page 19

In Praise of the Palm.

Dates are delicious—when you eat them at home, a few thousand miles from the land of their birth. In Egypt one soon becomes fed up with them, chiefly, I guess, because the fruit we get here is of poor quality compared to the dates of pleasant memory, Do they export the best of the fruit, or what? The grimy, gritty masses offered for sale in Pharaoh Land are barely recognisable as relations of the dates we relished in Australia. Ripe dates, fresh from the trees, are palatable enough—remember those we got in toe hods of Sinai —but the sticky conglomeration that is transported in dirty rush-bags like camel packs!!!

I have no desire to eat dates over here; but I'll always have time for the trees that produce them. The palm is a picture-tree, with its tall and slender bole, crowned by noble fronds which Goliath might have worn as hat plumes, if he ever donned a lid. And when the ripening fruit, golden-yellow or purple-red, hangs beneath the fronds, like pendants of priceless stones about a Duchess's neck, the palm is enchanting.

A solitary tree is more beautiful than a grove of palms, when it waves beside a minaret or soars above a sheikh's grey tomb. Lacking its palms, the East would be poor indeed, and lose the patronage of artists.

I remember, when convalescing at Montazab, my sorrow when I learned that the palm grove was out of bounds. The temptation of the small boy who sees unguarded apples or pears through a gap in an orchard fence, is as nothing to that which I conquered. I tell you true, I never let my feet stray on to forbidden ground; but there was no order about eyes, and you can bet that mine devoured bushels of ripe dates daily. Mobs of us used to loiter on the pathway bounding the grove; and watch the Arab gardeners gathering in the date harvest. They climbed the trees much as an Australian aborigine climbs a lofty Eiicalypt, using a flattened rope or belt. Reaching the crown, they planted their feet firmly against the trunk of the tree, and, with body supported by the belt, plucked dates for all they were worth, and tossed them into shallow wicker baskets about the size of a sunshade.

I've learned a lot about date palms since I came to the East. Their dinkum name is Phoenix dactylifera. Palestine was known to the Greeks and Romans of old time as Phoenicia, the "Land of Palms". Herod, a bloke you may have heard of, though he's been dead quite a long time, had thousands of palms in his gardens at Jericho. Doubtless he was a gourmand, and suffered pretty often from indigestion through overin-dulgence in dates. And, alas! there were no liver pills in his day. The wise men, who know all about Palestine's past, ask us to believe that, in ancient times, the Jordan Valley was one vast palm grove! I hae ma doots.

The palm is as useful to the Arab as the cocoanut is to the South Sea islander. The tribes have a saying, that the tree has as many uses as there are days in the year. Oriental exaggeration, of course, but the palm really is a mighty good friend to them. To quote Dr. Tristram, who probably knew more about it than I do: "Besides its employment for building purposes, a pleasant drink is made from its juice; wine is distilled from its sap, and a spirit is fermented from it. The crown of barren trees is boiled as a vegetable; sugar is manufactured from the syrup; mats, baskets, and all sorts of utensils are manufactured from its leaves; horses are fed on the fruit-stalks, and camels on the pounded stones." How's that for utility?

Most us have memories of early days in base camps, where couches made of split palm ribs were not unknown. The natives used to sell them by the road-side in Ismailia—and may do so still. You could get a good one for, say, fifteen ackers, and a passable specimen for ten. They were rather clumsy-looking in a bell tent; but they filled the bill in those long huts at Abbassia.

Palestine. "Oreb".