Sages will be interested to learn that Professor Koken, of Tuebingen, in a
learned pamphlet, lays it down that these flints of Gafsa belong to the
Mesvinian, Strepyian, Praechellean--to say nothing of the Mousterian,
Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and other types. So be it. He further
says, what is more intelligible to the uninitiated, that a bed of hard
conglomerate which crops up at Gafsa on either side of the Oued Baiesh,
has been raised in days of yore; it was raised so slowly that the river
found time to carve itself a bed through it during the process of
elevation; nevertheless, a certain class of these artificial implements,
embedded since God knows when, already formed part of this natural
conglomerate ere it began to uplift itself. This will give some idea of
the abysm of time that lies between us and the skin-clad men that lived
here in olden days.

An abysm of time...

But I remembered the cave-wench of the Meda Hill. And my companion to-day
was of the same grade, a characteristic semi-nomad boy of the poorest
class; an orphan, of course (they are nearly all orphans), and quite
abandoned. His whole vocabulary could not have exceeded one hundred and
fifty words; he had never heard of the Apostle of Allah or his sacred
book; he could only run, and throw stones, and endure, like a beast, those
ceaseless illnesses of which only death, an early death as a rule, is
allowed to cure them. His clothing was an undershirt and the inevitable
burnous, brown with dirt.

"What have you done to-day?" I asked him.

"Nothing."