“Next to thee, O fair Gazelle! O Bedowee girl, beloved so well,— Next to the fearless Nejidee Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee— Next to ye both I love the palm With his leaves of beauty and fruit of balm. Next to ye both, I love the tree Whose fluttering shadows wrap us three In love and silence and mystery. Our tribe is many, our poets vie With any under the Arab sky Yet none can sing of the palm but I. The noble minarets that begem Cairo’s citadel diadem Are not so light as his slender stem. He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam glance As the Almehs lift their arms in dance; A slumberous motion, a passionate sigh That works in the cells of the blood like wine. O tree of love, by that love of thine Teach me how I shall soften mine.” Mark Twain compared the palm-tree to “a liberty-pole with a haycock” on top of it. The truth lies between the poet and the “Innocent” traveller, for the date-tree is both a poem and a commercial product; to the Arab mind it is the perfection of beauty and utility. The date palm-tree is found in Syria, Asia Minor, nearly all parts of Arabia and the southern islands of the Mediterranean, but it attains to its greatest perfection in upper Egypt and Mesopotamia.[37] Some idea of the immense importance of this one crop in the wealth of Mesopotamia may be gained from the statement of an old English merchant at Busrah, that “the entire annual date-harvest of the River-country might conservatively be put at 150,000 tons.” The date-tree consists of a single stem or trunk about fifty to eighty feet high, without a branch, and crowned at the summit by a cluster of leaves or “palms” that drop somewhat in the shape of a huge umbrella. Each of these palms has long lanceolate leaves spreading out like a fan from the centre stem which often attains a length of ten or even twelve feet. In a wild state the successive rows of palms, which mark the annual growth of the tree, wither and contract but remain upon the trunk, producing with every breath of wind the creaking sound so often heard in the silence of the desert-night. But where the palms are cultivated the old stems are cut away as fast as they dry and are put to many different uses. The trunk of the palm-tree therefore presents the appearance of scales which enable a man, whose body is held to the tree by a rope noose, to climb to the top with ease and gather the fruit. At a distance, these annual _rings_ of the date-palm appear as a series of diagonal lines dividing the trunk. Palm-trees often reach the age of a hundred years. The date-palm is diœcious; but in Mesopotamia the pistilate-palms far exceed in number the staminate. Marriage of the palms takes place every spring and is a busy time for the husbandman as it is no small task to climb all the trees and sprinkle the pollen. [Illustration: A DATE ORCHARD NEAR BUSRAH.] [Illustration: DATES GROWING ON A DATE-PALM.]