Note 24 — Chapter XII · THE VALLEY OF THE MAGDALENA

As we gazed in silent delight at the broad expanse of the green-carpeted savanna, adorned with the graceful, columnar shafts and feathery fronds of the ever-beautiful, ever-majestic palm, we could easily fancy ourselves in the valley of the Euphrates or in the plains of Babylon, as described by Herodotus and Xenophon. And, without any effort of the imagination, we could descry, in a palm-shaded village in the vista before us, Jericho, as Moses saw it, when the Land of Promise was a land of palms, as well as a land of milk and honey, and when Judea was so prolific in palms that one of its representatives was chosen as the symbol of the country.24 We dreamed of Zenobia’s fair capital, Palmyra—the city of Palms—of the land of the Nile, where Isis and Osiris carried palms as the symbol of their fecund power. We recalled the enthusiastic words of the ancient poets—Hebrew and Greek—in praise of the gracefulness and magnificence of the palm, and the plaintive elegy of Abdul Rhaman, first calif of Cordoba, who, exiled from Damascus, his home, thus addresses the date palm, that reminds him of the land of his birth: “Thou, also, beautiful palm, art here a stranger. The sweet zephyr of Algaraba descends and caresses thy beauty. Thou growest in this fertile soil and raisest thy crown to the skies. What bitter tears thou would’st shed, if, like me, thou hadst feeling!”25