Note 4 — Chapter IV

Since writing the above, the French have entered Tunis, and at the point of the bayonet, have forced the Bey to sign a treaty. In future there is to be progress, and we have the gratification of learning that already civilisation is advancing in its normal manner. In the ‘Daily News’ of June 7, was a letter from the correspondent in the French camp, dated May 26, 1881, in which he gives an interesting account of the introduction of the old Algerian institution of razzia into Tunis, which he thus graphically describes. ‘It is simple in its aim, simple in its execution. It requires but one condition: You must be stronger than the enemy or friend towards whom the razzia is directed. The receipt is: Take a sufficiently strong force, scour the country of the enemy or friend, drive off all his cattle, if necessary spoil his crops, burn his tents, and if it is possible to perform a good clean sweeping razzia without shooting anybody, do not do so.’ ‘Depreciation of property is of course the effect of a razzia. The French find themselves with more cattle than they know what to do with, and sell them to the highest bidder. I have had pointed out to me a Frenchman whose business it is to go from one camp to another picking up cattle cheap. The effect on the Arabs themselves is, they will sell everything they have for what it will fetch, feeling that at any moment it may be taken from them.’

The letter continues, ‘I have always made it my business to inquire about the Kroumirs. Here, as elsewhere, I find the same story. Few people have ever seen one.’ ‘So certain is every one that no further fighting can possibly occur, and that any attempt to find the Kroumirs is abandoned, that I leave for Tunis to-morrow, marvelling much at a campaign that has had no beginning, no middle, no ending, and that has taken 40,000 troops away from their homes to invade the country of an enemy who has been invisible.’ The Kroumirs (if they really exist) are Berbers, and there is no reason to believe that they are worse people than those I have described living amongst. Owing to some unknown mental process, the French colonist believes that ingratitude is a fundamental defect in the native character; and concludes that, on account of this ineradicable moral cancer, he is not beloved and respected as he ought to be.