“To bare, dry mountain-ridges,” says M. Forgues, “succeed plains, sometimes incrusted with hard clay, sometimes clothed with thick sand. At the outset of spring, in the months of April and May, the country is coloured with some softer tints, the grass breaks here and there through the granite and the gravel; but in the first summer heats everything grows dry, and the soil resumes its monotonously brown or gray livery. Water fails for cultivation, which in the best districts is confined to a few scattered oases. In these vast spaces, when the eye surveys them from some mountain-crest, there occurs nothing to arrest the gaze; and when once the spring has past, the cultured fields become blended with those which the plough has suffered to lie fallow, the clay-built villages with the earth of which their walls are constructed. In these confused landscapes even a considerable town scarcely traces its blurred outline among the accumulated ruins in whose centre it persists in living, and whose extent attests its decadence. It is a marvel if, on arriving at the limit of these monotonous plains, the traveller distinguishes them from the deserts to whose threshold they have generally conducted him. He only recognizes the latter by the dazzling gleam of their saline efflorescence, which stretches far out of sight, and where at intervals abruptly projects some mass of ebon-black rock, transformed by the solar refraction, and assuming in quick succession the most fantastic aspects.”

First, I shall speak of the Dead Sea, the Lake Asphaltes, which Dean Stanley justly designates “one of the most remarkable spots in the world,” and which, as the reader knows, is situated in the south of Palestine, at a short distance from Jerusalem. It is true that “a great mass of legend and exaggeration, partly the effect, partly the cause, of the old belief that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were buried under the Dead Sea, has been gradually removed in recent years. The glittering surface of the lake, with the thin mist of its own evaporations floating over its surface, will now no more be taken for a gloomy sea, sending forth sulphurous exhalations. The birds which pass over it without injury have long ago destroyed the belief that no living creature could survive the baneful atmosphere which hung upon its waters.” But still, for the scientific no less than for the historical student, it possesses an absorbing interest. It is the most depressed sheet of water in the world, lying fully thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean: as the Lake Sir-i-Kol, where the Oxus rises

is the most elevated.[44] “Its basin,” to quote Dean Stanley’s graphic description, “is a steaming caldron—a bowl which, from the peculiar temperature and deep cavity in which it is situated, can never be filled to overflowing. The river Jordan, itself exposed to the same withering influences, is not copious enough to furnish a supply equal to the demand made by the rapid evaporation. Its excessive saltness is even more remarkable than its deep depression. This peculiarity is, it is believed, mainly occasioned by the huge barrier of fossil-salt at its south-west corner, and heightened by the rapid evaporation of the fresh water poured into it. Other like phenomena, though in a less striking form, exist elsewhere. But, without entering into its wider relations, this aspect is important, as that which most forcibly impressed the sacred writers. To them it was ‘the salt sea,’ and nothing more. They exhibit hardly a trace of the exaggerations of later times. And so it is in fact. It is not gloom, but desolation, which is the prevailing characteristic of the Sea of Death. Follow the course of the Jordan to its end. How different from the first burst of its waters in Mount Hermon, amongst the groves of Dan and Paneas! How different from the ‘riotous prodigality of life’ which has marked its downward course, almost to the very termination of its existence! Gradually, within the last mile from the Dead Sea, its verdure dies away, and the river melts into its grave in a tame and sluggish stream; still, however, of sufficient force to carry its brown waters far into the bright green sea. Along the desert shore the white crust of salt indicates the cause of sterility. Thus the few living creatures which the Jordan washes down into the waters of the sea are destroyed. Hence arises the unnatural buoyancy and the intolerable nausea to taste and touch, which raise to the highest pitch the contrast between its clear, bitter waves, and the soft, fresh, turbid stream of its parent river. Strewn along its desolate margin lie the most striking memorials of this last conflict of life and death: trunks and branches of trees, torn down from the thickets of the river-jungle by the violence of the Jordan, thrust out into the sea, and thrown up again by its waves, dead and barren as itself. The dead beach shelves gradually into the calm waters. A deep haze—that which to earlier ages gave the appearance of the ‘smoke going up for ever and ever’—veils its southern extremity, and almost gives it the dim horizon of a real sea. In the nearer view rises the low island close to its northern end, and the long promontory projecting from the eastern side, which divides it into its two unequal parts. This is all that I saw, and all that most pilgrims and travellers have seen, of the Dead Sea.”[45]

