THE DATE GARDENS. 19 



or " g:hitaii," as the natives term it, we find it to be a practically level 

 expanse of clean, bare sand, checkered with the bright sunlight and 

 the singularly black shadows that are cast by the trunks and leaves. 

 (PL V, fig. 1.) The palms stand farther apart than in the gardens 

 owned by natives in the Djerid and the Oued Rirh, but are not 

 planted in rows and at equal intervals, as in the French plantations 

 in the latter region. ^Miile native gardens elsewhere in the Sahara 

 are a perfect jungle of various fruit trees, besides garden vegetables, 

 barley, and alfalfa underneath the palms, in the Oued Souf one sees 

 only scattered pomegranate and fig trees, and the groves have an un- 

 familiarly open and bare look. While in other oases the soil is 

 often rich and black and is almost always moist, here it is quite dry 

 on the surface. One misses, too, the irrigation and drainage ditches 

 by which the gardens of the Djerid and the Oued Rirh are cut up into 

 small plats. 



Another feature of the Souf date orchards that immediately at- 

 tracts attention is the enormous thickness of the trunks of the trees. 

 They sometimes attain 3 feet in diameter. (PI. V, fig. 2.) This is 

 probably due to the trees being comparatively far apart, thus receiv- 

 ing plenty of light and air from every side, and is, perhaps, also to 

 some extent a reaction to the butfeting of the sand-laden winds. At 

 any rate, it is a useful character, giving the trees power to withstand 

 the winds that prevail here to a greater extent than in the other 

 oases of the northern Sahara. The relatively small height of the 

 palms, which rarely exceed 30 feet in the Oued Souf, gives them a 

 further advantage in this respect. Frequently, when the base of the 

 trunk has become weakened and there is danger of the tree blowing 

 down, the natives make a " dokana," or low, circular mound of soil, 

 plastered on the outside, to strengthen it. (See PI. V, fig. 1.) 



The palms are almost invariably strong and healthy looking. The 

 foliage is extraordinarily well developed, and the leaves commonly 

 measure 15 to 20 feet long. The yields of fruit, as stated by the 

 natives, are very heavy. 



So unusual are the conditions under which date palms are grown 

 in the Souf country that further details as to the methods used by 

 the natives can not fail to be interesting. 



PLANTING. 



As the date palm is a tree that requires a great deal of water, it 

 can evidently be grown in a dry country without surface irrigation 

 only in places where its roots <^an quickly make their way to ground 

 water. This is exactly the condition obtaining in the Oued Souf, 

 where the palms are artificially watered only during the first suunner 

 after the otlshoots are planted, and ai-e then left to shift for them- 

 selves, so far as water supply is concerned. 



