GARDENS AMONG THE PALMS. 419 



are a really delicious fruit and keep well when dried in the 

 sun : they have been put to a variety of uses, even the 

 stones when crushed serving as food for camels. The 

 stones have also been used as a substitute for coffee, 

 and large quantities have of late years been roasted, 

 and sold in England as "Date Coffee," * for the sale 

 of which a company has lately been started in London. 



The beauty of the gardens of fruits and flowering 

 plants usually cultivated beneath these trees, has been 

 already alluded to ; the dense canopy of dark green plume- 

 like leaves with which the date tree is crowned, prevents 

 the scorching rays of the sun from penetrating in their 

 full intensity to the earth below, so that when rows of 

 these trees are closely planted, as they generally are, 

 the most delicious coolness (comparatively^ that is, of 

 course), may, in many of the oases where they form 

 a continuous forest, be enjoyed beneath their shade. 

 The gardens are merely separated by walls of earth, 

 which are pierced with apertures, to admit the transit 

 of water: in these shady recesses many of our Euro- 

 pean fruits and vegetables grow and flourish ; of the 

 latter turnips, carrots, cabbages, beans, onions, capsi- 

 cums, tomatoes, pumpkins, gourds, and melons, may be 

 mentioned, f 



A description full of dramatic power is given of one 

 of these desert gardens in the sixth sura of the Koran, 

 which undoubtedly forms one of its finest passages, 

 well worthy of insertion here. It runs as follows: 



" Verily, it is God that causeth the seed corn, and the date 



* Smith's Dictionary of Economic Plants, 1882, p. 151. 



f Good examples of these Arab gardens are to be seen near Tripoli, 

 which lies on the very edge of the desert, and also near other towns 

 in the French Tunisian possessions along the "West coast of the Gulf 

 of Gabes. 