The sinister aspect of the valley of the Jordan, especially at the embouchure of the river, impresses itself on the mind of every spectator. There the traveller finds the path narrowed between two abrupt gigantic walls. On the right rises the Arabian chain, black and perpendicular; on the left, the Judæan range, less elevated, more irregular, and resembling a dismantled ruin. “The valley comprised between these two chains,” says the Père Laorty-Hadji, “exhibits a soil closely resembling the bed of a sea which has long been dry. You can discern but a few stunted trees. Ruined towns and castles appear in the distance. At the moment of flinging itself into the Dead Sea, the Jordan itself, traversing a muddy soil, changes its physiognomy and colour. It seems to drag reluctantly, towards the motionless lake, a burden of slow and tawny waters. The shores of the Dead Sea are low on the east and west; to the north and south high mountains enclose it.” “These mountains, separated by a formidable cleft, exhibit their beds of red sandstone, overlain by a thick stratum of compact chalk, interrupted by silicious fragments. One is surprised not to see a volcanic crater, when all about, in this convulsed site, the action of fire is visible—the violent, bitter struggle of the two Neptunian and Plutonian principles, which, during the geological eras, contended for the empire of the world. One might say that here the two antagonistic forces exhausted themselves, that they have equally lost their potency; so much so, that at the close of the combat all has sunk into the silence and immobility of death. And who knows if the volcanic crater, whose absence at first astonishes the observer, is not the Dead Sea itself? Is it unreasonable to admit that after the upheaval of the mountains which inclose it, and which a terrible explosion of subterranean fire will have separated, the neighbouring waters were precipitated into and swallowed up in the yawning gulf which they still fill to-day?... This hypothesis is so much the more probable, because in this fire-scathed region the lake affords manifest indications of an igneous travail even now accomplishing itself sullenly in the bowels of the globe. We know that its name of Lake Asphaltites is due to the semi-fluid bituminous matter which constantly rises to its surface and accumulates on its shores. With the vapours exhaled by this bitumen under the influence of heat, mingle sulphurous and ammoniacal exhalations, which render the atmosphere of the Dead Sea dangerous to breathe.”[46]

Before 1835 no one had ventured upon its waters. An Irish traveller, named Cottingham, was their first navigator; but after a five days’ voyage he returned to Jerusalem, and died of exhaustion. Two years later Messrs. Moore and Beke made a new attempt. For several days they withstood the pestilential exhalations of the lake, and succeeded in proving the deep depression of its basin; but at length, both of them being taken ill, they were compelled to cut short their explorations. In 1847 the enterprise was undertaken by a Frenchman—Lieutenant Molyneux—who sounded it in many places, but was speedily carried off by fever. The following year Lieutenant Lynch, of the American navy, embarked on the lake in iron boats, with competent crews. He navigated its waters for three weeks; but all who composed the expedition were more or less severely attacked, and one of them, Lieutenant Deane, succumbed.

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THE DEAD SEA.
THE DEAD SEA.

It is lifeless, untenanted; the fish found there, and brought down by the Jordan, are dead. Unlike the Caspian, it is never stirred by the whirr of wings—by the flight of gulls, or pelicans, or sea-mews. The migratory birds sweep across it without even a pause, without seeking the prey which they could not find. Its waters are denser than those of other seas: their constituents are different, and mingled in different proportions.

Laorty-Hadji is mistaken in his idea that they repose on a bed of rock salt. Rock salt is the chloride of sodium in a nearly pure condition. But the Dead Sea holds in solution a comparatively small portion of this salt, mixed with large proportions of other salts. Its water was analyzed for the first time in 1778 by Lavoiser, Macquer, and Sage. Experiments have also been made by Arcet, Klaproth, Gmelin, Gay-Lussac, and, more recently, by Boussingault. According to the latter, it contains:—

CHAPTER II.

ARABIA DESERTA AND ARABIA PETRÆA.

