It is a fortunate circumstance for foreigners of an inquiring turn of mind that the French occupation of Tunisia met with armed resistance from the fanatical inhabitants of Kairouan. Had they peacefully accepted the protectorate, the beautiful and highly interesting religious sanctuaries of the Holy City of Africa would be rigidly closed to unbelievers, as is the case in all the other cities of the regency. But they _did_ resist and were punished in a fashion peculiarly humiliating to the proud spirit of the Moslem by having their sacred places thrown open to the inspection of infidels, Kairouan being the only place in all of French North Africa where non-Moslems enjoy this privilege. Personally, I always feel a sense of embarrassment upon entering a mosque; to do so is an affront, whether intentional or not, to another people’s religion. To see hordes of tourists, guide-book in hand, camera under the arm, over-size slippers flapping from their heels, shuffling about an edifice where men are engaged in their devotions, peering inquisitively into venerated shrines, commenting in audible whispers on the genuflections of the pious, always strikes me as a rather sorry spectacle, a breach of good manners and good taste. Were a party of Moslem visitors to enter a Christian place of worship and behave precisely as I have seen Christian tourists conduct themselves in Moslem mosques in Egypt and Turkey, a scandalized sexton would promptly ask them to leave, if, indeed, no worse befell them. As the motor goes it is about six score miles, over a tolerably smooth highway, from Tunis to Kairouan, the route which we followed being the one taken thirteen hundred years before by the Arab invaders of Tunisia, though in the opposite direction. It has been in turn a highway of history, a course of conquest, a path of piety, a trail of torture, a thoroughfare of travel, a track of trade, a route of romance, this great trunk-road which leads from the Mediterranean to the desert. It has shaken to the ponderous tread of Carthaginian elephants, has been rutted by the tires of Roman chariots, has felt the padded feet of Numidian camels, has been trampled by the hoofs of Arab chargers, has known Berber slippers and Byzantine sandals, the calloused soles of monks and friars, the spurred heels of knights and men-at-arms, the dragging footsteps of slaves and captives, the measured tramp of modern soldiery. He who can travel that road without being stirred by thoughts of the mighty events which have taken place along it has no poetry or imagination in his soul; the only thing that would give pause to such a person is the upraised hand of a traffic-cop.