Chapter XIV Phosphates
A light railway leads up to the hills where the phosphates lie. Here you may see the fiends at work. A legion of wild-eyed, swart and nearly nude creatures are disembowelling the hoary mountain: visions such as this must have floated before Milton’s eye when he drew his picture of Mammon, who, with his horde of demons, opened in the hill a spacious wound—
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of our mother Earth
For treasure better hid….
The workers are chiefly of three races: Tripolitan, Khabyle (Algerian), and Moroccan; they live in separate clusters among the rocks, each with their peculiar national traits and mode of building; there is hardly a woman among them all.
Besides these tribes a certain proportion of Tunisian Arabs are employed, but they are too weak or timorous to relish underground work; a sprinkling of negroes, as well as some of the hillfolk from the district surrounding Metlaoui, who go by the quaint name of Boujaja.
“Good fellows,” said Dufresnoy. “They will slit your throat for a you.”
The surface phosphates having already become exhausted, the mineral is now pursued into the dim recesses of the earth. Tunnels are excavated, whence smaller ones radiate in definite directions—all of them sustained by wooden beams; the amount of material to be extracted from a given spot is scientifically fixed; it is shattered by minute blasts of dynamite and, once the trolley cars have carried it away, the wooden supports are removed and these cavities filled up by the collapse of the roof. By this means accidents are forestalled such as that which took place some years ago when, owing to an oversight of some subordinate left in charge, an immense mass of mountain fell in, entombing about three hundred miners, whose bodies are not yet recovered. The ill-fated engineer who was legally responsible for the mishap was in Paris at the time; he returned in all haste. After seeing the mischief, he tried to throw himself into an Arab well, and, baulked of this, lay down at night under a passing train and was decapitated.
They showed me a map of this subterranean world, variously tinted according to the regions already exploited and those yet virgin. It reminded me, with its regular streets and blocks, of some model city in the Far West.
The underground workings here are about thirty kilometres in length. Beside these Metlaoui deposits, the company has begun to attack those of Redeyeff, and will shortly open an assault upon the others at Ain Moulares, which lie near Henchir Souatir, the present terminus of the Feriana line. It employs six thousand men; some of the mineral goes as far as Japan; the output of last year amounted to over a million tons.
One may well be interested in the discoverer of these phosphates, in the man who has revolutionized the trade of Tunisia. He is a veterinary surgeon in the French Army—Monsieur Philippe Thomas.
His record is of the best.
Born in 1843, he has taken part in twelve military campaigns, distinguishing himself particularly in the Franco-Prussian war.
But, above all, he is a savant.
He has written valuable treatises on the diseases of domestic beasts, describing, among other things, a hitherto unobserved infectious malady of goats. He is the author of a number of memoirs on the geology of Northern Africa, and has discovered no less than two hundred new species of fossil animals of that country; he has made numerous contributions to our knowledge of its ethnology, prehistoric tombs, and flint implements. Many of these writings date from the seventies and earlier; they have procured for him the membership of learned societies, as well as medals and decorations of all kinds.
A man of such distinction, one would think, coming to Tunisia in 1885 at the head of a scientific expedition sent by the Ministry of Public Instruction, would be received according to his merits. It was far otherwise. Whether from distrust of his capacities or some other cause, Monsieur Cambon, the Resident, assumed towards him a most chilling official manner, and the commanding military officer, General Boulanger, all but refused to grant the escort necessary for his expedition. In one of his papers he speaks of this reception as “several degrees below zero.”
Then, in the same year, appeared his sensational report of the discovery of phosphate deposits which he had traced over a long line of country; realizing their commercial value, he insisted that they should be exploited “pour le plus grand bien de l’agriculture française et algérienne.” Nevertheless, ten years passed ere a company could be formed, as financiers were diffident about the American competition and the risks of installation in a desert country.
A tardy recognition of his services to the company took the form of a pecuniary grant, in 1904, of fifteen thousand francs—little enough, in all conscience, considering the millions he has gained for them. They further honoured him by changing the name of the station-settlement of Metlaoui into “Philippe-Thomas.”
“It’s very economical,” Dufresnoy observed.
I am glad to think that another place of that name, the mining village, will continue to exist; it would seem a pity to erase from the map the tuneful word Metlaoui, which contains the five vowels in a remarkably small compass….
Dufresnoy tells me that those barren slopes where the mines lie, and where the different races now work together in apparent amity, were once the scene of a sanguinary primitive battle. There is a steep gully at one point, a dry torrent; the Khabyles lived on one side of it, the Tripolitans on the other, and between these two races there occurred, on a starlit night in May, 1905, an affray of unearthly ferocity.
