The Date Palm, however, requires a little respectful consideration. If one enters a thick grove and looks upwards, the idea of Egyptian architecture as distinguished from Gothic and others is at once visible. It has quite the same effect as the great hall of columns near Luxor. The numerous stems ending in the crown at the top where the leaves spring off was quite clearly in the minds of the architect at Karnak and other temples. It goes on bearing its fruits for some two hundred years, and begins to yield when only seven years old. It revels in a hot, dry climate with its roots in water, and seems to require scarcely any care in cultivation. Yet during the first few years of its life it is necessary to water the seedling. A single tree may give eight to ten bunches of dates worth about six shillings. Generally it is reproduced by the suckers which spring out from the base of the tree. Dates make a very excellent food, not merely pleasant but both wholesome and nutritious. Sometimes toddy is made by fermenting the sap, but this is a very wasteful process, as it is apt to kill the tree. The stones are often ground up to make food for camels. The feathery leaves are exceedingly graceful. When quite young they are not divided, but they split down to the main stalk along the folds, so that a full-grown leaf affords but little hold to the wind. In some parts of Egypt, as for instance at Mariout, which is some fifteen miles from Alexandria, the wild flowers are probably more beautiful than anywhere else in the world. Amongst the corn and barley, which can be there grown without irrigation, masses of scarlet Poppies and Ranunculus are mingled with golden-yellow Composites, bright purple Asphodels, and hundreds of other Eastern flowers. The result is a rich feast of colour indescribable and satisfying to the soul. So that these deserts under the hand of man rejoice and blossom as the rose. Why is it that, as Disraeli has pointed out, civilization, culture, science, and religion had their origins in the desert? The answer is not difficult to see: for there is a dry, healthy climate; the severe strain of a long day's journey is varied by enforced leisure, when, resting at his tent-door, the Arab is irresistibly compelled to study the stars and to contemplate the infinite beauty of the night. It seems also to have been in the desert of the old world that man first learnt to cultivate the soil. In fact, it was only by irrigation on great tracts of alluvium, such as were furnished by the Nile and Euphrates, that the enormous populations of Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, and the other great monarchies could be maintained. So that city life on a big scale first developed there. CHAPTER XI THE STORY OF THE FIELDS