DATES AND THEIR NATIVE HOME 
subsisting almost entirely upon dates. Others nearer the 
coast send out their product by camel caravan. At such 
ports as Bassorah and Masket thirty thousand to forty 
thousand tons of dates accumulate and are shipped to 
foreign markets each year. 
From the region of the Persian Gulf the date tree 
spread westward. The Egyptians came to cultivate it. 
It spread to the oases of the Sahara desert, where condi¬ 
tions exist that are very similar to those in Arabia. There 
it proved a godsend to the sons of the desert. Tall date 
trees hundreds of years old form a semi-shade, in which 
such other tropical fruits as figs may be grown. It is a 
strange world that dwells in these hot lands, shaded and 
fed by this picturesque palm. 
The date palm will grow much farther north, but its 
fruit will ripen only in the presence of intense and long- 
continued heat. The trees are grown for ornamental pur¬ 
poses throughout much of Europe and the United States, 
but they bear no fruit. They furnish wisps for button¬ 
holes on Palm Sunday. 
Down in the Southwest, however, in Arizona and the 
southern California desert country, rainless regions ex¬ 
ist, in which the fruit can be brought to maturity. Men 
of science from the United States have combed the world 
for the best date trees, have established them in these 
regions, and have developed varieties that are superior to 
those which grow where dates originated. The United 
States today produces better dates than Arabia or Egypt. 
59 