THE traveller who starts from the southern extremity of the Dead Sea encounters a succession of deserts. To the east extend wide plains, covered with ruins, where upwards of thirty cities are to be traced in their decay, like Palmyra, by the trunks of shattered columns and the wrecks of desecrated temples. This is the once flourishing country of the Nabatheans, now haunted by some tribes of Idumean Arabs. One might not inappropriately call it the vestibule of Arabia Deserta; a name applicable to all the central and southern districts—that is to say, to nearly three-fourths of the Arabian peninsula. There the sea of sand reveals itself in all its nakedness, in all its horrors; with its implacable sky and fiery atmosphere, its sandy billows, its masses of salt, and, in certain places, with its hidden quicksands capable of devouring entire armies. The Desert of Akhaf, situated towards the extremity of the peninsula, conceals, it is said, several of these abysses, where the hapless traveller, if he set his foot upon them, would be instantly swallowed up. Thus even the Arabs regard it with an unconquerable dread. It owes its name to a Saffite king who would fain have traversed it with his troops, and who saw them perish therein even to the last man. The tradition does not inform us how he himself escaped this immense disaster.

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CARAVAN IN THE DESERT.
CARAVAN IN THE DESERT.

A European traveller, Baron de Wrede, undertook nevertheless, some twenty-five years ago, to penetrate into this soul-appalling desert, and attempted to measure the extent and depth of one of these abysses. Starting in the morning from Saba, under the guidance of a few Bedouins, he reached, after six hours’ marching, the threshold of the desert of Akhaf.

“A sandy plain, extending as far as the eye could reach,” he says, “and upon which arose innumerable hills in the semblance of waves,—such was the scene presented to my gaze. Not the least trace of vegetation was perceptible; not a bird interrupted with its song the tomb-like silence which prevailed around the graves of the Sabean army. I remarked three tracts distinguished by a dazzling whiteness. ‘Yonder are the abysses,’ said the Bedouins; ‘they are inhabited by the spirits who have covered with this deceitful sand the treasures intrusted to their charge. He who dares approach them will assuredly be dragged down under the sand! Do not venture there!’

“Naturally, I paid no attention to this counsel; on the contrary, I demanded to be guided towards them, according to agreement. Two hours were consumed by our camels in reaching the bottom of the plateau, where we arrived at sunset, taking up our quarters for the night on the lee side of two enormous rocks. On the following day I insisted that the Bedouins should guide me over these tracts. My trouble was in vain; fear rendered them unable to utter a word. Furnished with a plumb-lead weighing about a pound and a quarter, to which was attached a rope nearly 350 yards in length, I accomplished this dangerous enterprise. I occupied thirty-six minutes in reaching the first abyss; it was thirty-six feet long by twenty-six feet broad, and formed an inclined plain towards the centre, about six feet deep, which I attributed to the action of the wind. I approached at first with the utmost precaution, in order to examine the sand, and found it to be almost impalpable. I cast my plumb-lead as far as I could; it disappeared immediately; however, the rapidity with which the rope shortened gradually diminished; in five minutes, it had wholly disappeared.”

“At fifteen parasangs from Teheran,[48] commences the Salt Desert, which, from east to west, extends to the very frontiers of India. This immense basin, eastward, has no other limits than the horizon; to the west, to the north, to the south, it is bounded by hills of sand which completely represent the Dunes of France. The soil, of a fawn-coloured yellow, is composed of clay and sand, exactly resembling the mud which occupies the bottom of a dried-up basin. It is said that at many points a man on horseback will disappear without his body being ever again discovered.[49] I have seen one of these places, near Sivas; the soil is everywhere impregnated with salt mingled with nitre, which crystallizes on the surface. For the rest, if you dig two or three inches deep, you find water, though very brackish in quality. The general opinion is that the desert was once occupied by a sea, which suddenly disappeared on the night that Mohammed was born. And it seems to me that there is no reason to doubt this sudden disappearance, since even in our own days, and only a few years ago, the salt lake of Ourmiah (Urumiyeh), in the province of Azerbaïdjan, vanished completely for twenty-four hours; it is true that the waters emerged again from their subterranean basin. I think it almost absolutely demonstrated, from inspection of these localities, that at a remote epoch this sea communicated with the Caspian, and formed one united basin of water. I am not sure but that in the south it also communicated with the Indian Sea, for I have not travelled in that direction. The apparition of the Elburz chain has cloven the two basins, and the sea, receiving only inconsiderable streams, insensibly receded, until the day when it was wholly dried up, leaving only two lakes: one, the lake of Sivas, which disappeared in the seventh century; the other, the lake of Seistan, which is still extant, and receives several of the important rivers of Afghanistan. At all events, the great sea itself had disappeared some generations prior to the epoch of Alexander.

