In short, my plan was out of the question; utterly out of the question. The road-a mere track-was over sixty kilometres in length and positively unsafe on a wintry night; besides, the land lay 800 metres in height, and a traveller would be frozen to death. I must go as far as Majen, a few stations beyond Feriana; sleep there in an Arab funduk (caravanserai), and thank my stars if I found any one willing to supply me with a beast for the journey onward next morning. There are practically no tourists along this line, he explained, and consequently no accommodation for them; the towns that one sees so beautifully marked on the map are railway stations-that and nothing more; and as to the broad highways crossing the southern parts of Tunisia in various directions-well, they simply don't exist, voila "