Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/50





THE GREAT SYRTIS AND TRIPOLITANA SEABOARD.

HE maritime region of Tripoli, bounded east by the extreme bend of the Great Syrtis, west by the southern headlands of the Tunisian coast, forms a distinct territory both in an administrative and geographical sense. The belt of coastlands, varying in width, and intersected by a thousand mostly dry wadies draining to the Mediterranean, is dominated south and south-west either by chains of rocky hills and mountains, or by the rugged scarp of a plateau which runs mainly parallel with the shores of the Syrtes. This zone constitutes Tripolitana in the stricter sense of the term.

The vilayet of the same name also comprises the portion of the plateau stretching through Ghadames south-westwards to the Algerian frontier. But this forms a separate geographical area, sloping, not seawards but towards the west, in the direction of the Sahara. In the south yet another natural region is formed by the scattered oases of Fezzan, separated from the Mediterranean basin by hills, plateaux, and vast desert wastes. Excluding Cyrenaica, Fezzan, Ghadames, and Rhat, and disregarding administrative divisions, the surface of Tripolitana, within the waterparting between the marine and inland basins, may be approximately estimated at 110,000 square miles, with a total population of probably not more than 650,000, or about six persons to the square mile.

Farther removed from Europe than Mauritania, and possessing but a small extent of arable lands, the seaboard of Tripolitana could never have developed much commercial life throughout the historic period. Vessels doubling the projecting headlands of Numidia and Cyrenaica, and sailing southwards, found the desert in many places already encroaching on the marine waters. For some hundreds of miles the coast is low and sandy, or else fringed with reefs, while swamps and lagoons stretch far inland, separated from the sea by narrow strips of coastlands. These are often scarcely to be distinguished from the surface of the water, and the Syrtes were especially dreaded by mariners, owing to their surf-beaten shores, the