Little Falls weekly transcript., 1897-07-09
THE SAHARA DESERT
ACCOUNT or A VISIT 70 THE WASTES
OF SAND AND ROCK.

Have Been Many Mbsto&oments Con.
oernins It-Mors Oasss ana vegstaGioa
Than Generally Supposed.
Az the iron horse hurries through The
Anal break In the Atlas mountains all
eyes are instinctively turned in the difec-
tion of the desert. The poetry Of travel Is
now presumably to be turned into prose,
the soft and smiling picture Of nature into
that hard ruggedness which speaks Of q
LANDSCAPE not yet finished. And yet the
FIRST view Of the desert is that Of one Of
its oases, and of ono which is very nearly
the fairest Of them all, for 1t receives the
GOODNESS OF the north as we'll as the heat
from the south, and the stream that carries
the luxury of growth into It's deeper re-
cesses has not yet been sapped Of its vital
!ty by continuous summer heat
Long before we reach the fine gardens Of
Ell Kantara We are In the desert. Giant
rocks, burned brown and red under the
glow Of the southern sun, stand out IN Wild
pinuacles from the gently undulating
surface, their ragged sides buried deep In
the sand which they themselves have
made. This Is not the desert that IL Or
dinarily pictured In the mind-that fat,
endless expanse which fades of unmoved
and unbroken to the limits of vision-but
1t is the desert nevertheless just as much
az the mountain SHOWS Of the far north
are q part Of the great arctic "sea Of Ice"
Beyond, however, Is the great plain itself,
Its swelling undulations hardly relieving
to the eye the appearance OF absolute dat-
ness which the picture presents.
The truth Is that the Sahara has dou-
BILE aspect, that Of the fiat and sandy plains
and that Of the rocky ridge OF mountain,
the so called hammada. It Is the latter
that is more particularly dreaded by the
caravans, for among their wind swept
crags there are no, or but few, oases, md
only the blowing sands and relentless
a.: - ...c .u...;anio:,s OF the fOOts0re
pilgrim In the fat DESERT at least where
tho sand is not too deep, travelling is mod
c.atcly easy, for over long distances tho
surface has become coated into q hard, cal
careous crust-a solid basement rock, one
uoay call 1t. We saw no sand dunes Of any
magnitude, those along the southern faco
OF the great Chott Melghigh, about 20 feet
in height, being the highest. But was
informed by competent authority at Biskra
that beyond Tuggurt, on our route, they
rise to the prodigious height of 1900 to
1,4OO feet. This Is certainly an imposing
monument to tho power Of the wind-one
that speaks far more eloquently even than
the wind swept sands of coral islands.
It has become custom In certain book
quarters Of late to say that the Sahara Is
not as fat as it Is commonly assumed to
be, and that it Is almost everywhere torn
into ridges and rents. That is, however,
an imperfect statement Of the truth. The
fat desert Is almost interminably tlat for
days or weeks of travel, with hardly rise
of more than q few feet for mile after mile
Of perspective. All around is the same ex-
spanse. In vain the eye searches for some
special object to give it relief 1t does not
exist, unless it be the far of tufts OF 81
approaching oasis. - 50
+ ! am not sure that these endless sands
are truly Imposing. Sometimes they cat
tainly are, but they present most exquisite
pictures in the varying lights Of the morn
ing and evening sun. It Is then that they
seem to constitute a world of their own,
speaking in color that belongs to them
alone. We were not to any extent troubled
by their presence, either as impediments
to travel or as freely floating discomforts
in the atmosphere. Only as we approached
Mreir, at the close of q hard days journey,
of some 81 miles, did we come In disagree-
able conflict with them. Our horses had
more than their share in the second half
Of the days work. For the better part Of !
four miles we had been dragged through
deep sand, and finally the courage of tho
poor animals had spent itself. We were
stuck fast in the Sahara sands at point,
some 7Offeet below sea level. Coaxing and
urging had little effect, and it was not9t
until we ourselves took long hand in1|
pushing and pulling that we succeeded in
extricating ourselves.
Let it not for moment be assumed that
the Sahara; even in the parts that do not
belong to the region of the oasis, Is every
where destitute of growing vegetation.
Far from this is really the case. Along
the entire length Of our journey gener-
ous supply Of terebinth bushes, one or two
or three feet in height, covered most Of
the sand elevations, and with them was 2 4
form Of siokly green salcolsecious plant.
the exact nature of which I was unable to
discover, and II We can fully believe q
war illustration that has recently appeared |
from the pencil Of q staff correspondents,
the same feature must be a characteristic
Of the Sahara about Timbuktu as we'll.
There are, indeed, a number Of spots where
the vegetation is even more luxuriant-if |
a scattering Of plants can In any sense be
called luxuriant-c comprising a number OIL
dry herbs, such a. the rose of Jericho,