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National Geographic : 1910 Jul
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE CAMEL WITH LOAD OF DATE OFFSHOOTS PRESENTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE OASES TO THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT It required 90 camels to carry all the offshoots across the desert to the railway marching along dejectedly, for not only were their shoulders still aching from the beating of the night before, but they would have to pay a fine of one franc for each kilometer traveled by the spahi who administered the punishment. Such, El Hachemi assured me, was the law of the country. At noon I came up with the main cara van, which was traveling in very open order. The camels were walking side by side and browsing as they went, while the drivers plodded afoot through the sand. The sheik or leader was a tall, well-set-up Soudanese, with skin as black as ebony. But most of the drivers were natives of the Souf oases, who have al most a monopoly of this vocation in the Algerian and Tunisian Sahara. Their sturdy limbs and dark, smiling faces offer a striking contrast to the lank forms and sullen, anaemic visages of the stay-at home residents of the Jerid. When the sun dipped below the hori zon that afternoon the last camel had been unloaded at Metlaoui, and the palms were stowed away in the freight cars that waited to carry them to the coast. The drivers from El Hamma, who had made remarkable speed at the last, went away rejoicing when they learned that their fine would be remitted. A few days af terward I had the pleasure of watching the good ship Tafna as she steamed out of the harbor of Sfax with the cargo of date offshoots snugly reposing under tar paulins on her deck. Ten weeks passed by, and the little trees reached their journey's end in the new oases of the American Sahara. They were soon safe in the ground, alongside their cousins from the banks of the Nile and from Muscat and far-away Bagdad. With the blazing sky of the desert once more above them and the life-giving wa ter about their feet, they are growing and ripening their fruits as if there were no 8,ooo miles of land and sea between them and the mother palms of the Jerid. 566
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