Is the great amphitheater at El Djem—the Thysdrus of the ancients—in southern Tunisia; in size and magnificence scarcely inferior to the Colosseum at Rome, it rises solitary and with startling abruptness from the expanse of yellow desert] Instead of wearing the flowing burnous which is the universal costume of the natives elsewhere in the regency, the Arabs of Sfax are distinguished by their short, hooded jackets of dark brown, hand-woven wool or camel’s-hair elaborately worked with light brown embroidery. These, with the troops of the garrison—officers of _chasseurs d’Afrique_ in tight-waisted sky-blue tunics and enormously baggy scarlet trousers; spahis with great crimson capes, their enormous turbans bound with _agals_ of camel’s-hair; black _tirailleurs_ from Senegal whose high tarbooshes, trim uniforms, and smartly wound puttees are all of khaki—to say nothing of the strange desert types who drift in from the Saharian provinces and Tripolitania, lend to the streets and _souks_ of Sfax a diversity and color not found in the more northerly cities of the regency. A few hours by native sailing-boat off this storied coast are the Kerkenna Islands, Chergui and Gharbi, which in ancient times were joined by a bridge whose traces are still visible, but now separated by a channel of considerable width. They are interesting to every student of ancient history because of their tragic associations, for it was here that the fugitive Hannibal, seeking to escape the wrath of Rome, found refuge for a time, and from here that he fled to Asia Minor. The Kerkennas were the home, in later years, of another illustrious exile, that Sempronius Gracchus who dared to lift his eyes to Julia, daughter of the Emperor Augustus, and paid for his presumption with banishment and eventually with his life. But the Kerkennas, despite their hectic past, are to-day a pleasant, friendly, _dolce far niente_ spot, the islanders, a mixture of many nationalities, being engaged in sponge-fishing and the manufacture of an inferior but very potent variety of date brandy. Sfax is the “farthest south” for most visitors to Tunisia, but we kept on along the edges of the gulf to Gabés, which is the starting-point for those, prepared to put up with discomforts if not actual hardships, who wish to visit the cliff-dwellings of Matmata, the _rhorfas_ of Medenine, the island of Djerba, and the military provinces which adjoin the Tripolitanian frontier. Though so difficult of access, so far removed from the beaten paths of travel, as to be rarely visited by Europeans, these regions are by long odds the strangest and most interesting in Tunisia, if not, indeed, in all North Africa. Not to see the underground city of Bled Kebira and the desert sky-scrapers of Medenine is to miss two of the most extraordinary communities on earth.