Thus is explained the fact that
the historians of antiquity speak at length of the wonderful
irrigation systems, but refer to other forms of agriculture in a
most casual manner. While the absence of agricultural machinery
makes it very doubtful whether dry-farming was practiced extensively
in olden days, yet there can be little doubt of the high antiquity
of the practice.
Kearney quotes Tunis as an example of the possible extent of
dry-farming in early historical days. Tunis is under an average
rainfall of about nine inches, and there are no evidences of
irrigation having been practiced there, yet at El Djem are the ruins
of an amphitheater large enough to accommodate sixty thousand
persons, and in an area of one hundred square miles there were
fifteen towns and forty-five villages. The country, therefore, must
have been densely populated. In the seventh century, according to
the Roman records, there were two million five hundred thousand
acres of olive trees growing in Tunis and cultivated without
irrigation. That these stupendous groves yielded well is indicated
by the statement that, under the Caesar's Tunis was taxed three
hundred thousand gallons of olive oil annually.
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