The desert table-land of Nadjed, which fills all the central part of Asia, is bounded on the west and south by the more fertile and fortunate countries of the Hedjaz and the Hadramant, which skirt the Indian Ocean. To the north-east lies the desert of the Tih, whose deep sand-drifts lie between Palestine and the Isthmus of Suez, and which the Mediterranean washes on the north, on the south-west the Gulf of Suez, and on the south-east the Gulf of Akaba. This is the small triangular peninsula which was known to ancient geographers as Arabia the Stony. A group of ever-famous mountains, hallowed by the sublimest associations, Sinaï, Horeb, Jebel Mûsa, Jebel Bestîn (St. Epistème), raise their granitic summits on the southern point of this peninsula. “They are ‘the Alps’ of Arabia; but the Alps planted in the desert, and therefore stripped of all the clothing which goes to make up our notions of Swiss or English mountains; stripped of the variegated drapery of oak, and birch, and pine and fir, of moss, and grass, and fern; which to landscapes of European hills are almost as essential as the rocks and peaks themselves.” Sinaï, or St. Catherine, the loftiest peak in the range, reaches an elevation of 8160 feet. It is so closely connected with Mount Horeb, to the north, that the two mountains really seem but one. Ravines, and narrow valleys planted with palm-trees, thorny acacias, tamarisks, and some other shrubs, wind between the abrupt trunks of this grand chain. In one of these valleys stands the Monastery of the Transfiguration, and on Mount Horeb rises the Church of St. Catherine, a shrine held in great esteem by devout Greeks. The pilgrims ascend on their knees a large staircase laboriously constructed by the monks.

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Mount Sinai.
Mount Sinai.

The locality, consecrated by such glorious associations, is also rich in geological interest. It exhibits indubitable traces of the great volcanic convulsions which have so profoundly shaken the shores of the Dead Sea, and which still growl sullenly under the accumulated rocks. In the time of Procopius, the legend runs that men fled from Sinaï on account of the gruesome noises which haunted it; and modern travellers, notably Stutzen and Gray, declare that they have heard at intervals a sound comparable to the dull heavy throbbing of a Cyclops’ pulse. It might be said that one of the vast arteries which provide for the circulation of the ever boiling and seething flood of lava of our globe passes in this direction at an insignificant depth below the surface. The springs of thermal waters which well out at the mountain-base, the masses of bitumen and lava scattered over the soil, the gigantic rocks which bristle over the whole desert of El-Tîh, and whose hue, to adopt the expression of a modern traveller, is that of calcined and fire-scathed matter, are sufficient evidence that this country has been the theatre of dreadful volcanic phenomena.

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LAKE BAUDOUIN (A SALT LAKE).
LAKE BAUDOUIN (A SALT LAKE).

As you approach the Isthmus of Suez—which will soon be annihilated, so to speak, by M. de Lesseps’ great ship-canal—the desert resumes the character which we have seen it bear in Persia and Central Arabia. The rocks, much rarer and less lofty, gradually give place to mountains of sand. Salt lakes and fields of salt re-appear. Near the shores of the Mediterranean lies a pool of salt, still known by that name of Lake Baudouin (Baldwin), which the Crusaders imposed upon it. There the salt forms a firm and tenacious crust, on which the camel safely plants its foot. Sometimes the iron hoof of a horse breaks through, but beneath this first frail stratum it meets with another of astonishing hardness. “You might think yourself,” says a traveller, “on the Mer de Glace of Mont Blanc. Our camel-drivers collected some large pieces from the surface. Nothing can be more brilliant or more transparent than these crystals. It is by tasting them only that you can distinguish them from rock crystal. As we advance, the impression grows overpowering. A plain of dazzling whiteness surrounds us, and is prolonged far beyond our ken. Dimly on the left may be perceived, like an indigo-coloured ribbon, the line of the distant sea. The sky itself appears jet black. The reverberation of sound is unendurable.” Still further, between Suez and Cairo, the same traveller speaks admiringly of a natural amphitheatre, enclosed between two mountain-spurs, and strewn with débris of rock, and especially with petrified wood. It might be compared to a forest-clearing which the woodmen had just quitted. The splinters are quite fresh, the cloven fragments still expose the notches made by the axe. Great trees, divided into beams, resemble long serpents which have been slain by blows from a hatchet. The division is so clear that each gash reveals the concentric tissues perfectly preserved by this mineral embalming, this natural silification. Similar petrifactions may be seen in abundance on the plateaux of the Makattam, and the amphitheatre now described is not far from the hill, visited by every tourist, which has received the name of the Petrified Forest.

