Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/391

 coloured Berber community, who, notwithstanding their fewer numbers, have often contended for the supremacy with their more powerful neighbours.

A zone of artesian wells, analogous to that of tho Wed Righ, occupies the depressions in Wargla and the surrounding oases. The total eupply, of about 35 cubic feet per second, has been greatly increased by numerous fresh borings

since 1882. Till recently the wells were "dying" at the rate of one every year, each representing a loss of from fifteen hundred to two thousand palms.

Beyond Wargla and Nguga a few palm thickets are scattered over the hollows of the Wed Maya. But the whole population is as nothing: to what it must have been at a time when the ruins occurring at so many points were flourishing towns, surrounded by cultivated lands. Towards the north, the plain of El-Hajira, about midway between Wargla and Tugurt, was covered with villages, while the town of Bagdad stood on the margin of a now dried-up shott. The most remarkable place in the district was Sedrata (Cedrata, Ceddrata), which has been somewhat too grandiloquently called the "Saharian Pompeii." Under the dunes rolling away