while a spur of the same rocky hills separates Medjez from the half- ruined city of Testour. It was this district which now unexpectedly bade fair to become the first battlefield of the Tunisian campaign. The extraordinary events of the past week, the practical defeat of Sy Ali Bey, followed by the daring raids of the insurgent Arabs on the French railway in the defiles of Oued Zerga, for a moment diverted public attention even from the coming march on Kairwán, and certainly taxed General Logerot’s military skill to the utmost. A month ago the plan for the expedition was simple enough. Ali Bey was to guard the French railway, and maintain order in the apparently pacified northern provinces of Tunis, while the French columns stamped out _manu militari_ the spirit of rebellion in the south. It now turned out that Ali Bey was powerless to effect anything; that the tribes of the north were gathering in thousands to create a diversion in aid of their brethren of the south; and that notwithstanding the immediate presence of Ali Bey’s troops, and the knowledge that there were 40,000 French troops in the Regency, the insurgents had managed to obtain possession of the most important strategic point on the French railway. There were hardly any passengers by the afternoon train on Sunday, October 2d, and at Manouba we received a guard of thirty soldiers, commanded by a lieutenant of the 73d Regiment. On passing Jedeida and Testour, the two villages which were pillaged by the insurgents during the previous week, I noticed a small camp of Tunisian soldiers near the railway. After three hours’ travelling the train reached Medjez-el-Bab. The station formed the headquarters of Colonel De Bord, and a battalion of the 8th Regiment was encamped on one side of it, and one of the 73d on the other. Water had apparently run short, and the train brought a large supply from Tunis, with which the railway reservoir was speedily filled. The soldiers were nearly all young, but of good physique, and looked little the worse for the hard fighting many of them had seen during the previous night, the details of which I had no difficulty in ascertaining.