In the sunlit evening I saw a little railway which led out of Tunis on the north: a railway which looked too young and small to be able to go very far, but which would be almost certain to go to some enchanted place. And sure enough, when I asked for a ticket as far as possible I was given a ticket for Tunis: the train was of the kind that does a magic circle. It started, and at once it seemed to run into heaven without further delay; the town vanished and the sky lay under us as well as over us, luminous and blue and flecked with rosy clouds. After the first airy vision this undersky turned out tobeawide shallow lake stretching away to the eastward, with flocks of rosy flamingoes standing motionless in the blue water. They stood there like the clouds of sunset, perfectly still, and entirely happy, wrapped up in some lovely dream of their own.

On the other side of the lake was a hill of bare red earth crowned by a big white mosque. The train left the lake and in a little while came to the southernmost point of the promontory, where the green waves of the Mediterranean broke on the sand; then it began to turn on its circle and came to a place called Ste. Monique, where cherry trees in snow-white bloom fluttered everywhere against the red earth of the hills. Behind them a cliff-head rose above the sea, with a white Arab village crowded upon its crest. Then the train stopped on a hillside among a few villas and cornfields, and the station placard said in huge white letters, CARTHAGE. The letters needed to be huge and white, as if to emphasise a truth very difficult to believe. It simply did not seem possible.