ry
agreeable; it is not exported, nor made in any way an article of
commerce.

The Jereed, from the existence in it of a few antiquities, such as
pieces of granite and marble, and occasionally a name or a classic
inscription, is proved to have been in the possession of the Romans, and
undoubtedly of the Carthaginians before them, who could have had no
difficulty in holding this flat and exposed country.

The trade and resources of this country consist principally in dates.
The quantity exported to other parts of the Regency, as well as to
foreign countries, where their fine quality is well known, is in round
numbers on an average from three to four thousand quintals per annum.
But in Jereed itself, twenty thousand people live six months of the year
entirely on dates.

"A great number of poles," says Sir Grenville Temple, "are arranged
across the rooms at the height of eight or nine feet from the ground,
and from these are suspended rich and large bunches of dates, which
compose the winter store of the inhabitants; and in one corner of the
room is one or more large earthern jars about six or seven feet high,
also filled with dates pressed close together, and at the bottom of the
jar is a cock, from which is drawn the juice in the form of a thick
luscious syrup. It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more
palatable than this 'sweet of sweets.'"

As we are writing of the country of dates, _par excellence_, I must
needs give some description of the palm, but it will be understood that
the information is Tunisian, or collected in Tunis, and may differ in
some respects from details collected in other parts of North Africa. The
date-palm abounds in the maritime as well as in the inland districts of
North Africa. They are usually propagated from shoots of full grown
trees, which if transplanted and taken care of, will yield in six or
seven years, whilst those raised immediately from the stone require
sixteen years to produce fruit.

The date-palm is male and female, or _dioecious_, and requires
communication, otherwise the fruit is dry and insipid. The age of the
palm, in its greatest vigour, is about thirty years, according to the
Tunisians, after planting, and will continue in vigour for seventy
years, bearing anually fifteen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them
fifteen or twenty pounds in weight; after this long period, they begin
gradually to wither away. But the Saharan Tripolitans will tell you that
the d