Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/104





HADAMES.

LTHOUGH included within the political and administrative frontiers of the Turkish possessions, the group of oases of which Ghadames is the centre forms a distinct geographical region, differing in its ethnology, history, usages and commercial relations from Tripolitana properly so called. While the latter forms part of the Mediterranean seaboard, the Ghadames district lies within the area of drainage of the desert, in a basin whose waters never reach the great inland sea. The intermittent stream which rises north-west of the Red Hamada, and which under diverse names reaches the Ghadames oasis, after a course of about 150 miles, has no longer any perceptible channel in the region of dunes stretching beyond that point to the Igharghar basin. The other parallel wadies descending farther north from the southern gorges of the Jebel Nefusa also run dry in the same zone of sands, leaving nothing to indicate their course at a period when they were still running waters. It is probable, however, that all converged in a vast fluvial basin, tributary of the great southern sebkhas of Tunisia.

In this region of the Sahara slope, Ghadames is far from being the only, or even the most important oasis, as regards either the abundance of its waters, or the extent of its palm groves. But its special importance is due neither to its agricultural resources nor to the local industries, but to the commercial enterprise of its inhabitants, who have long been the chief agents in furthering the exchanges between the Mediterranean seaports and the markets of Sudan. From time immemorial Ghadames, the Cydamus of the Romans, has been the starting-point for caravans traversing the sea of sands in the direction of Lake Tsad and the river Niger. This commercial pre-eminence of a small oasis endowed with no exceptional advantages, must be attributed to its position precisely at the converging point of the Cabes and Tripoli route, on the very verge of the desert, between two inhospitable and almost inaccessible regions — to the west the shifting sands, to the east the rocky terraces of the Red Hamada. The advanced station, forming a sort of pass penetrating far into the desert, has become the necessary head-quarters of caravans bound for the Tuareg territory, the Twât and Wed-Draa oases. Thanks to the intermediate station of Rhât on the route to Sudan, it has also been able to compete with Sokna and the towns of Fezzan for the trade with Central Africa.