Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/103

 chiefly among the natives of Tibesti. Gatron lies in a hattiya, or swampy depression, surrounded on all sides by dunes and cliffs. Its vast palm forest is said to yield the best dates in Fezzan, and the baskets made by the native women are exported to all the surrounding districts.

Gatron lies at the northern extremity of a chain of oases which stretches as far as Tejerri, the last inhabited place in Fezzan, on the verge of the desert. Here also are seen the last date-palms, and the first dum-palms in the direction of the Sahara. Rohlfs was unable to determine the slope of the wady, which is perhaps nothing more than a depression in an old lacustrine basin.

South of Tejerri, where the Negro element already greatly exceeds that of the Fezzanese people, nothing farther is met on the caravan route to Sudan except the Bir Meshru well, which has been frequently choked by the sand. Round it are shown the skeletons of men and animals still clothed with their sun-dried flesh. Groaning under the lash, worn out by the march across the arid plateaux, burnt by the torrid and dusty atmosphere of the desert, the gangs of slaves trail their chains with difficulty to the brink of the well. Here they often full prostrate for the last time, and are left by the caravans to perish of hunger in the scorching rays of the sun.