The French, who were marching on Kairouan last week, are
marching on Kairouan still. It is only a hundred miles from Tunis, and the resistance is not strenuous ; but so bad is the commissariat, so defective is the water supply, and BO heavy is the number of sick, that up to Friday afternoon only a rumour of the occupation of the city had been received. The Generals are afraid that as the three columns converge, the Arabs will make a rush behind them on the coast towns, and massacre all they find. They are, therefore, watching all points, which the Arabs must pass—that is, in practice, all places fairly supplied with wells—and are still ham- pered with want of soldiers. M. Faure, a Deputy specially despatched to inquire, reports that of 35,000 men sent to Tunis 15,000 are sick, and the sickness is not light. The invalids land at Marseilles worn to the bone, and as exhausted as if they had passed through a long campaign. Indeed, the symptoms recorded suggest to laymen something worse than typhoid, an outburst of that "choleraic fever," that mixture of fever and diarrhcea, which has just depopulated Umritsur. M. Camille Pelletan, another Deputy, describes the hatred of the Arabs as indescribable, and while most anxious for a retreat from Tunis, declares that no European would be left alive.
