THE COUNTRY OF THE ANT MEN 



369 



town, where the view shown on page 366 

 was had. Except for the houses of El 

 Oued behind us, nothing could be seen 

 in every direction but great ridges of 

 pure sand absolutely bare of vegetation.* 

 Here and there among the dunes the 

 clustered heads of palms projected, look- 

 ing almost black by contrast with the 

 prevailing pale buff of the sand. 



Riding along the crests of the ridges, 

 we could look down into the date gar- 

 dens that nestle in the hollows among 

 them. We found these sunken gardens 

 — "ghitan" is the local name for them — 

 to vary in size from mere pockets con- 

 taining a dozen or a score of trees to 

 large basins holding several hundred. 

 Often the bordering ridges were so high 

 that even the tops of the palms could not 

 be seen until we reached the very brink 

 of the basin. 



The date gardens of the Souf are in 

 constant danger of burial in the sand, 

 for in that country the air is almost con- 

 stantly in motion. During the winter 

 the winds are generally from the north- 

 west or northeast. In summer the pre- 

 vailing wind comes from the southeast. 

 It is not so hot as the occasional sirocco 

 that blows from the south, but is usually 

 more violent and carries more sand. 

 With their steep slopes and knife-edge 

 summits, the dunes that border the ba- 

 sins are peculiarly liable to wind erosion. 

 The slightest puff of air suffices to start 

 a little cloud of fine sand curling from 

 their crests. In gardens that have been 

 abandoned for a few years the trunks of 

 the palms are sometimes entirely sub- 

 merged and only the tufts of leaves pro- 

 trude. 



The blowing is checked in some degree 

 by fences made of palm leaves or low 

 walls of gypsum rock along the crests of 

 the dunes, but after every violent storm 

 the natives are compelled to excavate 

 anew the floors of their gardens. It is 

 a veritable labor of Sisyphus. The sand 

 is carried out in baskets on the backs of 

 men who toil up the slopes of the dunes, 



_ * Professor Massart could discover only 

 eight species of flowering plants growing wild 

 in the Oued Souf. 



sinking almost to their knees at every 

 step. 



In summer, when the fierce rays of 

 the Saharan sun beat down relentlessly 

 and the shade temperature sometimes 

 reaches 120 0 F., as much as possible of 

 this back-breaking work is done at night. 

 During the period when the dates are 

 ripening especially strenuous efforts must 

 be made to keep the sand out, as the 

 low-hanging fruit-clusters spoil quickly 

 if buried. Souf dates fresh from the 

 trees are usually liberally powdered with 

 fine sand, and this coating must be 

 brushed or washed off before they are 

 fit for export. The natives themselves 

 apparently have no objection to sand as 

 a condiment with their dates. 



The gardens have a very different ap- 

 pearance from those of most Algerian 

 and Tunisian oases. The palms are 

 widely spaced, so that sunlight reaches 

 the ground almost everywhere, and the 

 clean sandy floor of the basins is pat- 

 terned with the black shadows of the 

 palm leaves, flecked with patches of 

 bright light. The palms are remarkable 

 for the great thickness of their trunks, 

 which sometimes reach three feet in 

 diameter. Except for an occasional fig 

 tree or pomegranate bush, no other plants 

 are grown at the bottom of the ghitans. 



A peculiarity of the Souf region which 

 at once strikes the traveler familiar with 

 the ordinary oases is the absence of sur- 

 face water. There are no springs nor 

 streams, no canals and ditches for irri- 

 gation and drainage. The rain that falls 

 at rare intervals is quickly sucked up, 

 leaving the surface of the sand as dry 

 as ever an hour or two afterward. But 

 in the hollows among the dunes the 

 water-table is usually only a few feet 

 below the surface of the soil. The coun- 

 try is believed to be underlain by a sub- 

 terranean river ; hence its name "Oued" 

 Souf. 



In planting a date garden in this re- 

 gion, the first step is to sink a well in 

 order to ascertain the depth to ground 

 water at the bottom of the basin. It 

 then remains only to deepen the basin 

 so much as is needful to make the dis- 



