CHAPTER V.

VEGETABLE LIFE IN THE DESERT:--THE OASES.

The _Flora_ of a region where nature provides no genial fertilizing rains, and whose soil is simply a shifting sand, moistened only in certain places by a brackish water, must necessarily be one of extreme poverty.

It is reduced very nearly, as we have seen, to a few plants of the genus _Salsola_ (salt-wort), flourishing on the borders of the salt pools and lakes. Nevertheless, at a few points, where a certain degree of fixity obtains in the sand, we meet with the thornless bushes or shrubs, the _Ephedra alata_ and the _retama Durioei_; some pistachios (_pistacia lentiscus_ and _p. terebinthus_); the "drin" (_aristida pungens_), a tall grass, with linear leaves, some seven feet high, to which the camel is very partial; and the "ézel," a member of the family of Polygonaceæ, which botanists class with the allied buckwheat and knot-grasses, and which attains the stature of three to four feet. The latter plant throws out roots, which are generally uncovered, to a distance of twenty to twenty-five feet; its woody stem spreads in its upper portion into gnarled branches, terminated each by a cluster of green, cylindrical and leafless twigs, which fall during winter. Elsewhere rise the tall trunks of the doum-palms, either isolated or assembled in scanty clumps, under which the traveller obtains with difficulty a modicum of shade, but which are otherwise of no value to him.

In districts where the surface is more broken up, notably in Palestine, on the banks of the Jordan and the Dead Sea; in the Sinaitic Peninsula of Arabia; in the Nubian deserts of Naga, Aredah, and Bahiouda; finally, even in the Sahara, in the "Desert of Erosion," and the table-land region, vegetable life becomes more abundant and more varied, though still but of mediocre interest. However, a curious arbustus, the _Limioniastrum Guyonianum_, shows itself very frequently in these damp localities, where it attains sometimes the dimensions of a tree. Its attenuated leaves are covered with saline efflorescence, and its particles of rosy flowers relieve the monotony of the wilderness. In the permanent salt marshes, or _chotts_, some of the plants are analagous to those formed in the bogs of Languedoc.

Among the plants of the Desert I must not forget the rose of Jericho (_Anastatica hierochuntica_),[67] an annual which contracts itself into a ball, and, blown about by the breeze, seems a dead and withered mass of twigs. But plunge it into water, and it expands, regains the bloom of life, affording a remarkable example of what is called "revivification." The fable respecting it is, that the first time it ever bloomed was on the eve of the Nativity, and that its flower remained open until Easter.

Several other vegetable species grow on the table-lands of the Algerine Sahara, which are found elsewhere under similar conditions of soil and climate. They are thorny shrubs and underwood, almost wholly belonging to the family of Salsolaceæ, or littoral plants, which only thrive on ground impregnated with salt; there are also sub-frutescent plants, partly dried up by the sun. In some places the nakedness of the earth is concealed by the bloom of geraniums and heliotropes. Further, you may notice in the region of the table-lands, the _Melantha punctuata_, a member of the Colchicum tribe, which bears a bouquet of very white flowers grown upon the sand, and surrounded by a crown of ensheathed leaves. Not unworthy of rejoicing the eyes of the most fastidious connoisseurs, it lives and dies unknown in the solitudes of the Sahara.

In the hollows, where the earth preserves some degree of humidity, a fine soft sward prevails, of the most delicious emerald green; two herbs, the Alfa (_stipa tenacissima_) and the White Wormwood (_artemisia alba_),[68] often cover extended areas; the jujube trees clothe themselves in profuse foliage; the coloquinta stretches over the ground its branches loaded with spherical fruit; and the tamarisk, developed into a tree, waves in the wind its tufts of snowy and rose-hued flowers. It is in these meadows that the Arab rears his tent and pastures his flocks under a winter sky. The industrious and sedentary tribes seek in the oases a more benignant nature,--

"The yellow down Bordered with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow;"

and a soil which will repay their toil with liberal harvests. And it is there only, in truth, that vegetation presents a development, a continuity, and sometimes even a variety, which recalls the fortunate countries of the Mediterranean region.

