They cultivate seventy different varieties. There are half a million trees
paying taxes--the common variety sixty centimes, the delicate amber-tinted
and translucent _deglat_ twice as much; some trees produce more than fifty
francs a year. But they require incessant care; "palms must eat and
drink," say the Arabs; they drink, in the summer months, a hundred cubic
metres of water apiece!
The export of these dates has been going on for centuries; in 1068 the
geographer Bekri wrote that almost every day a thousand camels, or even
more, leave Tozeur loaded with dates, and the trade will become still
livelier when they have finished building the railway which is to connect
this place with the present terminus Metlaoui. Maybe the Egyptians
introduced the tree into these regions: they cultivated dates as early as
3000 B.C. It is perhaps the earliest fruit of which we have clear record,
save that old apple of 4004 B.C. which gave some trouble to Adam and Eve.
In olden days they sold negro slaves here for two or three quintals of
dates apiece.
The irrigation of these palms is a hair-splitting business.
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