The only culture requisite, is to be well watered at the roots once in four or five days, and to have the lower boughs cut off when they begin to droop and wither.  Much rain, however, injures the dates, and we know that the countries in which they flourish, are mostly without rain.  In many localities in Africa, date-palms can never be watered in the dry season; it is nevertheless observable that generally wherever a palm grows and thrives water may usually be obtained by boring.  The sap, or honey of the palm is a delicious and wholesome beverage when drunk quite fresh; but if allowed to remain for some hours, it acquires a sharp taste, something like cider, and becomes very intoxicating.  It is called poetically leghma, “tears” of the dates.  When a tree is found not to produce much fruit, the head is cut off, and a bowl or cavity scooped out of the summit, in which the rising sap is collected, and this is drunk in its pure state without any other preparation.  If the tree be not exhausted by draining, in five or six months it grows afresh; and, at the end of two or three years, may again be cut or tapped.  The palm is capable of undergoing this operation five or six times, and it may be easily known how often a tree has been cut by the number of rings of a narrow diameter which are seen towards its summit; but, if the sap is allowed to flow too long, it will perish entirely at the end of a year.  This sap, by distillation, produces an agreeable spirit called Araky or Arak:  from the fruit also the Jews distil a spirit called bokka, or what we should call toddy.  It is usual for persons of distinction to entertain their friends upon a marriage, or the birth of a child, with this pure sap, and a tree is usually tapped for the purpose.  It would appear that tapping the palm was known to the ancients, for a cornelian intaglio of Roman antiquity, has been found in the Jereed, representing a tree in this state, and the jars in which the juice was placed.

Dates are likewise dried in the sun, and reduced into a kind of meal, which will keep for any length of time, and which thus becomes a most valuable resource for travellers crossing the deserts, who frequently make it their only food, moistening a handful of it with a little water.  Certain preparations are made of the male plant, to which medicinal virtues are attributed; the younger leaves, eaten with salt, vinegar, and oil, make an excellent salad.  The heart of the tree, which lies at top between the fruit branches, and weighs from ten to twenty pounds, is eaten only on grand occasions, as those already mentioned, and possesses a delicious flavour between that of a banana and a pine-apple.

The palm, besides these valuable uses to which it is applied, superseding or supplying the place of all other vegetables to the tribes of the Jereed, is, nevertheless, still useful for a great variety of other purposes.  The most beautiful baskets, and a hundred other nick-nackery of the wickery sort are made of its branches; ropes are made and vestments wove from the long fibres, and its wood, also, when hardened by age, is used for building.  Indeed, we may say, it is the all and everything of the Jereed, and, as it is said of the camel and the desert, the palm is made for the Jereed, and the Jereed is made for the palm.