The old geographer, Ptolemæus, compared the Sahara to a panther's skin, sprinkled with black spots on a tawny ground. These spots which, by an effect of contrast, are set off in black on the yellowish tint of the desert, are the far-famed oases, which have furnished our poets and romancists with so many an appropriate image. Ptolemy's comparison is the more accurate because these islands of verdure scattered over the sandy ocean,

"Like precious stones set in a silver sea,"

have, in general, a circular form. We must except, however, the grandest and most beautiful of all, Egypt. That immemorial land of mystery and power is enchased in the Desert region like any other oasis, and only differs in its greater extent and more elongated figure. It stretches along the Nile like a ribbon--

"And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave."

Its length, from Cairo to Assouan, is 450 miles. Its breadth does not exceed nine to twelve miles, except at Cairo, where it measures about eighty miles along the sea-coast, which forms the base of a triangular district known as the Delta ([Greek: delta]) of the Nile. The two other angles are marked by the cities of Pelusium and Alexandria. This long strip of fertility is narrowly shut in between deserts of almost incredible sterility.

A peculiarity worthy of attention, because it is the unique cause of the fertility of Egypt, is, that the valley of the Nile, instead of sloping down on either side to the river-bank, assumes a gently convex form. It is owing to this slight convexity that, at the epoch of the inundation--beginning in June and ending in October--the Nile waters overflow to the right and to the left, rest upon the soil, and there deposit their precious mud. How different the aspects of the country at different seasons of the year! First, the bright sparkling sheets of far-spreading and fertilising water; then the emerald green of the growing crops; lastly, the ripe warm yellow hues of the full harvest. Well might Amrou, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, remark to the Caliph Omar, that, "according to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a _silver_ wave, a verdant _emerald_, and the deep _gold_ of an abundant harvest."

The soil of Egypt is, then, simply an alluvium mixed with the sand which the winds bring from the Desert. Its aspect is that of a rich, well-cultivated land, but bears the impress of a wearisome monotony. You see there neither the dark dense forest, the rolling prairie, nor the undulating woodland; from the shore of the Mediterranean to the tropics you meet everywhere with the same cultivation; the same mud-built villages, with their dirty and winding streets; and ever the same clumps of palms, which would end by becoming tedious if it were not that their elegance of form invests them with an eternal beauty--if a glorious radiance did not gild with "refined gold" everything it touches--if, finally, an after-glow of wondrous loveliness, of which the eye and soul can never weary, which whenever seen suggests some new and subtle emotions, did not terminate every day by a crepuscular pomp of indescribable magnificence.

The Palm-tree is, in Egypt, as in all the oases, the principal element of the arborescent vegetation. But you also meet there with the banana, the gum-tree, the orange, the jujube, the mulberry, the sycamore, and other tall trees, which were planted by command of Mehemet Ali, and have perfectly succeeded. The green banks of the river are diversified by coppices of acacias and tamarisks. In the Fayoum district bloom impervious hedges of cactus, and plantations of roses for the production of rosewater. Cereals yield four crops a-year; flax, hemp, indigo, cotton, the sugar-cane, prosper admirably; and under a climate where ice, snow, and hail are unknown, not a month but has its burden of flowers and fruits. Abundant crops of vegetables are raised, even as in those days when the Israelites in the wilderness bewailed "the cucumbers and the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlics" of Egypt.

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M. Charles Martins classes the Oases of the Sahara under three heads, corresponding to his three sub-regions.[69]

The oasis of the Table Lands is watered by a stream or a copious spring. That of the valleys of Erosion, by natural or artificial Artesian wells. That of the Sandy Desert wants water. In the latter the palm-trees are planted in conical cavities hollowed by the hand of man, that their roots may strike down to the subterranean reservoir which is to nourish them.

