Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/141

 river and Lake Triton, more especially as not one of their statements harmonises with the present conditions. All the proposed identifications are contradicted by one or another passage of these authors, and beyond doubt numerous changes have taken place in the physical geography of the country, effacing many a topo- graphical detail now vainly sought by the commentators. It suffices to say that, although unacceptable on other heads, M. Rouire's hypothesis concerning the identity of the Wed Bagla with the river Triton, is at least so far in accordance with the writings of Ptolemy, that this watercourse really rises in the ravines of Mount Ussalet, the Ussaleton of the Alexandrine geographers, Moreover, throughout the whole eastern shore of Tunis, the Bagla is the only wed which, rising at some distance inland, flows on in a perceptible bed, if not as far as the Lesser Syrtis, at least, according to M. Houire, as far as " a little Syrtis," to which it brings a small quantity of water. Lake Kelbia, on the other hand, is, in circum- ference, almost exactly the thousand stadia (111 miles) which Scylax assigned to Lake Triton. At the same time, the extent of this lake would seem to be much too great, if the statement of Herodotus is true, that the Libyan virgins, after having engaged in a combat in honour of Athene, " bore the most valiant round the marsh." The prolonged cry which the women uttered at the feasts of the goddess is synonymous with the zagrit, tuluil, or yn-yu, which the Libyan women of all the modern Berber tribes give vent to, tapping their lips to give effect to the sound, on such occasions as feasts, weddings, funeral processions, and warlike expeditions.

To the north-west of Sfakes, another depression contains the saline lake called Mta-el-Grarra ; and farther south, near the regular curve described by the Gulf of Cabes, there is still another depression, filled with water or a saline efflorescence, called the Manzuna, or Sebkha-en-Nuail. But these survivals of former lakes are a mere nothing in comparison with the partially inundated plain which forms the natural boundary between the " Isle of Maghreb " and the Sahara. For over a space of 240 miles from east to west, a succession of sheets of water, saline basins, marshes, and hollows filled with clay, stretch south of Tunis and Eastern Algeria. It is probable in some part of this depression, so remarkable in all respects, that most ancient geographers located the sacred waters near which Minerva and Bacchus were born.

Shaw, towards the end of the eighiteenth century, was the first to put forward the hypothesis that Lake Triton was identical with one of the Tunisian sebkhas. As a zone separating two natural regions, two faunas, and two races, and from a hydrographical point of view appealing to the imaginition both by its vast size and by its divers phenomena, this region ought to prove of much greater interest to geographers than the little lake on the eastern coast, north of the islands. The vast basin of the Igharghar, whose waters formerly flowed into the chain of "Tritonic " lakes, presents a surface of at least 320,000 miles, forty times superior to that of the Tunisian weds which run into Lake Kelbia. This basin, however, has been completely separated from the Mediterranean for a period long antecedent to all historic records.