Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/118

 highways with the fertile and thickly peopled districts of Central Africa. It must remain a simple dependence of Southern Europe until it becomes attached to the Senegal and Niger basins by such routes as modern industry may yet create: in a word, until the vast obstacle of the intervening desert has been suppressed.

The Atlas Mountains, which constitute the backbone of Mauritania, and which would justify its being called by the name of Atlantis, apparently applied to it about the dawn of written history, forms a continuous orographic system from the Atlantic Ocean to the Sicilian waters. But they do not develop themselves in a

single range, as formerly represented on the maps, for they rise in distinct ridges or confused masses, and at many points are replaced by slightly rolling tablelands. The western section, to which the term Atlas is more specially applied, alone constitutes a true Alpine chain, whose highest peaks probably attain an elevation of over 13,000 feet. Hence they were described as the loftiest mountains in the world by the early Phœnician and Greek navigators, who beheld their alternately blue and snowy crests standing out against the grey or azure background of the firmament. Herodotus speaks of Mount Atlas as the "Pillar of Heaven," an expression not unnaturally applied also to Mount Etna and other lofty summits constantly wrapped in cloud and fog, which to the ancients seemed to represent the true celestial vault. But in reproducing the reports of explorers, legend could scarcely fail to personify the Atlas, giving to the word a sense different from its primitive meaning, On its