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.
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.
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.