goat skins on the backs of men some of it in clay jars on the heads of women and a great deal in barrels on the humps of camels the camels kneel down by the wells while the barrels are filled each camel carries two barrels at a load one on each side of its hump and on the horn of the saddle is hung the measuring tub turned upside down the water is sold at so much per tub and the camel owner has his regular customers to whom he furnishes their daily supply the only modern thing i have seen in tripoli is the american sewing machine which is used in the street of the tailors as is the usual oriental custom every business here has its own section and one long street is filled with tailors sitting cross-legged on the floors of their little cubby hall shops as they sew some of them use hand machines placed on little tables beside them but some have table machines of a well-known american make when the full-sized machine is used it takes up half the shop nevertheless i've seen more than a score of such machines in action they are all exported by one company which sells its machines everywhere over the world notwithstanding the fact that we have equally good makes that are never seen abroad let us take a walk through the bazaars and observe these ex-pirates at work they are a busy people and have many manufacturers although everything is turned out by hand for instance here is the bazaar of the jewelers it consists of a street walled on both sides with little rooms not much bigger than an upright piano in the center of every room there is a tiny furnace kept going with the bellows worked by a boy here is one in which a long gown dark-faced arab holds a pot of molten silver over the fire when he takes it off he casts the metal into bracelets and anklets in the next shop a turban man sits flat on the floor pounding a gold bar into earrings as big around as a saucer while over the way are smiths making silver anklets each of which will weigh several pounds in the bazaar of the shoemakers i saw scores of cobblers at work upon slippers the arab gets along without shoe strings or shoe buttons the shoe shops are small and yet the ordinary cobbler often has three or four boys sitting cross-legged working away beside him triply makes a great deal of cloth there are streets filled with weavers where men are at work on hand looms in just about the same way that they worked in the time of muhammad the city is the Minneapolis of this country and its roller pattern process of making flour is a curious sight to an american its many mills are worked day in and day out the year through each mill looks more like a stable than anything else and indeed is often stable and mill combined in the center of the place are two great stones as big around as a cartwheel and about two feet in thickness there is a hopper above the top stone from which the week pours down into a hole in that stone and is ground as the two stones move about one on the other the power is a shambling camel hitched to a long bar that moves the top stone the camel has over his eyes two cups of closely woven basket work as big around as saucers so that he plots around blindfolded in addition to this kind of grinding a great deal of flour is made with handstones kept in motion by woman power this is the custom in most of the oases the grain being ground from day to day as it is needed another tripolitan institution through which many families combined to cheapen their food is the town baker as in tangier this man is to be found in most of the streets of Tripoli the butcher and the candlestick maker too have shops in Tripoli the chief light of the dwellings still comes from candles and there is a regular business of making candles for the trade they are usually sold by the perfumers the butchers are even more interesting i spent some time the other day in a big meat market just inside the city walls the chief meat sold our mutton and camel flesh each of which has its own department and its own butchers the market is held out of doors and the killing and selling are done on the same spot i saw men slaughtering sheep and skinning them while their customers waited for the still smoking flesh and beside them their fellows were cutting up other carcasses and weighing them preparatory to selling the Tripoli mutton is fine it is tender and fat and the carcasses have great flaps of fat at the tails the barberry sheep have tails made of nothing but fat they hang down like great aprons over their rumps a single tail sometimes weighing 15 pounds much of the mutton sold in the market is decorated with gold paper to catch the eyes of customers while some is sprinkled with black and white seeds a little farther on was the camel market here the meat was also decorated with gilt paper but as it came from old and broken down camels it was tough and jaw breaking and brought much less than the mutton leaving the meat market i visited a place where men were selling perfumery in little bottles about as big as one's thumb they sat on the ground with their tables before them and weighed out the scents at so much per ounce close by i saw several Arabs peddling second hand weapons most of the guns were the old flintlock variety some beautifully inlaid with gold silver and ivory the flintlock gun is still in use here and even the flints are sold in some of the shops flints are shown for sale side by side with cast bullets and cast shot end of chapter 25 chapter 26 of from Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G carpenter the sleeper vox recording is in the public domain recording by betty b the oasis of libya i've just returned from mechia the great oasis on the edge of the libyan desert east of Tripoli it faces the Mediterranean and is an island of green on the edge of this mighty ocean of sand it contains more than a million date palms fully as many olive trees and vast groves of oranges and lemons the oasis is cut up by roads much like the streets of a city each little farm has walls six or eight feet high and everywhere are to be seen the high frameworks of the wells by which the land is irrigated cows camels donkeys and women furnish the motive power for raising the water in many places tunnels or long inclined ditches beginning at the wells and sloping downward for several hundred feet have been dug and in these tracks the cow donkey camel or woman trots up and down dragging the rope which passes over a wheel on the top of the framework and thus raises the water at the end of the rope is a huge bag of skin open at both ends this is dropped into the well and when it fills the lower end is pulled together thus forming a closed bottom and the hole is dragged high up into the air the bottom is now released so that the water pours out into the trough which carries it off into a reservoir as one of these bags