Thus it appears that the Land Deserts, despite the proverbial monotony of their aspect, do not fail to offer to the artist as well as the savant, the philosopher no less than the historian, objects worthy of patient study. Everywhere the handiwork of God and the evidences of Almighty design awaken the admiration of the thoughtful. Whether the picture be sombre or beautiful, grand or appalling, we see that it was conceived and filled up by superhuman power. But we are now in Egypt, on the threshold of the world’s vast deserts. Egypt, kept alive by the fertilizing and genial Nile, is but an island in the great ocean of sand which encircles it, and which, far more truly than the Red Sea or the Mediterranean, isolates it from the rest of the globe.

CHAPTER III.

THE NUBIAN DESERT—THE GREAT SAHARA—DESERTS OF AFRICA.

“Everything in Egypt,” says Miss Martineau,[50] with equal truth and eloquence, “life itself, and all that it includes, depends on the state of the unintermitting conflict between the Nile and the Desert. The world has seen many straggles; but no other so pertinacious, so perdurable, and so sublime as the conflict of these two great powers. The Nile, ever young, because perpetually renewing its youth, appears to the inexperienced eye to have no chance, with its stripling force, against the great old Goliath, the Desert, whose might has never relaxed from the earliest days till now; but the giant has not conquered it. Now and then he has prevailed for a season, and the tremblers whose destiny hung on the event have cried out that all was over; but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has risen up again to do what we see him doing in the sculptures—bind up his water-plants about the throne of Egypt.”

The traveller, ascending the famous river which has so long been mixed up with an apparently insoluble geographical problem, sees the Desert everywhere present; its yellow boundary-line is vividly traced against the rich emerald-green of the fertile valley, and, as he advances, that line seems to draw nearer and nearer, until the cultivated soil appears reduced to a narrow strip on the river-bank. It has encroached upon many once prosperous and busy sites, and buried deeply the memorials of the old Egyptian civilization.

At certain times it would rather remind the spectator of another of Coleridge’s conceptions:

Yet the spectacle is generally one of a rare and peculiar loveliness. “If nature,” says M. Trémaux,[52] “had invested with this kind of beauty our verdurous fields of the West, they would have been veritable Edens; but to produce, blend, and harmonize these inimitable hues, it requires, under the last beams of the sun, the emanations from the heated sands and those which the day has called into existence from the burning surfaces of the denuded rocks. It is by the side of her greatest horrors nature places her grandest beauties.”

The horror of the Desert does not lie only in its aridity, in its vacuity—this vacuity is not absolute; in default of life, Death peoples its solitudes. The glens or gorges frequented by the caravans are lined with stones, symmetrically disposed at certain intervals. These stones mark the places where rest the remains of the hapless pilgrims who have attempted to cross the wilderness, and perished in the attempt. Round and about each rugged tomb lie the skeletons of animals which none have troubled themselves to bury in the sand. Frequently you may see, on the sandy wastes of Africa, or the desolate plains of Asia and the New World, these carcasses laid out in two interminable rows; indicating the gloomy track which should be followed by the traveller, and never failing to remind him of the tribute Death levies upon mankind in these accursed regions. Thus does the Desert show itself more relentless than even the hungry ocean, which at least devours its victims whole, and affronts the eye with no traces of its murders. But the Moloch of the Desert has no shame; it cynically exposes the hideous remains of those whom it has killed; it strews the earth with their bones; it has its museums of skeletons, or rather of preserved animals.

M. Trémaux observed this curious phenomenon in the ravines of Korosko, but it probably occurs elsewhere under similar conditions. On closely examining the carcasses which he met at every step, he was astonished to find them covered with their skin, and presenting still their natural forms, as if the animals had been stuffed or embalmed. He readily distinguished horses, oxen, asses, camels. He observed with no less surprise that these corpses exhaled no odour. They had been dried by the heat before decomposition could commence its frightful work. The skin had hardened; the muscles and internal organs had been reduced into dust and gradually blown away by the wind through the yawning apertures at the two extremities of the body. There remained nothing more, literally, but skin and bone.

