The salt of the lake is considerably weaker than that of the sea, and not adapted for preserving provisions, though its flavour is very agreeable; it is not exported, nor made in any way an article of commerce.

The Jereed, from the existence in it of a few antiquities, such as pieces of granite and marble, and occasionally a name or a classic inscription, is proved to have been in the possession of the Romans, and undoubtedly of the Carthaginians before them, who could have had no difficulty in holding this flat and exposed country.

The trade and resources of this country consist principally in dates.  The quantity exported to other parts of the Regency, as well as to foreign countries, where their fine quality is well known, is in round numbers on an average from three to four thousand quintals per annum.  But in Jereed itself, twenty thousand people live six months of the year entirely on dates.

“A great number of poles,” says Sir Grenville Temple, “are arranged across the rooms at the height of eight or nine feet from the ground, and from these are suspended rich and large bunches of dates, which compose the winter store of the inhabitants; and in one corner of the room is one or more large earthern jars about six or seven feet high, also filled with dates pressed close together, and at the bottom of the jar is a cock, from which is drawn the juice in the form of a thick luscious syrup.  It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more palatable than this ‘sweet of sweets.’”

As we are writing of the country of dates, par excellence, I must needs give some description of the palm, but it will be understood that the information is Tunisian, or collected in Tunis, and may differ in some respects from details collected in other parts of North Africa.  The date-palm abounds in the maritime as well as in the inland districts of North Africa.  They are usually propagated from shoots of full grown trees, which if transplanted and taken care of, will yield in six or seven years, whilst those raised immediately from the stone require sixteen years to produce fruit.

The date-palm is male and female, or dioecious, and requires communication, otherwise the fruit is dry and insipid.  The age of the palm, in its greatest vigour, is about thirty years, according to the Tunisians, after planting, and will continue in vigour for seventy years, bearing anually fifteen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them fifteen or twenty pounds in weight; after this long period, they begin gradually to wither away.  But the Saharan Tripolitans will tell you that the date-palm does not attain its age of full vigour till it reaches a hundred years, and then will flourish two or or three centuries before it withers!