THE DATE GARDENS OF THE JERID 



557 



chinks of the mud-brick walls. This is 

 not our dingy city bird, but a glorified 

 sparrow, who wears a dainty dress of 

 russet and steel blue. Earliest dawn 

 arouses him to cheerful twitterings and 

 occasional snatches of sweet song. The 

 Arabs call this bird the "Bou Habibi," 

 the ''Father of Friends," and believe that 

 he brings good luck to any house in 

 which he makes his nest. He is strictly 

 a town dweller, never venturing into the 

 desert and seldom met with in the gar- 

 dens. Nothing in common has he with 

 such nomads as the linnet and the sky- 

 lark. He will not live in captivity, and 

 attempts to naturalize him no farther 

 away than the city of Tunis have always 

 failed. 



The Ramadan, the Lent of the Mo- 

 hammedans, commenced ere I had been 

 many weeks in the desert. From sunrise 

 to sunset the natives took neither bite nor 

 sup. By the middle of the afternoon the 

 people of Tozer would be faint with hun- 

 ger, and huddled in silent groups at the 

 edge of the town, watching the sun as if 

 conjuring it to hasten its setting. The 

 moment it disappeared, the signal was 

 given by a small cannon installed for the 

 purpose in the market place. 



Instantly all was noise and motion. 

 Fires were lighted everywhere. The air 

 was filled with the grateful odor of cook- 

 ing. Lamps were hung out on the mina- 

 rets and laug^hter and song resounded 

 from every house. Most of the popula- 

 tion devoted the entire night to revelry 

 and were unfit for work in the daytime. 

 The feast of the "Little Bairam" follows 

 the month of fasting, and it was during 

 those three days of childish merrymaking 

 that I left the Jerid for a season. 



Early in February I alighted once 

 more from the ''train mixte" at Metlaoui 

 and rode southward across the desert. It 

 was a brilliant day, the sky blue as tur- 

 quoise, the air soft and warm. Crested 

 desert larks, near relatives of the Euro- 

 pean skylark, rose at every few steps, 

 scattering showers of low plaintive notes. 

 This lark and the little black and white 

 "Comforter of the Camels" were the only 

 birds I saw in the open desert. 



When I reached Tozer the gardens 

 wore a changed aspect. The palms were 

 bare of fruit. Here and there among 

 their rough brown trunks gleamed the 

 tender pink of blossoming apricots. The 

 buds of the fig trees were beginning to 

 disclose the lovely green of their young 

 leaves. Hosts of linnets sang all day 

 long in the palm tops, recalling the choirs 

 of gold finches on May mornings at 

 home. Gardeners, stooping low to their 

 work with the "messah," the short-han- 

 dled hoe, which in oasis agriculture does 

 all the duty of plow and cultivator, w^ere 

 turning over the rich black soil. 



The object of this second visit was to 

 purchase and prepare for shipment the 

 palms that had previously been selected 

 for introduction into the United States. 

 The date, be it said, like the apple and 

 other fruit trees, does not "come true 

 from seed." There is almost infinite di- 

 versity among the seedlings, with small 

 chance that any will bear fruit exactly 

 like that of the parent tree. It is only by 

 taking up and planting the leafy shoots 

 that spring from the base of a palm that 

 the variety can be maintained unchanged. 



The offshoots are fit to be removed and 

 planted when they have begun to form 

 roots of their own. The Jeridis say they 

 are at their best for starting a new tree 

 when their trunks are of the size of a 

 camel's head. The oasis gardener, when 

 about to take up one of these baby palms, 

 first trims back its outer leaves, so that 

 only two feet or so of the thorny stalks 

 remain. He next digs a hole around and 

 beneath it, severing its roots. With a 

 heavy chisel he proceeds to divide it from 

 the parent trunk. The roots are then cut 

 off close to the stump and the offshoot is 

 ready to be planted. 



If it is to be transported to a distance, 

 the base of the little palm is dipped in 

 puddled clay to poultice its wounds. It 

 is then snugly wrapped in several layers, 

 of "lif," a coarse brown-matted fiber that 

 grows around the bases of the leaf stalks 

 of the date. The wrapping of lif is se- 

 cured by cords plaited from the same ma- 

 terial. So wrapped, a healthy offshoot 

 can be shipped without risk to the ends 