Every oasis is composed, in the main, of date-palms, which seem to form a continuous forest; but in reality they are planted in rows, and in gardens separated from one another by walls of earth, which are pierced with an aperture to admit of the entrance of the irrigating rill into the enclosed square. The soil employed in the construction of the walls is removed from the paths, which are consequently below the surface, and can be employed for a double purpose; they facilitate circulation in the oases, and the waters, after having refreshed the gardens and revived the soil, discharge themselves into these hollow ways, whence they flow towards the chotts, or stagnate in swamps, which the lethargic Moslem never thinks of draining. From such hotbeds of infection issues the monster Fever every year, and slays its hundreds.

In case of need, every oasis becomes a fortress. Each "square of flowery ground" is a redoubt; the assailant's bullet lodges in the earth wall, or if it pierces through, forms a new loophole in which the Arab plants his gun to aim at his enemy. The villages themselves are encircled with walls, flanked by towers, which remind the spectator of the picturesque fortifications of mediæval times.

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The Date-Palm (_Phoenix dactylifera_) is _the_ tree of the Desert; there only will its fruits ripen; without it, the Desert would be uninhabitable and uninhabited. Arab poesy represents it as a living being, created by God on the sixth day, at the same time as man. To express under what conditions it prospers, the imagination of the Saharan exaggerates the true, to render it the more palpable. "This king of the oasis," he says, "must plunge his feet in the water and raise his head in the fire of heaven." Science, to a certain extent, confirms this seeming hyperbole; for it needs 5100° of heat accumulated during eight months for the date to ripen its fruit perfectly. If the sum of heat be less, the fruits set, but they do not grow to their full dimensions, remain bitter to the taste, and fail in the sugar and farina, which form their nutritive properties.

These conditions are realized in the climate of the Sahara. The mean temperature of the year averages from sixty-eight to seventy-six degrees, according to the locality. The heat commences in April, and does not cease until October. The thermometer seldom sinks in the cold season more than two degrees below zero, and the date can endure six degrees below zero.

Rain, as already stated, is rare in the Sahara; it falls in winter, and stimulates into a newly awakened life the vegetation which has been drained of vigour by a summer sun. Sometimes they descend in torrents, but these torrents, like our summer showers, are of briefest duration. At Tongourt and Ouraegla whole years pass by without a drop of rain. Does not the reader understand, then, the gratefulness of the Arabs towards a tree which can derive its nourishment from the burning sand, the scarcely less burning airs of heaven, and the brackish waters beneath the soil which are fatal to all other kinds of vegetation--which retains its verdure fresh in the glare of a pitiless sun--which resists successfully the winds that bow to the ground its flexible stem--which provides him with beams and coverings for his tent, cordage for the harness of his horses and camels, fruit to satisfy his hunger and wine to quench his thirst--which is, moreover, "a thing of beauty," and gladsome to the eye?

"Those groups of lovely date-trees bending Languidly their leaf-crowned heads, Like youthful maids, when sleep descending, Warns them to their silken beds."[70]

What the vine is to the Italian, the oak to the Englishman, the cocoa-nut tree to the Polynesian, is the date-palm to the Arab. And more--far more. This single tree has peopled the Desert. A civilization, rudimentary compared with that of the West, sufficiently advanced if you contrast it with that of the Malay or the South Sea Islander, finds in it its standing-point, its centre, its support. And without it the tribes of the Sahara would cease to be.[71]

The wealth of an oasis is computed by the number of its palm trees. All of them, however, are not fruitful; for the date is dioecious. It has its males and its females. The males have flowers furnished with stamens only, and form a closed-up, folded, grape-like ball, previous to the ripening of the pollen in an envelope called the spathe. The females, on the contrary, bear clusters of fruit also wrapped up in a spathe, but incapable of development until fecundated by the pollen or dust of the stamens. To multiply the date-trees, the Arabs do not sow the kernels of the fruits, though they germinate with extreme facility, for it is impossible to tell beforehand of what sex the tree will be; they prefer, therefore, to detach a slip from the trunk of a female tree, and this becomes fruitful at the expiry of eight years.

The male trees blossom, says Mr. Tristram,[72] in the month of March, and about the same time the case containing the female buds begins to open. To impregnate these, a bunch of male flowers is carefully inserted and fastened in the calyx. Towards the beginning of July, when the fruit begins to swell, the bunches are tied to the neighbouring branches.

