RÂM ALLÂH MAN AND A BASKET OF OLIVES
STRETCH OF OLIVE TREES ON ROAD TO AYN SÎNYÂ
The terrace is a thing of great utility to the hill farmer of Palestine. To the traveler it is a thing of beauty as it climbs the hills with its artistically irregular breaks in what would be otherwise a rather monotonous slope. But with terraces and some water the earth is caught and filled with many possibilities of fruit and vegetables. A hill well terraced and well watered looks like a hanging garden. Much of the farming in Judea is on the sides of hills. The little iron-shod wooden plow is run scratching along the terraces. Sometimes one of the oxen will be on a lower level than the other. To go forward without slipping down the hillside is not easy. What cannot be plowed is dug up with the pickax, and wheat or barley will find lodgment in every pocket of soil. As all the reaping is done by hand it offers no especial difficulty, and the monotony of which some people complain on prairie land is never experienced on such a pitched-roof farm. Even where the made terrace is allowed to decay there are many natural terraces where the horizontal layers outcrop from the hillsides. Were the country well kept up, all these terraces would be guarded artificially, for in time a natural terrace loses its protecting edge and the soil and rain come down cascading over the hill stairs until the bed of the stream is reached.
Of food trees the olive is probably the most valuable. It takes ten or fifteen years to bring it to the state of bearing much fruit, but it may go on bearing heavy crops for a century. The oil is freely used in cooking, for salads, for lighting and for anointing. A hard-pressed peasant will occasionally yield to the temptation to cut down some of his olive-trees, selling the finest pieces of wood to the makers of the olive-wood articles[[46]] which are prized by tourists, and disposing of the rest as fire-wood.[[47]] A hundredweight of such fire-wood sells for from twelve to twenty-five cents, according to the season and the market, the city price being considerably higher than the country price. A good olive-orchard is a sure source of income, unless the taxes are too harshly and arbitrarily imposed. The cutting them down is a real calamity to the country, but it is done only too frequently in a poor year to avoid taxes. The trunk of an aged olive-tree attains a great girth and a gnarled, knobby look. Sometimes a large part of one of these huge trunks will be quite hollowed out by decay, in which case the peasants often fill up the cavities with a core of stones. The tree goes on bearing with chief dependence on the state of the bark for its healthy condition. The heavy crops and light crops follow each other in somewhat the same relation as the apple crops in our New England country. Women and children gather up those olive berries that fall to the ground early in the season. Whenever it is desired to gather the crop of a tree or orchard the men beat the branches with very long light poles and the women and the children pick up the fallen fruit from the ground. Of course this is a poor way to gather the best olives, but inasmuch as the chief use of the olive in Palestine is to express the oil, it makes less difference. The berries do not ordinarily grow to the larger sizes so often seen in our markets. Perhaps one of the very handsomest stretches of olive-orchards in the East is at what is called the Ṣaḥrâ, near Beirut, between that city and Shwayfât. Other smaller but excellent orchards are to be seen between Bethlehem and Bayt Jâlâ, at Mâr Elyâs, Bîr ez-Zayt and to the south of eṭ-Ṭayyibeh.
The fig in Judea ripens in August and its fruit may be had for several months, as new fruit keeps maturing. There are several varieties of this valuable tree. A few ripe figs are often found as early as June and are luxuries.[[48]] The natives sometimes hasten the ripening of a few early figs by touching the ends with honey. The natives declare that the fig-tree will not thrive near houses but will become wormy. The action of the milk of fig branches and leaves on the tissues of the eyes, lips and mouth is very disagreeable, sometimes making them very sore. The eyes of children in the fig season are often very repulsive. For this reason the people prefer other shade, if obtainable, than that of fig-trees. Most fig-trees are small, about the size of an ordinary plum-tree, but the large green varieties may grow to a considerable size. When small fig-trees have sent up two pliable trunk-shoots these are usually twisted together to strengthen each other. They look like a suggestion of that ugly taste in architecture that delighted in twisted columns. The appearance of the branches of a leafless fig-tree is not unlike that of the horse-chestnut in winter time. Large quantities of the black figs and some of the white figs are dried in the orchards, being spread out on the ground under the strong sun-rays.
The pomegranate-tree looks more like an unkempt shrub. The beautiful red bell-like blossoms are very attractive. Lemons and oranges grown for profit are often small trees. The sour marmalade orange grows into a larger, statelier tree.
At Urṭâs, near Solomon’s Pools, the largest and most beautifully colored apricots grow. Peaches, plums, quinces and almonds are plentiful, and the cherry, mulberry and walnut thrive.
Concerning trees about the shrines and wilys and all the so-called sacred trees there will be a more appropriate place to speak later on.
In a land where fruit grows and flourishes one may have far less fruit than in some fruitless city in a colder climate but favored with ample facilities for transportation. Right here within a few miles of the finest orange groves in the land, near the vineyards, under the olive and fig-trees, with peaches, pomegranates, apricots and plums, we probably find shorter seasons for each than is the case in some Anglo-Saxon city of the middle temperatures. Here fruit will be much cheaper while it lasts, and some fruits, which must be found near the trees, if enjoyed at all, such as the fig, will be available nowhere else as here. The peach, plum, orange, apricot and grape go to the London, Liverpool, New York, Chicago and Boston markets from the place producing the earliest crops, and the trains and steamships continue bringing from various markets as the season shifts from one garden spot to another. But right here, under this particular orange-tree or by this grape-vine, we usually wait for the ripening of the local crop, knowing that lack of carrying facilities forbids us eating from a tree that yields earlier fruit some hundred miles away, or from a tree that yields when our tree is bare. And so while people who never saw an orange-tree may buy oranges ten months in the year, we who have an orange-tree in sight may have to be content with the orange season of our district. But they will be cheap while they last. Fifty cents is a very ordinary price for a hundred of the best oranges, and one dollar a hundred is pretty dear.