Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/38

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not only for the capture of the coast cities, the subjugation of the barbarous tribes of the mountains and the desert, but in that short space of time they have built cities of European aspect, extended everywhere magnificent roads marvelously engineered, and created a railway system which, although still incomplete, traverses the province from Tunis to the frontier of Morocco, and extends three long branches far southward toward the Sudan, Timbuktu, and Senegal.

THE THEATER

The people have gained much through the change in government. Under the French the native enjoys rights and privileges of which he never even dreamed when deys and beys and pashas, appointed by the Turkish sultan or raised to supreme authority by the power of the local troops or Janizaries, ruled and mercilessly robbed him. The poor Arab owes a debt of gratitude to the last of those tyrant deys, the potentate who, after misruling the land for many years, became unintentionally instrumental in bringing on the war which assured his own destruction and the welfare of his