The dates are ripe in October, at which time any premature rain is fatal to the crop, though the _roots_ require a daily watering. Not less injurious are east winds in March and April. The tree when it begins to bear is about seven feet high. Each year the lowest ring of leaves falls off, so that the age of a palm may be roughly computed from the notches on its stem. Its fruit begins to decline after a century, and the tree is then cut down for building purposes; but it will live for at least a couple of hundred years. Some trees produce as many as twenty bunches, but the average in a favourable season is from eight to ten bunches, each weighing from twelve to twenty pounds. Before the dates ripen, each proprietor is bound to set apart one tree in his garden, whose fruit is consecrated for the service of the mosque and the use of the poor.

From the juice of the date the Arab obtains a sweet fermented liquor, called "laguni," of which he is inordinately fond. He makes an incision in the top of the tree, taking care to strike home to the centre. A funnel is attached, by which the sap flows into a vessel at the rate of about three quarts every morning for ten to sixteen days. The incision requires to be opened afresh daily.

The cabbage, or soft pith and young unfolded leaves at the summit of the stem, in taste approaching the chestnut, is also eaten, but only when the tree has fallen or been felled, as the loss of its crown invariably destroys it.

There are fifteen varieties of dates, of which the _dghetnour_ is considered the best for keeping, and three other kinds are preferred fresh.

The crest of the full-grown trees rises about fifty feet above the ground. The air circulates freely under the leafy canopy formed by their interlacing branches, but the sun's rays do not penetrate. Shade, air, and water--these three elements permit the most varied cultivation in the palm-gardens, despite the scorching heats of summer. The fruit trees which flourish are the fig, the pomegranate, the apricot; less frequently, the vine and the olive; still more rarely, the peach, the pear, and the orange. Vegetables are commonly cultivated during winter; such as turnips, cabbages, onions, carrots, beans, and pimento (_Capsicum annuum_), an indispensable condiment for those Arab sauces (_merga_) destined to stimulate the digestive energies of a people who abstain from alcoholic liquors. You may also remark pumpkins, gourds, and water-melons; small squares of lucerne, which yield as many as eight crops yearly; the henna (_Lawsonia inermis_), which tints with yellow the nails of the Arab women; and tobacco (_Nicotiana rustica_), cultivated most largely in the Souf. In winter you may refresh your eyes in the clearings of the oasis with verdurous fields, green with barleys and early wheats springing vigorously from the earth. The cultivation of cotton, though considerably stimulated by the failure of the usual supply from the Southern States of America, is still in its infancy. There can be little doubt, however, that with improved methods of irrigation it will be considerably and successfully developed.

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The oases of the table-land region, fertilized, as we have already seen, by the streams of fresh water which flow down from the mountains and spread abroad in natural or artificial channels, are much the most fertile, and also the most healthy. They possess, moreover, the inestimable advantage of being but a short distance from the Mediterranean region, in a country less arid and less desolate than the remainder of the Desert. I may name, among these oases, those of El-Kantara, Biskra, and El-Outaïa, which form a sort of chaplet, and are watered by the same river.

The oasis of El-Kantara is the first we encounter on quitting the Mediterranean region to penetrate into the Sahara through the gloomy and precipitous ravine entitled "The Mouth of the Desert." It is situated 1800 feet above the sea-level. Its length is 5000 yards. Fournel, the first geologist who examined it (in 1864), christened it the Hyères of the Sahara. Its temperature is cool and equable, and does but just suffice to enable the dates to ripen. It possesses upwards of 76,000 palm-trees, sheltering under their leafy shadow legions of apricots, pomegranates, and fig-trees. In the centre of this pleasant and fruitful shade houses of brick, with flat roofs and narrow loop-holed windows, surround a square tower. The ancient watch-towers have fallen into decay. Before France took under its "protection" the peaceful Berbers who cultivate the oasis, these towers were useful as posts of observation whence to descry the approach of the wandering Arabs, who resort in summer to the pastures of the mountains, and in winter to those of the Sahara.

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As a type of the oasis of the Desert of Erosion, let us take that of Ouargla, the last which submitted to the French in South Algeria.

