Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/578

 476 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. present a patcli of verdure to relieve the gaze, or suggest the presence of man. The sea breaks several miles from the coast, and when the west wind blows, the first white crests of foam are formed in 50 feet of water. From October to April sailors carefully avoid these surf- beaten shores, where not a single lighthouse has yet been erected, where the land is almost perpetually wrapped in dense fog, and where a few hours suffice for the gale to lash the waters into billows of monstrous size. For sailing vessels the most dangerous part of the Saharian coast is the section lying between Boca Grande and Cape Juby. The ocean stream skirting the continent from north to south, usually at some distance from the mainland, and which is most felt some 6 miles seawards, also sets directly in shore. Hence vessels here often drift helplessly towards the inhospitable beach, which has been the scene of many shipwrecks. The current, which has a normal velocity of little over half a mile, acquires more than double that rate of speed near Cape Juby, probably owing to the neighbourhood of the Canary Islands confining it to a narrower compass. On the exposed Saharian seaboard, little shelter is afforded to shipping, although about midway between Cape Bojador and Cape Blanco a long inlet runs parallel with the sea, here penetrating through a break in the line of cliffs. This is the Rio de Oro, or " River of Gold," so named because in the year 1442 the Portu- guese obtained here a little gold-dust by barter. They thought they had discovered the golden " Pactolus," which was reported to form a branch of the Nile in the interior of the continent. The approach is difficult, and sailors penetrating into the river in foul weather run the risk of perishing of himger, because the bar prevents their return and the land yields nothing. Flora, Fauna, and Inhabitants of the Western Sahara. Receiving a share of the regular tropical rains, "Western Sahara is not entirely destitute of vegetation, and, like other regions of the desert, it contains some few oases. Even in the midst of the dunes the little saline swamps are covered here and there with tufts of herbage, which supply fodder for the herdsmen's camels. In the southern parts of the Juf, extensive tracts clothed with alfa, are known by the designation of El-Miraia, or " the Mirror," doubtless owing to the shifting play of dull colours and silvery tints, as the sea of alfa grass waves in the breeze. These alfa plains indicate the neighbourhood of the steppe region, which with its forests of acacias and mimosas, follows farther south between the desert and the Sudan. Adrar, which already belongs to this intermediate zone, is overgroAvn with gum- trees, in some places so numerous that " the gum would be given for nothing to anyone wishing to come and fetch it."* In those regions the zebra begins to make its appearance, and one of the com- monest animals is the ostrich, which suffers so much from the heat that it is easily run down by the hunter mounted on an ordinary horse. On the seacoast tho
 * E. Musqueray, loc. cit.