It Would Appear That Tapping The Palm Was Known To The Ancients, For A Cornelian _Intaglio_ Of Roman Antiquity, Has Been Found In The Jereed, Representing A Tree In This State, And The Jars In Which The Juice Was Placed.

Dates are likewise dried in the sun, and reduced into a kind of meal, which will keep for any

Length of time, and which thus becomes a most valuable resource for travellers crossing the deserts, who frequently make it their only food, moistening a handful of it with a little water. Certain preparations are made of the male plant, to which medicinal virtues are attributed; the younger leaves, eaten with salt, vinegar, and oil, make an excellent salad. The heart of the tree, which lies at top between the fruit branches, and weighs from ten to twenty pounds, is eaten only on grand occasions, as those already mentioned, and possesses a delicious flavour between that of a banana and a pine-apple.

The palm, besides these valuable uses to which it is applied, superseding or supplying the place of all other vegetables to the tribes of the Jereed, is, nevertheless, still useful for a great variety of other purposes. The most beautiful baskets, and a hundred other nick-nackery of the wickery sort are made of its branches; ropes are made and vestments wove from the long fibres, and its wood, also, when hardened by age, is used for building. Indeed, we may say, it is the all and everything of the Jereed, and, as it is said of the camel and the desert, _the palm is made for the Jereed, and the Jereed is made for the palm_.

The Mussulmen make out a complete case of piety and superstition in the palm, and pretend that _they are made for the palm, and the palm is made for them_, alleging that, as soon as the Turks conquered Constantinople, the palm raised its graceful flowing head over the domes of the former infidel city, whilst when the Moors evacuated Spain, the palm pined away, and died. "God," adds the pious Mussulman, "has given us the palm; amongst the Christians, it will not grow!" But the poetry of the palm is an inseparable appendage in the North African landscape, and even town scenery. The Moor and the Arab, whose minds are naturally imbued with the great images of nature, so glowingly represented also in the sacred leaves of the Koran, cannot imagine a mosque or the dome-roof of a hermitage, without the dark leaf of the palm overshadowing it; but the serenest, loveliest object on the face of the landscape is _the lonely palm_, either thrown by chance on the brow of some savage hill or planted by design to adorn some sacred spot of mother-earth.

I must still give some other information which I have omitted respecting this extraordinary tree. And, after this, I further refer the reader to a Tour in the Jereed of which some details are given in succeeding pages.

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