6 PALM TREES 



cases furnishing the most important necessaries for 

 existence. 



The Cocoa-nut is known to us only as an agreeable 

 fruit, and its fibrous husk supplies ns with matting, 

 coir ropes, and stuffing for mattresses ; but in its native 

 countries it serves a hundred purposes ; food and drink 

 and oil are obtained from its fruit, hats and baskets are 

 made of its fibre, huts are covered with its leaves, and 

 its leaf-stalks are applied to a variety of uses. To us 

 the Date is but an agreeable fruit, but to the Arab it is 

 the very staff of life ; men and camels almost live upon 

 it, and on the abundance of the date harvest depends 

 the wealth and almost the existence of many desert 

 tribes. It is truly indigenous to those inhospitable 

 wastes of burning sand, which without it would be un- 

 inhabitable by man. 



A palm tree of Africa, the JEleis guianensis, gives ns 

 oil and candles. It inhabits those parts of the country 

 where the slave trade is carried on, and it is thought by 

 persons best acquainted with the subject that the ex- 

 tension of the trade in palm oil will be the most effec- 

 tual check to that inhuman traffic ; so that a palm tree 

 may be the means of spreading the blessings of civili- 

 zation and humanity among the persecuted negro race. 



Sago is another product of a palm, which is of com- 

 paratively little importance to us, but in the East sup- 

 plies the daily food of thousands. In many parts of the 

 Indian Archipelago it forms almost the entire subsist- 

 ence of the people, taking the place of rice in Asia, corn 

 in Europe, and maize and mandiocca in America, and 



