Note 1123 — Chapter XIV · —Plains, Steppes And Deserts

The few and limited spots where the desert or steppe affords water for cultivation require artificial irrigation, the importation of plants, and careful tillage, to make the limited area support even a small social group. Hence they could have been utilized by man only after he had made considerable progress in civilization.1123 Oasis agriculture is predominantly intensive. Gardens and orchards tend to prevail over field tillage. The restricted soil and water must be forced to yield their utmost. While on the rainy or northern slope of the Atlas in Algiers and Tunis farms abound, on the Saharan piedmont are chiefly plantations of vegetables, orchards and palm groves.1124 In Fezzan at the oasis of Ghat, Barth found kitchen gardens of considerable extent, large palm groves, but limited fields of grain, all raised by irrigation; and in the flat hollow basin forming the oasis of Murzuk, he found also fig and peach trees, vegetables, besides fields of wheat and barley cultivated with much labor.1125 In northern Fezzan, where the mountains back of Tripoli provide a supply of water, saffron and olive trees are the staple articles of tillage. The slopes are terraced and irrigated, laid out in orchards of figs, pomegranates, almonds and grapes, while fields of wheat and barley border the lower courses of the wadis.1126 In the "cup oases" or depressions of the Sahara, the village is always built on the slope, because the alluvial soil in the basin is too precious to be used for house sites.1127