Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/17





portion of the African continent designated on the maps by the name. of Tripolitana is a territory destitute of geographical unity. A vast region over 400,000 square miles in extent, it comprises several distinct countries separated from each other by uninhabited or even uninhabitable solitudes. Here the desert, or at least the steppes leading to it, reach the Mediterranean at the Syrtis Major. The space comprised between Cyrenaica on the east, and the Ghurian highlands near Tripoli, forms a land of imperceptible transition between the coast and Sahara zones, while the whole of Southern Tripolitana already belongs to the desert, properly so called. Here we meet with little but rocky, stony, argillaceous, or sandy tracts, except in some depressions, where a few springs afford sufficient water for man and his dategroves. Hence Tripolitana is regarded as a geographical unit rather through a political fiction than on account of its physical conditions. The whole region comprised under this name is not even politically subject to the Sublime Porte. Thus the Kufra oasis, although usually included amongst the possessions of Turkey, has hitherto maintained its independence, while in several oases lying nearer to the coast the Sultan's authority is purely nominal.

West of Egypt and its dependent northern oases stretches the Barka plateau, often called Cyrenaica, from the famous city of Cyrene, built here by the Hellenes. Politically it forms part of the regency of Tripoli, and it is consequently, at least in appearance, directly subject to the Turkish Government. But geographically it