will hold about 30 gallons and the work goes on all day the quantity of water raised is enormous during my stay i visited some of the gardens they are of all sizes and are extremely well kept one i remember was cut up by cement conduits running along on the top of the ground so disposed that every little tract could be irrigated at will here and there under the rich orange groves there were beds of beautiful flowers and in most places three crops were growing on the same soil over the hole the ragged trunks of the date palms rose high into the air their wide branched fan like leaves quivering in the breeze and their honey color dates shining like gold under the dazzling sun the trees below were loaded with oranges pale yellow lemons flaming pomegranates and even peaches and pears on the ground itself vegetables were growing and i saw alfalfa and grain of different kinds in some places this garden was in charge of a bedowin and several of his wives over a fire in the open the women were boiling dates in a pot about the size of an apple butter kettle making date butter or date honey or perhaps merely cooking the dates for sale in the markets the women were loaded with jewelry with alira i bribed one of them to let me take her photograph the others more bashful wrapped themselves up in their shawls whenever the camera was pointed their way the oasis of libya contained practically its whole population scattered over a territory one ninth as large as the united states they have altogether a million or more people a large number of the oasis such as mechia are found along the shores of the Mediterranean others are farther south in the desert in a great depression known as the pheasant while still others are in the beds of dry rivers where the water supply comes from springs or artesian wells there are caravan routes leading from Tripoli to all of these oases as well as routes crossing the desert to the sudan from one oasis to another Tripoli is in fact the commercial metropolis of the eastern Sahara it lies almost directly north of lake chad and its routes across the desert are the shortest although they are by no means the safest the roads over the Sahara lead not only to lake chad but also to tuat and timbuk too so that Tripoli gets a share of the trade of the french sahara as well the french had made every effort to divert the caravans to gabis in southern tunisia as their landing point but with only a partial degree of success there has been no ready market at gabis for caravan goods because there were no merchants at hand to buy out a large camel train on its arrival the caravans often transport goods to the value of tens of thousands of dollars and a big capital is required to handle their trade the journey to the sudan for example takes many months so the freight must be valuable to stand the cost of transportation i took a camel ride along one of the routes a few days ago and passed several caravans coming in and going out the only roads i could see were the fresh camel tracks which must be obliterated by every sandstorm and in some places there were for long distances no tracks at all nevertheless the Arabs and Bedouins can travel 2000 miles over such wastes without once losing their way i have heard much about the great oasis centers from the merchants of Tripoli they tell terrible stories of the horrors of the desert and of the desolate villages scattered through it between here and fisan there is a wide plain of hot stones where there is no water at all and upon which travelers almost roast as they hurry across it this plain known as the hamada is about as big as kentucky and has an altitude nearly that of the blue ridge mountains in virginia the faisan which lies on the other side of the hamada also covers a large territory it is a shallow depression in the desert spotted here and there by oasis it lies 800 miles north of lake chad in the path of the chief caravan routes to cuka and borneau the trans-sahara trade of the past consisted largely of slaves from Tripoli they were smuggled to tunisia algeria and turkey finding a ready market in the harems of those countries they were often taken on the steamers as the nominal wives of their masters since no mohammedin will tolerate any inquiry into his family arrangements such a statement prevented investigation the capital of the faisan is murzak a dreary city containing about 11 000 inhabitants and dependent almost entirely on the caravan trade its climate is considered so deadly that foreigners compelled to live there think themselves lucky if they lose only their senses of smell and taste another important caravan center is the oasis of ghat which lies in the bed of a dry river and a third is gdamas in another dry river some distance farther on ghat is famous for its great fair which is held once a year and brings together traders from all parts of the sahara in ordinary times the town has only about 4 000 population and the fair is held on a great plain outside of it the city is surrounded by walls and entered only by gates its streets are dark passages with houses built over them so that getting through it is like traveling through the tunnels of a mine the damas i hesitate to write the name it sounds so much like swearing is twice as big as ghat it has been a trading place since the days of the romans and the caravans of the faizan tuat timbuktu and lake chad all pass through it it is surrounded by a wall three miles in length but the people live only in one corner of the enclosure the houses are box shaped and so laid out that the women can walk from one house to another on the roofs which are reserved for their use some of the most interesting parts of this region are along the Mediterranean sea to the east road of Tripoli is the town of Benghazi which was a thriving city in the days of the Phoenicians and the romans still farther east is dirna the only place on the african continent ever seized by americans in the spring of 1805 William Eaton formerly american consul to tunis started off with a band of 500 men including a few americans about 40 greeks and some arab cavalry to cross the libian desert from alexandria to dirna 600 miles away his purpose was the restoration of amet caramanly to the throne of Tripoli and his action far exceeded the authority granted him by the united states government in the long march the camel drivers and the arab chiefs continually mutinied and the expedition ran short of provisions yet Eaton struggled through took the town of dirna and held it for several months until peace with amet's rival was concluded by the united states he built a fort in dirna the ruins and rusty guns of which are still to be seen the products of the desert are much more important than is generally supposed the caravans bring in to Tripoli quantities of ostrich