The Khabyles, prudent folk, many of whom had served in the French Army, had long been laying in a store of warlike provisions; their secret was well kept, although it was observed that piles of stones were being collected round their huts, and that a goodly quantity of dynamite and petroleum was missing from the stores; some of them possessed guns and revolvers, the rest were armed with knives, daggers and savage mining gear. They chose a Sunday for the attack, well knowing that the Tripolitans, who are good-natured simpletons, would be least prepared to resist them on that day, and half of them in a state of jollification; and they were so sagacious, that they actually induced a few drunken Tripolitans to insult them, before beginning the conflict. This, they knew, would be counted in their favour afterwards.
Hardly was the night come when they advanced in battle array—the fighting contingent in front; behind them the boys and older men, who kept them supplied with stones and weapons. A well-nourished volley of missiles greeted the Tripolitans, some of whom rushed to the fray, while others took refuge in their huts or with the Moroccans who lived in their own village near at hand. It was now quite dark, but at close quarters the stones began to take effect, and hardly was a man down, than five or six Khabyles ran out of the ranks to finish him off with their knives; others, meanwhile, went to the locked huts and fired them, or burst them open with dynamite.
The explosions and lights began to attract attention in Metlaoui; the whole sky was aflame; there were mysterious bursts of sound, too, and a chorus of wild howls. Something was evidently wrong, up there.
A party of Europeans, accompanied by a small force of local police, went up to the mines to investigate. They found themselves powerless; “keep yourselves out of danger,” they were told, “and let us settle our own affairs.” The carnage was in full swing; it was hell let loose. Not content with killing, they mutilated each other’s corpses, bit off noses, gouged out eyes, and thrust stones in the mouths of the dead; burnt and hacked and slashed each other till sunrise; no element of bestiality was lacking. The wounded crawled away to die in caves, or were carried to nomad camps. The number of the dead was never ascertained; Dufresnoy says “about a hundred,” which is probably below the mark, as an eye-witness saw three railway trucks loaded with the slain. To this day they find mouldering human remains, relics of that battle, hidden away in crevices of the rocks.
Although, once roused, the Tripolitans fought like demons, they were worsted—the others were too numerous. They had a brief moment of revenge, however; for during their retreat, on Monday morning, they encountered two young Khabyle boys who had been on absence and were now returning to work at the mines, blissfully ignorant of what was going on. These unfortunate lads were literally torn to shreds.
I confess that, as a spectacle, I should have preferred that night’s engagement to anything in modern warfare. It must have been a stupendous exhibition of the bête humaine.
The Khabyles meditated nothing short of a total extirpation of the Tripolitan stock; they sent to the mines of Redeyeff for auxiliaries of their nation, some of whom actually arrived in time for the slaughter; the rest were intercepted on the hill-paths by the police of Gafsa, who had been telegraphically summoned and despatched by special train. And soon afterwards, elated by success, the Khabyles fell foul of the Moroccans and sent word that they meant to fight them too for sheltering Tripolitan fugitives in their huts. The Moroccans were delighted at the prospect; but the management got wind of the project in good time, which was just as well, for the Moroccans are not only the most orderly of the native settlers at the mines, but also by far the strongest and fiercest, and it might have fared ill with the Khabyles. The Tripolitan village has now been moved to another site—a certain number of troops, too, are definitely stationed at Metlaoui.
“As usual,” said Dufresnoy, “we came in for the blame. They say that we did not allow the real authors, the Khabyles, to be punished, because they are French citizens, and all the rest of it. Don’t believe a word of that. If it had been the Tripolitans, we would have acted just the same; we cannot be bothered with decisions of civil courts, which would have satisfied nobody, besides depriving us, probably, of a number of good workmen. There was a little outcry about this, too: that none of the wounded were treated in our hospital, but carried down to the native funduk near the station. ‘The hospital,’ said our director, ‘is for those who are injured in the performance of their duty, and not for bloodthirsty savages.’ That’s sound—that’s military. One cannot afford to be sentimental in this country.”
I asked what could possibly be the reason for such a ferocious outbreak of hostility.
“Long-standing animosities of race,” he said, “and, as determining cause, cherchez la femme”
“But you said that there were no women on the place.”
“Eh bien, cherchez toujours….”
And then it also occurred to me that among the mass of local literature and newspaper files I had perused in his house there was not a single criticism of this affair. I thought it strange, I said.
He smiled.
“Local politics, my friend! We are obliged to keep the Press well under control, you know. Don’t compare Tunisian life with life in England; there is no public opinion here, no idea of fair play. These papers, if they were not subventioned, would print abominations such as no English journalist could conceive; they would alienate our best friends in the long run. The company must take account of things as they are, not as they should be—of Arab savagery, Franco-Tunisian malevolence; of journalistic venality and public credulity. Whoever is not for us is against us. That is why the only papers that dare to criticize our management are those which nobody reads; those, to put it bluntly, which are not worth bribing. For the rest, there is not a writer in the whole country capable of grasping either our aims or our methods; the poor fellows have not had the required education. They only want their mouths stopped.”
“That must be more convenient than libel suits; and more economical as well.”
“Just so. Above all things, we are bound to consider the interests of our shareholders.”