148 THE FLORA OF THE DESERT. 



Such being the phenomena of the Desert, one can understand the 

 dreary picture which Dante paints in his " Inferno," of 



" The plain 

 Which from its bed rejecteth every plant ; '' 



whose soil is 



" Of an arid and thick sand ; " 



and where 



" With a gradual fall 

 Are raining down dilated flakes of fire. 

 As of the snow on Alp, without a wind."* 



CHAPTER V. 



VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT : THE OASES. 



THE Flora of a region where nature provides no genial fertilizing 

 rains, and whose soil is simply a shifting sand, moistened only in 

 certain places by a brackish water, must necessarily be one of extreme 

 poverty. 



It is reduced very nearly, as we have seen, to a few plants of the 

 genus Salsola (salt-wort), flourishing on the borders of the salt pools 

 and lakes. Nevertheless, at a few points, where a certain degree of 

 fixity obtains in the sand, we meet with the thornless bushes or 

 shrubs, the EpJiedra alata and the retama Durioei ; some pistachios 

 (pistada lentiscus and p. terebinthus) ; the "drin" (aristida pungens}, 

 a tall grass, with linear leaves, some seven feet high, to which the 

 camel is very partial; and the "e'zel," a member of the family of 

 Polygonaceae, which botanists class with the allied buckwheat and 

 knot-grasses, and which attains the stature of three to four feet. The 

 latter plant throws out roots, which are generally uncovered, to a 

 distance of twenty to twenty-five feet ; its woody stem spreads in its 

 * Dante, " L' Inferno," c. xiv., Longfellow's Translation. 



