Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/402

 824 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. an annual income of about £600,000, which is about four times more than the present revenue derived from this source. In the Algerian Sahara the date-palm forms the great resource of the inhabi- tants. But for this wonderful plant, which yields them half their nutriment and enables them to procure the other half, the Saharian populations could not exist in this sand-encircled region. Every tree is tended like a member of the family : watered, cleansed, regarded as a being endowed with soul and sentiment, showing its gratitude for fostering care by an abundant crop of fruit, its anger at neglect by a scanty harvest. •' When a living palm is felled," says the legend, " it cries like a child, and its murderers are moved to pity." Till recently throughout all Mussulman lands, as still in I^farocco, international rigTit, which tolerated homicide, never allowed a palm to be touched. In southern Algeria the palm groves comprise altogether about three million plants, yielding a revenue of considerably over £2,000,000. In some of the oases, and especially in the Mzab Valley, a single plant is sometimes valued as high as £32. As in the Roman period, the chief crops in the Tell are still cereals, such as hard wheat, barley, beshna or millet, maize, and, since the French occupation, rye, oats, and soft wheat. In good seasons the yield suffices for the supply of men and animals, leaving some barley, oats, and hard wheat for exportation. In ordinary years the cereals represent one-fifth of all the exports from Algeria. The gardens along the seaboard also forward considerable quantities of oranges, lemons, bananas, and other fruits ; and this trade in fruit, which might be greatly developed, already supports a large commercial movement with the mother country. Of economic plants, tobacco is much favoured by the new settlers, although many planters have in recent years exchanged it for viniculture. Cotton also came into favour during the American war, but is now seen only in a few districts of the Tell and in the Wed Righ, where some Sudanese varieties are grown, whose fibre resembles that of the United States " long silk." Alfa and Viniculture — Stock Farming. Far more important than all these cultivated plants is the alfa, or half a, grass, which grows wild on the plateaux, and of which a financial company has acquired the monopoly over a space of some 750,000 acres south of Saida. The fibre of the alfa, which yields a yearly revenue of from £600,000 to £800,000, is employed chiefly in the manufacture of paper. The esparto grass of the Spanish province of Murcia having become almost completely exhausted, the English dealers, who are the chief purchasers of these fibres, turned their attention to the Algerian alfa. Since the first cargo shipped at the port of Oran in 1862, the trade has acquired an enormous development throughout the plateaux. But extensive tracts have already lK?en exhausted, and speculators have now begun to replace the alfa by the dis, another fibrous plant long employed by the Arabs for making canvas sacks and cordage. •