Three thousand years before the shepherds followed the star to the manger at Bethlehem, the beautiful date palm was cultivated beside the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile rivers. The date was the bread of the people who lived in these fertile valleys, and it is an important article of food in northern Africa, Arabia, and Persia to-day.

Look at a map of northern Africa, and you will see that the great Sahara covers a large part of it. Here and there across the drifting sands wind caravan routes, traveled by camels ridden by strangely dressed men. These routes lead to beautiful garden spots called oases. Here are wells and springs, with little streams flowing in the shade of fig, date palm, and other trees. The people who dwell within these groves beside the cooling waters look out upon the desert as the inhabitants of an island might look upon the boundless sea. Find some of these oases and learn why they are fertile. The people who live in these oases depend upon dates for their living. The dreary journey from the coast to the interior is made to procure quantities of this fruit, which are wanted by the outside world.

If you were to make a journey in a desert country, you would find that you could not carry such articles of food as you would have if you remained at home. The sunshine beats down fiercely, the springs and wells are far apart, and the patient animals must not be overloaded. The chief article of food carried is the date. A mass is packed together until it is so hard that pieces are chopped off with a hatchet when they are wanted.

Like the cocoanut palm, the date palm rises to a great height, sometimes fifty or sixty feet, without branches. It ends in a crown of beautiful feathery leaves which droop downward. These leaves may be ten or fifteen feet long. Many of them stand edgewise. Unlike most trees, the trunk does not steadily increase in size, and you can tell nothing as to the age of the tree by its diameter.

In its wild state many shoots spring from the base of the tree. These may grow as high as the parent stalk, so that in time a jungle or thicket is formed.

The flowers, which are clear white, grow in clusters. There are from six to twenty of these clusters on a tree, each of which produces a bunch of dates. The female tree bears the fruit. The blossoms are pollinated both by the wind and by man.

There are from ten to fifteen pounds of dates in a bunch. A tree will average from one hundred to two hundred pounds each year, although trees have been known to yield six hundred pounds. The trees yield when from four to eight years old, and continue to bear for a century.

The dates, green at first, later in the year a yellowish brown, are, when ripe, amber or black in color.

The trees require a very dry, hot climate, but moist soil. Long, long ago, this saying was common among the Arabs, "The date palm, the queen of trees, must have her feet in running water and her head in the burning sky."

Although there are lovely date palm trees on the grounds of many California homes, few of them bear fruit. The temperature must average from eighty to ninety degrees for a considerable time in the summer, in order to mature it. What is the average summer temperature in your locality?

If an ordinary tree is frost-bitten, it recovers and soon puts out a new growth; but if the crown of the date palm be frozen, the tree dies.

When the Moors went to Spain, in the eleventh century, they introduced this valuable tree which the mission fathers several hundred years later brought to Mexico and to Southern California.

How would you like to try to climb a date palm tree? Although they look so smooth and are without branches, the natives of the desert climb them without any help whatever. The trunk is always somewhat rough, and this makes it possible to ascend them.

Not all of the dates in a bunch ripen at once, so they are usually picked by hand and only the ripe ones selected. Sometimes, however, the bunches are cut off. Some dates contain so much sap that the bunches must be hung up to allow it to drain off before they can be shipped. This sap is called date honey, and is saved. They are sent to the coast towns in bags or boxes called frails. Where dates are to be sold in small quantities, they are repacked in the small boxes such as you have seen.

You know that dates are very sweet, and it is no wonder that they are, for they contain from fifty-five to sixty per cent of sugar.

The trees are often tapped, and the sap which flows out is made into sugar. Vinegar and a liquor called arrack are also made from it. The leaves of the tree are made into bags and mats; from the stones a drink is made which takes the place of coffee. From the leafstalks baskets are made, while the trunk furnishes material for houses and for fences.

If the dates could speak, they could tell us many wonderful stories of the far East, of the river boats on the Nile, of the drifting sands which come so close to the river's banks, of the caravans creeping over the desert toward the green oases and then fading out of sight, bearing loads of this food to the countries where it is not produced.