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Updated: June 10, 2025
IT was the beginning of December, and the rainy season at Macassar had just set in. For nearly three months had beheld the sun rise daily above the palm-groves, mount to the zenith, and descend like a globe of fire into the ocean, unobscured for a single moment of his course. Now dark leaden clouds had gathered over the whole heavens, and seemed to have rendered him permanently invisible.
As the king proceeded on his way in his two-wheeled golden chariot, a long array of soldiers, cymbal players, and dancing girls following behind, the palm-groves resounded with the cries of the people. Joseph fled with the boy down narrow streets so as to avoid the crowd that wanted to press round him and look at and pet Pharaoh's little favourite.
Taraba is environed with palm-groves and gardens, watered by numerous rivulets; near it are some inconsiderable hills, at the foot of which the Arabs cultivate durra and barley: the inhabitants are of the Begoum tribe, and their Sheikh is Ibn Korshan.
Just as we were there they were very busy with the spathes, and in Thursday's Market huge baskets of the male spathes were exposed for sale. The palm-groves are surrounded by dykes to keep the water in. The date-tree is everything to a Bahreini.
Thus, "he is Behemoth, wallowing in primeval jungles;" "he is a gigantic elk or buffalo, trampling the grass of the wilderness;" "he is an immense tree, a kind of Ygdrasil, striking its roots deep down into the bowels of the world;" "he is the circumambient air in which float shadowy shapes, rise mirage-towers and palm-groves;" "he is the globe itself, all seas, lands, forests, climates, storms, snows, sunshines, rains of universal earth."
On the edge of one of the reservoirs a sentimental Sultan built in the last century a little pleasure-house called the Menara. It is composed of a few rooms with a two-storied loggia looking across the water to the palm-groves, and surrounded by a garden of cypresses and orange-trees.
The greatness of the work assigned to him, the enthusiasm of a man who devotes himself with devout earnestness to the performance of a difficult task, the rapturous joy of the lover, who with well-founded hopes of the fulfilment of the purest and fairest desires of his heart, hastens to meet the woman of his choice, first dawned upon him when he had left the city behind and was dashing at a rapid trot toward the south-east across the flat, well-watered plain with its wealth of palm-groves.
The little girl surely could not help feeling it, and she came and sat on the stool at my feet, leaned her head against my knee, and gazed at the flames without saying a word. But I answered her thought. "Yes," I said, "we may see almost anything in that fire. Look at that strip of cocoanut husk. Does it not tell of green palm-groves and sunny skies and warm breezes?
Others come from harems in the turreted cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves beat all night against the stars and date-caravans journey across the desert from Timbuctoo.
The plain between is no more of saline or sterile character; but, as on the other side, showing a luxuriant vegetation, with the same picturesque disposal of palm-groves and other tropical trees. The hour is late nigh to midnight as the captive train passes under the shadow of the Cemetery Hill, making round to where the tolderia stands; for both lake and town are on the west side of the hill.
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