dates ripen in September they are
picked, sorted, and then packed in layers by the Arab women and boys who
get paid for this work. Large steamships are loaded down with these boxes
and many of them leave Busrah every year with no other cargo than dates.

[Illustration: DATES GROWING ON A DATE PALM.]

The date tree is very beautiful. I think it is the most beautiful of all
the palms. It is no wonder that a palm branch is the symbol of victory in
the Bible and that the psalmist compares the life of a righteous man to a
palm-tree! How straight and beautifully proportioned is the tall trunk of
the tree. It is an evergreen and is always flourishing winter and summer.
It is a lovely sight to see the huge clusters of ripening fruit,
golden-yellow or reddish-brown, amid the bright green branches. Along the
rivers in the north of Arabia, at Hassa and in Oman, date orchards stretch
for miles and miles as far as you can see. Some of the Arabs have such
large date gardens that they do not know the number of their trees. How do
you suppose they climb the tree? The Arabs have no ladders and indeed it
would be hard to make a ladder long enough to reach to the top of a tall
palm tree. So they use a rope band which goes around the trunk of the tree
and around their waist; it is shoved up little by little and the Arab puts
his bare feet on the rough bark of the tree and so climbs up as easily as
a monkey. The palm tree is perhaps the most useful tree in the world.
Every part of it is used for something or other, and I do not see how
Arabia could get along without palm trees. The fruit is prepared in many
different ways for food. The date stones are used by the Arab children in
playing checkers and other games on the smooth sand. They are also ground
up into a coarse kind of meal and this is good cattle-food. The branches
of the date tree are long and strong and thin just like a piece of rattan.
From them the carpenters make beds, tables, chairs, cradles, bird-cages,
reading-stands, boats, crates, kites and a dozen other useful things. The
leaves are woven into baskets, mats, fans and string. From the bark
excellent fibre makes rope of all sizes. Not a bit of the tree is wasted.
Even the blossoms are used to make a kind of drink and the old musty fruit
that cannot be eaten is made into date syrup or date vinegar.

In one of the pictures you see the fire wood market at Busrah. The long
branches you see are sold for kindling wood and they m