Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Young Knights of the Empire

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wife and child. They are monuments to the Indian belief that those who do their duty in spite of any difficulty or danger are the best men and the greatest heroes. * * * * * TUNIS. The Souks. Perhaps you do not know what a "souk" is? Imagine yourself in a long, narrow tunnel lit with skylights here and there, with small open shops along either side. That is what one of the "souks" or bazaars in Tunis is like. There are miles of them, and they are generally crowded from end to end with the white-cloaked Arabs and shrouded figures of women with black masks over their faces, all busy shopping, buying or selling. Each trade has a souk to itself. Thus, in one souk you will find nothing but shoemakers' shops one after another, in the next will be all coppersmiths, in another the cloth merchants, and so on. There still stand the "Bardo" or Palace of the "Bey" or King of Tunis, and the "kasbah" or castle in which the Tunisian pirates of old days used to imprison the Christians whom they captured at sea; and there is still the old slave market where they used to sell them. Many an English sailor has been lost for ever to his home and friends in that dismal place. But on one occasion the prisoners got the better of their captors. As many as ten thousand of them had been collected, and they made a plan to escape, and, rising against their captors, they overwhelmed them by force of numbers and got away. "Home, Sweet Home," An interesting spot in the city is the old Christian cemetery, in which lies buried the man who wrote the well-known song, "Home, Sweet Home." Most people think that it is an English song, but the composer was in reality an American--a clerk in the Consulate--named John Howard Payne. * * * * * CARTHAGE. Close to Tunis is the site of Carthage, the capital of the great country of that name in North Africa. There is very little to be seen of it to-day, for the city was destroyed by its enemies, and the stones were taken to build the present town of Tunis. It was founded nearly 900 years before the time of Christ, and was for hundreds of years a powerful and prosperous country till 146 years before Christ, when it was conquered by the Romans, and the city was given over to the flames. The city was at that time twelve miles round, and was defended by huge walls sixty feet high and thirty-three feet thick with rooms inside them. In the lower storey were stables for horses and elephants (of which there were 300), and the upper storey served as barracks for over 20,000 soldiers, who formed the garrison for defence of the city. But very few of these soldiers were Carthaginians. The Carthaginian young men did not care about soldiering: they preferred to loaf about and do nothing but watch public games, and foreigners or poor men were hired to do the soldiering for the country. The country was large and rich, and had many colonies oversea and plenty of ships. It looked as though no enemy could ever arise to come and attack her. But what seemed so unlikely actually happened in the end. The Romans had no great fleet to speak of, but they had a fine army, and they meant business. They put their soldiers into crowded transports, and sailed across the short distance of ocean that lay between the two countries--not much farther than Hamburg in Germany is from Hull in Yorkshire. Thus the country which, like Germany, had a fine, well-trained army, landed a force in Carthaginia, the country which, like Britain, had a great fleet and great colonies, but only a small army, and it smashed up the Carthaginians through their not Being Prepared for it. Boar Hunting. From Tunis one sees to the southward a mountain called Zaghouan. Though forty miles away it was from here that the Carthaginians got their water supply, and they conveyed it by a small canal, which they built all the way to Carthage. [Illustration: You can imagine the fun of having a lot of wildly excited Arabs firing from the opposite side of the circle straight in your direction, with the animal in between you.] That canal still serves to bring the water into Tunis, though it is now a good deal over two thousand years old!

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