As for water, it must needs be content with that of a few brackish wells, grouped, about twelve in number, at a spot called El-Mourath. It is there only that the caravans can fill their ill-tanned leather-bottles, in which the already nauseating liquid grows hot, and quickly becomes putrid. Its stench and its taste are then so disgustful that the very camels reject it several times before they can constrain themselves to drink of it.

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Ravines of Korosko.
Ravines of Korosko.

The Desert of Bahiouda, situated in about the same latitude as that of Korosko, but on the other bank of the Nile, is of a less absolute aridity and nakedness. Water is more abundant and less brackish; vegetation is less scanty; and one meets on every side with giraffes, gazelles, wild cattle, and even, it is said, with lions and elephants. Great numbers of reptiles, lizards, serpents, and tortoises inhabit the sand and the crevices of the rocks.

M. Charles Martins, in his elaborate monograph on this remarkable region, divides it into three distinct sub-regions: the Desert of the Table-lands, the Desert of Erosion, and the Sandy Desert.[53]

In Algeria, and in Barbary generally, the Mediterranean littoral does not come into immediate contact with the Sahara; but is separated from it by the Atlas chain. But the Atlas does not rise abruptly from the plain: on either side it ascends by a succession of rocky steps or terraces, which form the sub-region of the elevated Table-lands. Vast denuded surfaces, sprinkled with chotts, or salt lakes, deprived of all arborescent vegetation, traversed in summer by immense herds which feed on the plants even to their very roots, bare mountains starting abruptly from these horizontal surfaces; such is the general aspect of the landscape. The richly-varied culture of the Mediterranean littoral has disappeared, and barley is the only cereal which the husbandman relies upon for his harvest. At many points, however, the “purple vine” and “golden olive” succeed admirably, and are destined one day to clothe the nakedness of these plateaux which the free-pasturing herds and the careless Arab have stripped of their blooming verdure.

Descending these rocky terraces of gray old Atlas, we enter the desert region in its first phase: the Desert of the Table-lands, or Saharan Steppe.

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LANDSCAPE IN THE ATLAS (REGION OF TABLE-LANDS).
LANDSCAPE IN THE ATLAS (REGION OF TABLE-LANDS).

Here, horizontal strata of mud and gypsum, or sulphate of lime, are deposited upon the shores, as it were, of the great Sandy Sea. The gypsum reposing on the mud is composed of plates in such close juxtaposition as to resemble an artificial pavement. “It covers the surface of vast plateaux which have not been encroached upon by the waters; whether those waters were marine currents at the epoch when the Sahara was a vast sea, or diluvian torrents which descended from the mountains after their elevation, little matters; the gypsum, produced by the violent evaporation of the Saharan sea, has withstood their operation, and composes the plateaux of which we are speaking. Their surface is so smooth, that vehicles might roll for leagues upon this natural pavement, which echoes like a vault under the horses’ hoofs. A plateau of this kind, the small Desert of Mourad, extends from Biskra to the banks of the great salt lake called Chott Mebrir by the Arabs. The gypseous surface is not everywhere exposed: most frequently it is covered by a layer of small rounded pebbles, nearly all quartzose, exhibiting the greatest variety of tints, from the purest white to the most vivid red; they are mixed with black calcareous stones split on the surface. Whence came these pebbles, which have evidently been ‘rolled’ by the waters? We know not. They are the mysterious witnesses of those grand diluvian torrents which have left the traces of their passage over the surface of the whole earth, though the geologist cannot always discover the mountains or rocks that furnished the materials of this diluvium.”[54]

