Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/121

 THE ATLAS OROORAPUIC SYSTEM. ^ brawny shoulders it now bears the world itself, and sculptors represent it as a giant straining every muscle beneath the huge mass of the terrestrial globe. But accord- ing to most authorities, the terra Atlas is simply a softened form of the Berber word A(/r(n; or " AIount«in." In Marocco the range is still called Idraren, or, more simply, Deren, the ♦' Mountains," so that for the last two thousand years— that is, since the time of Strabo — the name has undergone no change, doubtless because the same Berber populations still dwell at its foot. Although now separated from Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar, the Atlas belongs none the less to the same system as the Sierra Nevada and the other sierras of the Iberian peninsula. They are certainly loftier, and, with the southern chain of the anti- Atlas spurs and secondary offshoots, occupy a greater 8Uj)erficial area; but they consist of the same rocks, disposed in the same order, while their general direction from west-south-west to east- north east is maintained almost paralUl with the Spanish ranges. Like these also the Mauritanian highlands are partly interrupted by plateaux of great elevation. Thus, east of ^Marocco, the line of the Atlas is continued throughout Algeria and into Tunisia by the zone of the great plateaux at a mean altitude of over 3,300 feet. The Algerian ranges are in fact for the most part merely border chains skirting the plateaux north and south. The northern or coast ranges have the greatest mean breadth, about 50 miles, those on the south being scarcely 30 miles broad, from the edge of the plateaux to the verge of the Sahara. But, towards the east, on the Tunisian frontier, the two highland zones converge and develop fresh chains, which continue in the normal direction of the whole system. Even the extreme peninsula of Dakhla-el-Mahuin, projecting between the gulfs of Tunis and Ilamniauiat, runs south-west and north-east in the direction of Sicily. Between the Marocco frontier and Central Algeria none of the summits attain an elevation of 6,600 feet ; but in Jurjura and the Jebel Aures, west of Algiers, the highest peaks exceed 7,500 feet. Farther east the hills gradually fall, the loftiest crests in Tunisia rising to a height of not more than 5,000 feet. From one extremity to the other, the system has a length of no less than 1,400 miles. Owing to the parallel disposition of the highlands, plateaux, and plains, in the long Mauritanian quadrilateral, the whole region from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Cabes is distributed in narrow zones, differing from each other in physical appear- ance, climate, products, and inhabitants. The fertile coastland valleys support an agricultural population, while the upland steppes are peopled by nomad pastors and their flocks ; in the southern oases, encroaching on the desert, tillers of the soil again constitute the bulk of the community. Thus are develoj)cd in parallel lines a number of distinct zones, whose inhabitants differ in their pursuits, character, traditions, and often even in origin. An interchange of necessary commodities takes place between the various zones ; but the relations are not always pacific, and neighbouring tribes often contend for the conterminous territory. This natural distribution of Mauritania into longitudinal sections, each with ita distinctive ethnical conditions, is certainly one of the chief causes of the jwlitical dismemberment of the land. The littoral zone, stretching from Cape Bon to Cape