96 DATE SUGAR AND DATE TODDY. 
Pfees in Sindhee, is a most useful plant. Of it are made san- 
dals, baskets, mats, &c., and its moonyah or fibre makes twine 
and ropes in Sindh. It is of extensive use in Affghanistan 
for making cordage; in the same way that the Hemp Palm, 
also a species of Chamerops, was found by Mr. Fortune to be 
employed in Northern China; and as Chamerops humilis, or 
Palmetto, is in the North of Africa and South of Europe, for 
making baskets, brooms, mats, and cordage. Indeed, paper 
and pasteboard are made of its fibres by the French in Algeria. 
The true Date tree (Phenix dactylifera), the Palm tree 
of Scripture, flourishes in comparatively high latitudes, and is 
well known to afford the principal article of food to the natives 
of Arabia and of the North of Africa; while the leaves are 
employed in making mats, baskets, &c.; and at Cairo cordage 
is made of fibres obtained from the footstalks of the leaves, 
Though the tree grows well in India, it does not there produce 
any edible dates ; but Phoenix sylvestris, the Khujjoor of India, 
which closely resembles the former in character, is found in 
every part of that country, as near Madras, to its north in 
Mysore, in Bengal and the North-West provinces up into the 
Punjab. This tree is especially valued in many places, as its 
sap or Palm juice (fari) is either drank fresh from the tree, 
or fermented for distillation, when it yields a common kind of 
spirit or aruk. In Bengal it is valuable as yielding a con- 
siderable quantity of the sugar produced in that province, and 
known as Date sugar. ach tree, “on an average, yields 180 
pints of juice, of which, every twelve pints are boiled down to 
one of goor or jaguri, and four of goor yield one of good pow- 
der sugar; so that the average produce of each tree is about 
seven or eight pounds of sugar annually.” (Roxburgh.) 
The leaves are very generally employed for making mats 
and baskets, and also bags in Bengal. The footstalks of the 
leaves are beaten and twisted into ropes, which are employed 
for drawing water from the wells in Bellary and other places. 
One species of Phenix (P. paludosa), the Hintal of Bengal, 
abounds in the Soonderbunds, while another, P. farinifera, 
common on dry, barren, sandy lands on the coast, and on 
the hilly country between the Ganges and Cape Comorin. 
Its stem abounds in farinaceous matter, which the natives 