From the Desert of the Table-lands we must needs make another descent. The town of Batna is situated at the extremity of the lowest of the Atlantean terraces, whose elevation is still some 3300 feet above the level of the sea. To the north-west rise the lofty spires of the colossal chain, with their diadems of cedars sharply defined in black upon the azure of the sky. Loftiest of all soars the Jebel-Tougour, or “Peak of Cedars,” reminding the spectator of the Pyrenean crests. Towards the south-east stretch the rounded shoulders of the mountains of the Aurès, clad with dense dark forest of oak and pine. In a fold of the mountains lurk the ancient Lambessa and the mouldering ruins of a Roman camp. Four miles to the south of Batna is a large depressed hill, whose base mingles with the table-land, above which it rises only three hundred and thirty feet. This ridge marks the watershed; all the streams on the north flowing towards the Mediterranean, and, on the south, gradually disappearing in the arid bed of the ancient Saharan sea. On the frontier line, like a Cyclopean landmark, is planted the Peak of Cedars, while from its loins a torrent issues, and through a deep ravine whirls and leaps and flows towards the desert. Springs, abundant and warm, bubble up through the chalky marls, and take the same direction. Beyond the French military post, called Les Tamarins, the road descends the ravine-cloven mountain-slopes, and passes over the torrent which bifurcates at the foot of the majestic Metlili. On the left is seen a steep wall of rock, the Jebel-Gaouss, cleft midway by a chasm, or breach, which the Arabs expressively designate “The Mouth of the Desert,” and which, gradually enlarging, opens upon the first oasis of the Sahara, El Kantara (“the bridge,” from a Roman arch which spans the torrent), the most northerly limit of the palm-tree. “A magnificent, semi-alpine, semi-tropical scene. Below, a tumultuous foaming stream, its banks on either side clad with palms bending their feathery foliage towards the river, and sheltering fig, apricot, peach, almond, and pomegranate trees.”[55] Above, a range of snowy heights, wreathed in ever ascending and descending clouds.

We now enter the Desert of Erosion, a mass of mountainous highlands; of ridges, peaks, and cols, intersected and, as it were, gashed by ravines where roll the winter torrents and the rivers which the heats of summer dry up, and which, hollowing and gnawing into the stony soil, spread themselves over the valleys and awake a transitory vegetation. The erosive action of the waters is, then, the special characteristic of this part of the desert, which the Arabs call Kifar, or “the abandoned country.” Most of the streams which water it have their sources in Mounts Aurès and Zibans, which form its northern boundary. They have excavated wide intermingling furrows, whose intervening spaces are occupied by gypseous plateaux. The formations of less resisting power, the marls, clays, and sands, have been washed away.

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THE SAHARA (DESERT OF EROSION).
THE SAHARA (DESERT OF EROSION).

The waters, whether proceeding from rain, or the melting of the snows on the loftiest peaks, are very pure at first, and roll in deep beds with vertical sides; when they reach the plains, their channels grow wider and shallower. In the wet season, the floods burst the banks, and overflowing, carry down immense quantities of rolled pebbles, which are distributed over an extensive area; in ordinary weather they are reduced to thin threads of silver, which, on arriving in the desert, vanish completely. You must excavate the soil to obtain a supply of water, and when found, it is brackish. Frequently the beds unite, forming basins of greater or less extent and depth, which fill themselves at the close of the winter floods, and a few of which preserve, even in the winter season, a certain quantity of water. Elsewhere, the soil is only humid, thanks to the abundance of salt, which retains the moisture. In such places numerous slimy marshes occur, where the traveller may not adventure without peril. But in general the surface is dry, cracked, cloven, and completely parched.

When, from the summit of the rocks which fence round and bristle over the Desert of Erosion, we perceive for the first time the Desert of Sand, the impression is very similar to that which we derive from the sight of ocean. M. Martins had already become sensible of this peculiar effect when, from the Col de Sfa, he had gazed down upon the Desert of the Plateaux. “A grand circular arch,” he says, “extended before us, bounding a violet surface, smooth as the sea, and blending at the horizon with the azure of heaven; it was the Sahara. The arc eastward rested against the chain of the Aurès; westward, against that of the Zibans, some of whose offshoots, in the neighbourhood of Biskra, arose like reefs upon that sea which seemed to have been frozen suddenly into immobility. The actual sea ever trembles and shivers on the surface; a light wavering, imperceptible to the eye, propels towards the shore the expiring wave, fringed with a border of foam. Here, nothing like this may be seen; it is a motionless, a congealed sea, or, rather, it is the smooth bed of a sea whose waters have disappeared. Science teaches us that such is the fact; and now as ever the expression of the reality is more picturesque, more eloquent than all the comparisons created by the imagination.”[56]

