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 BLACKER MEN AND TALLER TREES

grants, stretches of the desert sand thought to be doomed to eternal sterility, and by means of artesian wells they have created new oases which excel the old in the richness and splendor of their vegetation. We make our noonday halt in the fresh coolness of one of these newly-risen isles of green. We see limpid waters well up from the thirsty soil and flow joyously through the tiny canals, carefully arranged for their proper distribution. The palm roots drink their fill and repay the labor of man a hundredfold in clusters of luscious fruit. Sometimes a single cluster will weigh as much as forty pounds, one tree producing in a season two hundred pounds of dates. The Arabs say that the date-palm can attain perfection only when living thus, with its feet bathed in cool waters, its head kissed by the fires of an incandescent sky. We do not wonder that dwellers in the desert love the date-palm. It is as great a blessing to them as the camel. It lives a hundred years; it gives them food and shelter; it gives them the gold of its fruit, which passes