feathers and cotton dates tobacco and grain as well as the ivory and gold dust of the sudan the output of the oases themselves is greater than that of any similar area on earth outside of them there are vast tracks used for grazing millions of camels sheep and goats as well as horses and cattle of late years a new crop has been found which is bringing fortunes into the sahara this is the alpha grass commonly called asparto by foreigners it grows wild along the edges of the desert and upon the plateaus where there is only a slight rainfall not many years ago this crop went to waste but now the Arabs are gathering it and bring it in from everywhere by car and caravan I saw it stacked along the railroad in the deserts of algeria and tunisia the trains were loaded with it and there were mountains of it on the wharves of every port that I visited here in Tripoli the alpha grass is brought in upon camels it is picked by the Bedouins Arabs and Berbers every blade of it being pulled from the ground it is packed in great bags about four feet wide and eight feet in length two of these bags are slung over the hump of a camel and are thus carried for miles over the desert when the grass arrives at Tripoli it is weighed upon steel yards and paid for at about ten dollars a ton it is then bailed up like hay and shipped on the steamers to england where it is used for the making of the best book and writing papers some of the great newspaper companies of england have put up factories in algeria for the handling of alpha grass it is said that its value was originally discovered by the Lloyds of Lloyds register it makes a much better paper than would hope but as it is far more costly there is no possibility that it will displace the latter a large part of the caravan business at the ports is handled by Greeks and Italians the alpha grass is bought by Italians acting for the English who ship it to Liverpool and London and bring back hardware and Manchester cotton goods the Italians handle also the date exports although the fruit is brought in by native tribes who make a specialty of merchandising distinct among the tribes of the Libyan desert are the moza bites who are sometimes called the Jews of the Sahara the Arabs say that while it takes five of their people to beat a Jew at a bargain it requires at least five Jews to get the better of one moza bite indeed many believe that the moza bites are of Jewish origin at any rate they outrank the Jews in their trading ability and have monopolized certain kinds of trade in the desert the moza bites have seven cities far down below Algiers in the middle of the Sahara at the point where the caravan routes cross they're engaged in commerce there as well as in Algiers in Tunis and in nearly every trading center of North Africa these men stay away from home for two years at a time their laws require that they come back at regular intervals and their wives can claim a divorce if they remain away longer if a man is absent more than two years his wife not only has the right to marry again but can take possession of all the property belonging to the family and keep it i'm told that the moza bite women are true to their husbands they wear black while their lords are absent and make great feasts when they come home among the beyond served on such occasions are barbecued camels and sheep at the same time a dinner is given to the poor which strange to say takes place at the cemetery here the wife plays the lady bountiful sitting on the tomb of her parents while she hands out the soup and dispenses her alms i've seen many of the moza bites during my travels they are short stout and of light complexion with a Jewish cast of features they are noted for their stinginess most of them sleep in their shops where they sometimes do their own cooking saving every cent to take home at 10 a girl of the Sahara begins to primp and look at men and something is supposed to be wrong with her if she is not married at 17 or 18 as for the age of the husband that matters not he may be 16 or 60 and he may have several wives sometimes a female matchmaker is employed by the groom to find out all the details of the character and wealth of the bride this woman goes with her to the bath and investigates her beauty she makes inquiries at home about her cooking and housekeeping ability so as to furnish a full description of the girl's qualities the groom is supposed to pay a certain sum for the bride and she is expected to bring him a small fortune jewelry and household effects on her wedding day the bride is wrapped up in so many veils that she looks more like a bundle than a woman and in this shape she's carried on a camel or donkey to the home of the groom the new home of the desert bride is with her husband's family but only when she is the first wife if he has other wives she goes to the common tent where she takes her place as boss of the establishment after holding this position for a year or so she comes down to everyday life and does her share of the work she aids in the cooking in gathering fuel and in weaving the cloth for the tents and the family clothing have you ever heard of the uled nails there to be found in every oasis and there is a whole street given up to them in bisgra the so-called paris of the sahara they are noted for their beauty and are professional entertainers much like the notch girls of india the guwazi of egypt or the gaseous of japan robert hitchens rather effusively describe them in the garden of ala making them more beautiful than i have ever found them either in bisgra or here in triply the uled nails sing and dance for money in the moorish cafes anyone who will pay for a cup of coffee can see them and scores of these dark-faced turbaned long bearded Arabs will sit and watch them for hours the girls are paid by the owners of the establishments but they also collect contributions from the foreigners present coming to them and kneeling down at the close of each dance there upon the foreigner wets a silver coin with his lips and presses it upon the forehead of the dancer the coin sticks and the girl rises and goes through the wild abandon of another dance moving her head so gently that the coin remains where it was placed the dance of the uled nails is the well-known stomach dance involved throughout the orient it consists of a series of contortions of the hips and abdomen while the remainder of the body remains stationary or perhaps sways back and forth the girls are fully dressed there is no exposure of the person and they lack the tights of our wicked stage nevertheless their actions are more demoralizing than those of the worst of our dance halls yet their profession is considered respectable by their own tribe and after time they take the money they have thus made and go home to marry their lovers end of chapter 26