It is situated in a profound hollow. In form it is elliptical, with its major axis measuring about five thousand yards, and its minor about three thousand. The palms are planted at the rate of ten to eleven hundred a hectare (two acres); they attain to extraordinary dimensions, and their dense foliage over-arches a small world of fruit trees. Outside the gardens grow some wild date-palms, which yield a smaller crop, but whose fruit is much more savoury. Two avenues, or clearings, bisecting the forest from north to south, lead to the _q'sour_, or village, of Ouargla. This _q'sour_, like every other, is built of sun-dried earth, and surrounded by a circular rampart in very bad condition, six to thirteen feet in height, and four and a-half feet thick at the base. It is flanked with loop-holed towers, and encircled externally by a muddy moat, crossed by six causeways leading to as many gates.

Before some of these gates are planted the small entrenched camps, wherein the Arab shepherds of the neighbourhood take refuge with their flocks what time the oasis is menaced by an enemy.

The _q'sour_ of Ouargla is divided into three quarters, inhabited by three tribes, who do not live always on the most friendly terms. In appearance it resembles the Saharan _q'sours_, which have all a strong family likeness; there are the mosque, and the governor's residence, and the open market-place, and the narrow squalid streets, often obstructed by heaps of unclean and unsavoury rubbish; and the low dull houses, pierced with holes instead of windows, which have seldom any shutters; so that the traveller, when he penetrates into these dismal quarters, is startled by the contrast which they present to the picture of enchanted palaces full of shade, perfume, and freshness, drawn by his eager imagination. Our poets and romancists have much to answer for. Their ideal East is very different from that actual East, in all its heat, and noisomeness, and glare, which the voyager finds around him, and which seems to have lost much of its beauty along with its grandeur and its power. Pleasant to the fancy is the palm-grove, pleasant the garden with its golden and purple fruitage, but the warm (and often mineral) waters which irrigate, or rather inundate the soil, exhale the most deleterious emanations, so that the unfortunate inhabitants are constantly decimated by fever, blinded by ophthalmic disease, and devoured by insects!

We have already seen that the Desert of Erosion is watered by means of artesian wells, natural or artificial. The latter have been known to the peoples of the Sahara from the remotest antiquity; but the implements and the methods employed to bore or preserve them were, as the reader will suppose, very rude and unsatisfactory. The sides of the well are only supported by a framework of palm-wood, which decays very quickly; the well gets choked; divers descend with baskets to clear away the sand; but after awhile the evil exceeds their power of remedying it. "Then, for want of water," says M. Martins, "the palms grow sick and perish; the villages are emptied of their population; the oasis contracts its boundaries, and gradually disappears. The Desert resumes possession of the demesne which the labour of man had temporarily won for it." Fortunately, in the track of the French army have trodden the French engineers, with all the wonderful apparatus that Science places at their disposal, and in numerous places they have excavated true artesian wells, similar to those which supply some of our great towns. And thus many oases which were on the point of perishing have been saved, others have been created, and the conquest of the Desert by modern industry is henceforth no more than a question of time.

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The oases of the Sandy Desert, as I have said, are not watered. They only possess such wells as suffice, more or less, for the needs of the poor cultivators. As for the palms, and other nutritive vegetables, they are planted at the bottom of conical excavations some eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty feet in depth; so that at a short distance you only see their crests rising above the sandy soil like large tufts of herbage. The slopes around these hollow gardens are stayed indifferently well by a matting of palm leaves. The well itself is placed in the centre, and its depth does not exceed five-and-twenty feet. Nothing can be more precarious than these oases, which a gust of wind may bury under an avalanche of sand. Yet the men are cleaner in their person, neater in attire, and livelier in spirit--the women are less wretched and less oppressed--and the houses better built and better provided than in the great _q'sours_ of the upper regions. In the Souf, the sandy region of the Eastern Sahara, the industrious inhabitants of these oases remain at peace in the midst of the tumults and insurrections of their turbulent neighbours, and appear fully sensible of the advantages they undoubtedly derive from the firm and impartial rule of the French Government.