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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



p- "• — — — ~ ■■ " ' 1 



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CAMKL WITH I^OAD Ol' DATli OFFSHOOTS PRFSFNTFD BY THK PEOPI.E; OF THE) OASES 

 TO THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT 



It required 90 camels to carry all the offshoots across the desert to the railway 



marching along dejectedly, for not only 

 were their shoulders still aching from the 

 beating of the night before, but they 

 would have to pay a fine of one franc 

 for each kilometer traveled by the spahi 

 who administered the punishment. Such, 

 El Hachemi assured me, was the law of 

 the coimtry. 



At noon I came up with the main cara- 

 van, which was traveling in very open 

 order. The camels were walking side by 

 side and browsing as they went, while 

 the drivers plodded afoot through the 

 sand. The sheik or leader was a tall, 

 well-set-up Soudanese, with skin as black 

 as ebony. But most of the drivers were 

 natives of the Souf oases, who have al- 

 most a monopoly of this vocation in the 

 Algerian and Tunisian Sahara. Their 

 sturdy limbs and dark, smiling faces 

 offer a striking contrast to the lank forms 

 and sullen, anaemic visages of the stay-at- 

 home residents of the Jerid. 



When the sun dipped below the hori- 

 zon that afternoon the last camel had 



been unloaded at Metlaoui, and the palms 

 were stowed away in the freight cars that 

 waited to carry them to the coast. The 

 drivers from El Hamma, who had made 

 remarkable speed at the last, went away 

 rejoicing when they learned that their 

 fine would be remitted. A few days af- 

 terward I had the pleasure of watching 

 the good ship Tafna as she steamed out 

 of the harbor of Sfax with the cargo of 

 date offshoots snugly reposing under tar- 

 paulins on her deck. 



Ten weeks passed by, and the little 

 trees reached their journey's end in the 

 new oases of the American Sahara. They 

 were soon safe in the ground, alongside 

 their cousins from the banks of the Nile 

 and from Muscat and far-away Bagdad. 



With the blazing sky of the desert once 

 more above them and the life-giving wa- 

 ter about their feet, they are growing and 

 ripening their fruits as if there were no 

 8,000 miles of land and sea between them 

 and the mother palms of the Jerid. 



