File:Caravan at a well in the desert, by G D Armour.jpg

Identifier: storyofafricaits03brow (find matches)
Title: The story of Africa and its explorers
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Brown, Robert, 1842-1895
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Cassell
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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proposedroad. These circumstances will not only facili-tate the work, but make the territory throughAvhich it runs of marked value in the nearfuture ; for with sand and water one accom-plishes wonders in Africa. As the Arab proverb runs, Plant a stickin the sand, water it, and you will have atree; and the tree which is to the Arab thetree of all trees is the date-palm, .for dates are to him what Avheat is oases and theto Europe, and rice to India and ^^^^-p*^!-China. They are the staple of life, and the chiefwealth and commodity of barter to millions of people, by whom they are exported to everycountry in the Avorld. In eight years after beingplanted the date bears fruit, and sometin^esin favourable situations it returns a revenuewithin an even shorter period. Thus, withtwo hundred trees upon two and a half acresof ground, an income of £40 a year is securedto the capitalist, so that, in reality, a palm-orchard is as profitable to the SaharanArab as the vineyard is to the toiler in the
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I ^.^^©^mts^i CARAVAN AT A WELL IN THE DESERT (p. 99). WELLS IN THE SAHARA. 99 south of France. For if his fruit is slowerin coming, there is no phylloxera to be feared.The date was, no doubt, the lotus of Homer,and on Djerba, an island off the coast ofTunis, which is now generally admitted tohave been the home of the Lotophagi, whosepalm-wine made the sailors of Ulysses forget wife and child and slave, the date growsthickly to this day (p. 100). All that thisbeneficent tree wants is water, and this watercan almost everywhere be obtained by sinkingan artesian well. One of the most striking evidences notonly of the advantages which the nativeAlgerians have derived from the French pos-session of their country, but of the ease withwhich large areas can be rendered productiveby means of artesian wells, is seen in the oasison which the ancient town of Touggourt isbuilt. In 1856 this, like many other oases inthe desert, had become more or less unin-habitable, owing to the old wells having

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