Nestling in the shadow of the rugged Djebel Zaghouan, from whose summit, forty-two hundred feet in height, can be obtained a view which embraces half Tunisia, is the unkempt little village of Zaghouan. One’s first impression is of a pleasant, restful place, for in the outskirts are many gardens, and the air is heavy with the fragrance of roses, lilies, violets, and orange-blossoms; but the town itself, dirty, unpaved, and squalid, reeks with odors of quite a different kind. Zaghouan is the Danbury of Tunisia, having a virtual monopoly of the manufacture of _chéchias_, the tasseled caps of red felt which are the universal head-gear of the natives. A mile or so above the town are the ruins of the Nymphea, the colonnaded temple built by the Romans over the famous spring which eighteen hundred years ago supplied Carthage with water as it now does Tunis. Here commenced that remarkable system of conduits and aqueducts, constructed in the reign of Hadrian, whose mammoth arches still march across the Carthaginian plain. Another hour or so of dusty motoring, and the domes and minarets and turreted ramparts of the Holy City rise to view. What induced the Arab conquerors to choose such a site for their capital and chief sanctuary passes the comprehension, for Kairouan lies in the middle of a dreary, waterless expanse, thirty-odd miles from the sea and even farther from the mountains, without an adequate water-supply or natural resources, swept by cold winds in winter and scorched by the pitiless summer sun. It does not even have military strength to recommend it, for it has never withstood a siege successfully, having been taken and retaken at least a dozen times. Though it is on the road to nowhere, so far as its geographical situation is concerned, the followers of Mohammed regard it as a half-way stop on the road to heaven, seven pilgrimages to Kairouan being deemed equivalent to a _hadj_ to Mecca itself. A distinctly medieval appearance is lent the city by its massive crenelated wall, pierced by five gates and broken by numerous bastions and towers. The essentially religious character of the place is immediately made apparent by its most fantastic sky-line, which is broken by the domes and minarets of the hundred or more _zaouias_ and mosques, the whole dominated by the enormous tower of the Djamaa Sidi Okba, which, visible for many miles, rears itself skyward like a great brown finger pointing to heaven.