Though the Matmatas are unquestionably of pure Berber stock, a fine, upstanding people possessed of extraordinary tenacity and courage, their origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. They themselves claim to have been led to this mountain refuge by that remarkable woman, El Kahena, the African Joan of Arc already mentioned, who made her last desperate stand at El Djem after defying for years the Arab invaders of her country. That the Matmatas were originally lowlanders, pasturing their flocks and tending their olive-trees on the rich plains bordering the Syrtes, there is good reason to believe. But, constantly harassed by bands of Arab raiders from Tripolitania and the desert, who burned their towns, drove off their flocks, and killed those whom they did not carry into slavery, the Berbers realized that their only hope of existence lay in seeking refuge amid the wild fastnesses of the Matmata Mountains. Here, within sight of the fertile plains which they had been forced to abandon, they intrenched themselves, and, resisting all attacks of their enemies, succeeded in eking out a precarious existence for centuries, though how they managed to obtain sufficient food remains a mystery. As the years passed, however, they grew weary of their enforced seclusion upon the mountain-top; so, coming to terms with their hereditary enemies, the nomad tribes, they abandoned Gelaa Matmata and descended to the arable plateau, five hundred feet or so lower down, where, in the soft, porous soil, half-clay, half-sandstone, which forms the sides of the hills, they built, or, rather dug themselves, the present town of Bled Kebira. They continued to live in their subterranean dwellings partly because they had become accustomed to them, no doubt, but primarily because they were still necessary as a defense against marauding bands, for it was not until the French bayonets came that this much persecuted people acquired even a speaking acquaintance with peace and security. Now, their stronghold on the mountain-top long since abandoned, the Matmatas have their _chef-lieu_ at Bled Kebira, where some twelve thousand of them live like moles beneath the surface of the earth. Though Bled Kebira has a population equal to that of many an American community holding a city charter, there is nothing to suggest its presence, for a small, whitewashed mosque and the _caserne_ occupied by a handful of French troops are the only structures above ground.