Though a site so lavishly supplied with water, and commanding the great trade-routes from Carthage and Cirta to the south, must have been occupied and cultivated since the very earliest times, the origin of Tozeur is hidden behind the misty curtains of antiquity. It was evidently a place of considerable importance in the days of Ptolemy, who calls it Tisouros; in the depths of its palm-groves one is shown the remains of what was once a Roman watch-tower, later a Byzantine campanile, then a Moslem minaret, and is now a crumbling ruin; it was the scene of many bloody and stirring incidents during the Fatimite wars of the ninth and tenth centuries; in 1068 the Arab geographer Bekri wrote that almost every day caravans of a thousand camels or more left Tozeur laden with dates. Then, for eight hundred years, it seems to have dropped from sight, “the world forgetting and by the world forgot.” But now it is coming into its own again. Already a narrow-gage railway has been pushed southward, across the steppes, across the shats, through Gafsa and Metaloui, and now the hoot of the tin-pot, ten-mile-an-hour locomotive is echoed by the palm-groves of Tozeur. In preparation for the expected tide of tourist travel the Transat has erected in the edge of the oasis a fine modern hotel, with French-made furniture, and porcelain bath-tubs with hot and cold running water, and excellent _table d’hôte_ meals, and a spacious terrace where in the evenings the guests may lounge in deep cane chairs over their coffee, listening to native music and gazing dreamily into the brooding, star-lit desert. And from here set out the great Renault twelve-wheelers, which churn their way across the sandy sea to Touggourt, to Ourgla, to Ghardaia, and beyond. A few more years, a very few, and Tozeur, so long a wild and woolly frontier town, will be as sophisticated—and as spoiled—as Biskra. I think I have already remarked that Tozeur has upward of half a million date-palms, most of them of the _deglat_ variety, whose luscious, semi-transparent, amber-colored fruit melts in the mouth like so much honey. These date-palms form a veritable forest, along whose paths you may wander for hours and never weary of its beauty. And in your ears is always the pleasant sound of running water. Overhead the palm-tops interlace to form a continuous canopy of glossy green, through whose interstices the sun sifts to carpet the ground with shadows as delicate as lace. Beneath the palms, peach and apricot and almond trees blossom in pink and snowy clouds, and the brown earth beneath is thickly inlaid with the green patina of gardens and little patches of sprouting grain; for land is so scarce and valuable in the oases that every foot is cultivated with almost pathetic care, the owners grudging even the narrow paths which separate their holdings. [Illustration: THE FORGOTTEN OF GOD