Not far from Medenine is the smaller community of Metameur, which is a fortress rather than a village. Here all the houses are built in the form of a hollow square, inclosing a spacious courtyard, from which they rise to a height of five or six stories. As has already been mentioned, none of the houses have windows, and so the outside of the square is merely a blank wall of rough stone covered with cement, too lofty to be scaled and too thick to be breached except by modern artillery. In the center of the courtyard is a well, which insures the inhabitants of a water-supply should they be besieged. Access to the courtyard is gained through a tunnel-shaped entrance, so low that one has to crawl through it almost on all fours. But once inside the inhabitants were perfectly secure, as long as their food and water held out, for there was no means by which an enemy could dislodge them. To me these troglodyte towns were particularly interesting because they illustrate how, even in a region wholly destitute of natural defenses, a primitive but ingenious people can protect themselves when dire necessity compels. As, even to-day, the southern marches of Tunisia are not wholly immune from attacks by bands of raiders from the desert, Medenine is garrisoned by a considerable force of _méharistes_, _tirailleurs_, spahis, and _chasseurs d’Afrique_, whose trim white barracks are in the outskirts of the town. Rising beyond the squat, vault-like rows of _rhorfa_, perhaps the most primitive dwellings in the world, and in striking contrast to them, are the slender masts and cobweb-like aërials of the military radio station—the last word in twentieth-century civilization. Circumstances made it necessary for us to lunch at Medenine. It was the last place on earth where I should have expected to get a decent meal, for the single European café in the town was at first sight anything but appetizing. But appearances are sometimes deceiving, for, as it turned out, the proprietor had once been a chef in a famous Paris restaurant, and he set before us one of the best-cooked _déjeuners_ that we had in Africa. My recollections of it are particularly vivid because for the modest sum of ninety cents I obtained a bottle of fine old Château Yquem! * * * * * In pushing so far southward into Tunisia we had a double-barreled motive: to see the troglodyte communities which I have just described, and to visit Djerba, the Island of the Lotus-Eaters. This fabled isle, so alluringly described in the Odyssey, was known to those mariners of ancient Greece who ventured beyond the rim of their world before the dawn of history, and the reports which they brought back served as foundation for the epic tales of Jason and Ulysses. There the Argonauts dwelt for a time in happy idleness; there they ate of the lotus and the sweet fruit of the date-palm; there they found a land where it was always afternoon and life passed like a dream.