580. The oases with springs and small streams.—In most of the many hundreds of oases of the Great Desert, living conditions are easier than at Suf and M'zab, because the water comes from flowing streams which the people can turn into their gardens, thus giving the date tree what the Arabs say it wants: namely, "its feet in the water and its head in the fires of heaven." The date gardens yield crops year after year, century after century. Some oases are known to have been yielding steadily since the time of the Romans. The date garden yields twenty times as much food as a wheatfield of the same size.
581. much food is needed in these oases, the people have developed a wonderful system of agriculture. Beneath the tall open topped date trees are smaller trees, such as apricots, olives, and oranges. Beneath these trees vegetables are grown. This three-story agriculture yields so much that a tiny patch of ground will support a family. Arabs will sometimes Pay at the rate of $5000 an acre for a bit of oasis land with palm trees on it.
The villages, which are always on the desert beside the oases, swarm with people who are busy in the early morning and in the late evening working their gardens, carrying water, and milking the goats. At noon the settlement is as quiet as death, because everyone sleeps during the heat of the day.
582. Mysterious Arabia.—Much of Arabia is still unexplored. Since Roman times only two white men are known to have crossed Arabia from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. Between the tropic of Cancer and the Arabian Sea is a strip of land which the Arabs call the "Empty Quarter," because it is entirely uninhabited for most of the year. In central Arabia, however, there is a pla teau, and its greater elevation causes more rainfall. Many streams flow down its slope. Once these streams ran together and made a river which reached the Persian Gulf, but this was ages ago. Now all streams are lost in the sand a short distance from the plateau. But immediately at the foot of the plateau there is a strip of land four hundred miles long and twenty miles wide, where every little valley has an oasis or two. Some of the oases are so tiny that there is room for two or three trees; others are five or ten miles in length and their trees and gardens support thousands of people.
583. An independent town. — One of these many oasis towns lies with its springs in a little valley entirely surrounded by a water less plateau, yet it has 10,000 people. The
town is absolutely in dependent. About the year 1900 the governor of central Arabia sent a tax gatherer to collect taxes from the town. The people whipped him publicly and drove him away. The governor could not attack the town be cause it contained too manypeople. If he had tried to besiege it, he would have had to camp out in a desert where there is no water. This shows why the Turks, who have claimed to rule Arabia, have really ruled only a rim around its shores. They have never been able to rule the vast, mysterious inland territory.
584. Camping in the Empty Quarter.—At the end of the rainy season the nomads along all the desert's edges often go into the desert and live for a short time in places where they could not possibly live all the year. At this time the oasis people living at the south end of the central highland of Arabia often make a trip into the Empty Quarter, The water of the springs is so salty that men cannot drink it, but camels can. The camels, after pas turing, must return to the springs to drink; so the people camp by the springs, and mill( the camels when they return for water. Camel's milk, dates which they bring with them, the flesh of gazelles, and other game furnish food for the desert camp. At times these people cross the eight hundred miles of the Empty Quarter to raid the tribes on the shores of the Red Sea, but no white man has ever been known to have gone with them.
585. Yemen and Mocha coffee.—A small part of southern Arabia, called Yemen, has a high mountain facing the Red Sea. This section receives enough rainfall to grow Mocha coffee, and a grain somewhat like Kafir corn. Mocha coffee is one of the most expensive coffees in the world. It was from this region that the people of Europe first received coffee.
The agricultural district of Yemen is so small and precious that the people have ter raced their hillsides like steps, thus making more garden land on which the rain can fall.
586. The great rivers and the great oases of Egypt and Mesopotamia.—In two places large rivers, rising in distant lands of heavy rainfall, carry their great waters into the heart of the desert and on across it. Thus the broad plains of Egypt and Mesopotamia can be irrigated. They are the greatest oases in all the world and support millions of people.