Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/569

 ADOBAOH. 4m Hide from 3 to 4 feet, while at the same time affording the only rooaoA of getting to the top. Agades has but few industricH. and these are mostly left to the women. Ther do all the louthcr work and weuvo all tha rug«, and the choeae made by them ia highly prizwl throughout tlic Sahara. The local trade in still very active, the transjwrt of salt esix^cially fonning an in)|)ortant branch of the businew of the place. By the Kcl-Uheres and other IJerber tribes of the district are organiaed all the caravans, which have to proceed to Hilma for the supply and afterwards convey it to the Sudan, where it is sold at the rate of from forty thousand to sixty thousand cowries per camel-load. The salt caravan never numbers less than thrre thousand camels. At the time of Barth's visit the medium of exchange in the Agades market was neither gold nor silver, nor shells nor bales of cloth, but only the grains of millet {pentuHetitm). But forty years have elapsed since the great explorer traversed this region, and forty years often see many changes in the customs and institutions of a people. Adgilgh. West of Air, and beyond the steppes inhabited by the Kel-Gheres and Iti« Berbers, a region of uplands, never yet visited by a single European traveller, occupies a superficial area of at least HO, 000 square miles. Its very name of Adgbagh, or Adrar, makes it probable that this vast tract does not consist of a series of level or uniform plateaux, but that it must be intersectixi by lofty mountain ranges. These heights, forming a group of highlands comparable to those of Ahaggar and Tibesti, rise to the north and north-ejist of the great bond described by the course of the Niger west of the deep sandy valley, through which percolate the waters of the Wed Tafassasset, known by the name of the Ballul Basso in its lower course, near its confluence with the Niger. The southern slope of the Adghagh highlands is already comprised within the zone of regular rainfall. Here the moisture-bearing south winds, arrested by the mountain ranges, precipitate a considerable quantity of water, often in the form of hail, on the upland valleys. The Adghagh orographic system thus belongs in ita higher regions to the Sudan, in its lower slopes to the Sahara. The whole district abounding in pasture lands and forest vegetation along the river valleys, might become an " African Switzerland," udaptwl not only for camel- breeding, but also for cattle-farming. Hundreds of thousands of an industrioua peasantry might also find employment in cultivating the alluvial tracU at the mouth of all the mountain gorges.* But at present the country is in the possession of the Tuaregs, whose varioua tribes are comprised under the general designation of Awellimiden, and who, according to the national tradition, came originally from the region of the Soharian Sahel. Their ancestors ai)iK>ar to have roamed over the western plaina, inter- • Pouyanne, " Note wr r^Ubii-emeat de la citft. de U i*gton oo«jd« «itrt k Tooat •! Tta- bouctoo."