An eminent French artist, M. Fromentin, whose skill with the pen equals his talent with the brush, has also painted this “congealed sea” in grand and poetic language. “The first impression,” he says, “produced by this glowing lifeless picture, composed of the sun, space, and solitude, is keen, and cannot be compared to any other. Little by little, however, the eye grows accustomed to the grandeur of the lines, to the emptiness of space, to the denudation of the earth; and if anything can still astonish, it is that one becomes sensible to effects which change so little, and is so powerfully affected by spectacles in reality of the simplest character.”[57]

I must also enumerate among the “artists in words” who have painted the wonders of the Sahara, General Daumas, not one of the least distinguished of the Franco-Algerine warriors. He describes it in the following language:—“It is a naked and barren immensity,—this sea of sand, whose eternal waves, agitated to-day by the choub, will to-morrow be heaped up immovable, and which are slowly furrowed by those fleets called caravans.”

General Daumas, it is evident, confines himself to the scientific realism, which M. Martins prefers to the glowing and inexact imagery of the poets, and conveys in a few words an accurate yet very picturesque idea of that arid sea, where the wind stirs up rolling waves of sand instead of foaming billows, and which the Arabs call Falat. I shall place before the reader, however, the description given by M. Martins himself, for it represents both the ensemble and the details of the picture.

“If the Desert of the Plateaux,” he says,[58] “be the image of a sea suddenly fixed during a level calm, the Desert of Sand represents to us a sea which may have been solidified during a violent tempest. The Dunes, or sand-hills, like waves, rise one behind another even to the limits of the horizon, separated by narrow valleys which represent the depressions of the great billows of the ocean, all whose various aspects they simulate. Sometimes they narrow themselves into keen-edged crests, or shoot upwards in pyramids, or swell into cylindrical domes. Seen from a distance, these Dunes also remind us at times of the appearances of the névé (or granulated snow) in the amphitheatres and on the ridges which lie contiguous to the loftiest Alpine summits. Their colours still further enhance the illusion. Moulded by the winds, the burning sands of the desert assume the same forms as the névés of the glaciers.”

Whoever has seen the Dunes on the coast of Norfolk, or more particularly in Gascony, may gain a very accurate conception of the Desert. The only notable differences are in the extent, which here seems infinite, like that of ocean; the purity of the heaven, which is seldom sullied by a cloud; and the colour, which is of a soft, intense blue. The nature of the soil is the same; it is a very fine, shifting, silicious sand, white sometimes, like that of Fontainebleau, and sometimes reddened by the presence of oxide of iron. In the Sahara this sand gathers in veritable Dunes, hillocks which the wind upheaves, displaces, and transforms from one day to another. Only the lettes, or valleys, which in our Dunes receive the pluvial waters and preserve a sufficient amount of fertility, are here just moistened by rare saline infiltrations, and almost always remain in a condition of absolute sterility. Nevertheless, in some localities, the presence of gypsum gives the sand a certain fixity, which permits a small number of plants to germinate and develop themselves. This gypsum is never found but in the valleys, and never in tabular masses, as on the plateaux, but only in crystals of various forms, penetrated by silica. “You pick up a pebble,” says M. Martins, “and find it to be a crystal.” The villages are surrounded by crenellated ramparts built of crystals; the houses which compose these villages are constructed of the same materials; and very weird and splendid is the scene presented by these edifices with their sun-illuminated walls. Notwithstanding their small dimensions and mean architecture, when thus lit up in glorious radiance, they seem to realize the wonders told in fairy tales of the enchanted palaces of the genii!

CHAPTER IV.

PHENOMENA OF THE DESERT.

The soil is everywhere as smooth as “the liquid main.” This uniformity contributes, in addition to its silicious, argillaceous, or calcareous character, to render more abrupt the changes of temperature which occur from morning to evening and from evening to morning. In truth, the earth reflects the sun’s heat in proportion as it receives it; it absorbs but insignificant quantities, which it loses in a few minutes when the calorific source begins to fail. On the other hand, in these immense plains where no inequality of surface can oppose the atmospheric movements, the wind acquires an increasing force and swiftness, vires acquirit eundo, and soon assumes all the characteristics of a tempest. Hence arise those terrible typhoons, those appalling hurricanes, of whose destructive effects history records so many instances, and of which I shall presently be called upon to speak. As for water, we have seen that its entire absence is a characteristic feature of the Sandy Desert.