The view from the Kasbah, especially in the late afternoon, when the shadows begin to lengthen and the fort-crowned hills which encircle the city are tinged with coral, is one never to be forgotten. To the southward, an opal imbedded in green velvet, lies the salt lake, Sebkhet-es-Sedjoumi. Two or three miles to the west the white palace of the Bardo rises from a sea of verdure. To the northward, beyond the Park of the Belvedere, with its sweeping drives and charming Moorish pavilions, the fir-clad peaks of Djebel Merkez and Djebel Ahmar rear themselves against the African sky. Eastward, across the turquoise-colored, flamingo-haunted lagoon of El Bahira, bask in the sunshine the ivory buildings of La Goulette; while somewhat more to the north, beyond the rose-brown arches of the Roman aqueduct, are the slopes on which Carthage once stood so proudly, the whole dominated by the twin peaks of Bou-Kornein. Descending from the heights of the Kasbah, a few hundred paces bring us to the town palace of the rulers of Tunisia, the Dar-el-Bey, now seldom used as a royal residence save during the month of Ramadan, for during the rest of the year the bey dwells at his suburban palace of La Marsa, on the sea-shore beyond Cape Carthage. The interior of the Dar-el-Bey is an unhappy combination of Oriental taste and European tawdriness. Though some of the reception-rooms and the private apartments of the bey are as fine as anything in the Alcázar or the Alhambra, their walls done in tiles of exquisite design and color, their ceilings decorated with the delicately chiseled, lace-like plaster-work called _nuksh hadida_, the state apartments present a painful contrast, having been perpetrated in the early years of the Victorian epoch, when Turkey-red carpets, crimson brocade hangings, ornate crystal chandeliers, and an excessive use of gilt were considered the acme of richness and good taste. [Illustration: THIRTEEN CENTURIES LOOK DOWN UPON YOU From the lofty minaret of the Djamaa-es-Zeitoun, the largest mosque in Tunis, which was already hoary with antiquity when Columbus sailed into the West] Save, as I have already remarked, during the fasting month of Ramadan, when he finds his city palace more convenient for participating in the numerous religious ceremonies, the present ruler visits the Dar-el-Bey only once or twice a week for the transaction of official business and to sit in judgment on criminals. For, though the regency is French in pretty much everything but name, it has been deemed wise to maintain the fiction of Tunisian independence by permitting the bey a good deal of latitude so far as the punishment of his own subjects is concerned; his ideas of justice (_la justice du bey_ it is called, in contradistinction to _la justice française_) usually working out in a fashion truly Oriental.