Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/417

 FLORA OF THE OASES. 887 scopes is due especially to the prevailing African vegetation, here represented by the tarfa {^tamaris Nihtica), the dute, and sycamore. The diim-palrn, which, however, nowhere grows spontaneouHly in Egypt, is met in the gardens only above Esneh. Formerly the Fayum bore the name of " Sycamore Land ; " and one of the ancient appellations of Egypt itself was " Land of the Bek Tree," probably a species of palm. All the villages have still their avenues of palms encircling the walls, or fring- ing the banks of the canals, and everywhere the people gather in the evening beneath the shade of the broad-branching sycamore. The sycamore, a very ditrcrent species from the plant known by that name in Europe, was formerly far* more common in Egypt than at present. Its wood, supposed to be "incorruptible," was employed in the manufacture of costly furniture, and especially of the cofBns placed in the sepulchral chambers. After a lapse of three thousand years, the boards recovered from these tombs still retain their finnncss and delicacy of texture, thanks to the excessive dryness of the atmosphere. The fruit of the sycamore was regarded by the ancients as one of the choicest, whence the saying that " the man who had once tasted it could not frfil to return to Egj'pt." On this account it was customary on setting out for foreign lands to eat of these figs, in order thereby to secure the traveller's return to the Nilotic plains. Now, however, the fruit of the Egj'ptian sycamore is regarded as fit food only for the ass. Has its flavour deteriorated, or has the taste of the Egyptians themselves undergone a change since those times P But if some species would seem to have been modified, others are known to have entirely disappeared. The dug-out tree stems in which the dead were laid during the eleventh djTiasty belong to varieties which are now met only in Sudan. The fruit of the diim-palm, which is no longer found north of Upper Egj'pt, and that of the argun, now confined to Nubia, occur in great abundance in the old Egyptian burial-places. And what has become of the papyrus, whose name is associated more intimately than any other with Egj'ptian civilisation itself? Salt, Drovetti, Reynier, Minutoli, have discovered it in the neighbourhood of Damietta ; but it is no longer found in any other part of Egj-pt. Thus it has all but disap- peared from its original home, while still flourishing in Syria and in Sicily, whither it was introduced from the Nile Valley. Where also are the masses of pink lotus, with its broad-sprcuding leaves, beneath which the people of Alexandria, in the time of Strabo, floated un the still waters, enjoying the cool zephyrs and perfume of the flowers ? The white lotus, formerly diffused throughout the whole land, is no longer met beyond the limits of the delta. Reeds and the pink epilobium are now the plants most frequently occurring on the shores of the lakes and meres in Lower Egypt. Flora of the Oases. The flora of the oaaes, separated from that of the Nile Valley for an unknown cycle of ages, presents some remarkable features. Thus while the Egj'ptian 22— AP.