Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/194

 178 LIBYA. western shores of India, and the eastern shores of Africa. The extreme south point of the voyage is the headland of Eliapta, probably the modern Quiloa, in lat. 10° N. (See Vincent's Voyage of Nearclms, vol. ii. p. 74, seq.) With their imperfect ac- quaintance with Libya Interior, and their miscon- ception of its extent, it is not surprising that the more ancient geographers should have long hesitated to which portion of the old continent Libya should be assigned. It was sometimes regarded as an in- dependent division of the earth, and sometimes as part of A.sia, and even of Europe. (Agathemer. ii. ; Herod, iv. 42 ; Varr. L. L. iv. 5 ; Sail. Bell. Jugurth. 17; Lucan, Pharsal. vs.. 411; Multe- brim, Geog. i. 27.) As the topography of the interior is very uncertain, we shall examine rather the general physical phenomena of this region, than attempt to assign a local habitation to tribes who roamed over the waste, or to towns of which the names are doubtful and disguised, even when genuine, by the Greek or Eoman orthography of their Libyan titles. 1. The Great Desert. — Herodotus (ii. 32, iv. 181) divides Libya N. of the equator into three re- gions: — (1) The inhabited, which is described under the several heads of Africa, Atl.as, Carthage, Cyrene, &c. ; (2) the wild beast territory [Atlas] ; and (3) theDesert. These divisions correspond nearly to the modern districts of Barbary, Biledtdgerid, and Sahara. The latter region (JxppvT) i//a,u/x7j$, Herod, iv. 181) extends from the Atlantic to Aegypt, and is continued under the same degrees of latitude through Arabia, Asia, the southern provinces of Persia, to Moultan in Northern India. Contrasted with the vale of Biledulgerid, the rich arable districts of Afi'ica Propria, and especially with the well- watered Aegypt, the Sahara is one of the most dreaiy and inhospitable portions of the world. To its real barrenness and solitude the ancients ascribed also many fabulous terrors, which the researches of modern travellers have dispersed. It was believed to swarm with serpents, which, by their number and their venom, were able to impede armies in their march (Lucan, Pharsal. ix. 765) : its tribes shrieked like bats, instead of uttering articulate sounds (Herod, iv. 183) ; its pestilential winds struck with instant death men and animals, who traversed them (Arrian, Exp. Alex. iii. 3); and its eddies of sand buried the slain. These descriptions are, however, much exaggerated. The Khamsin or fifty-days' gale, as the Copts term it, the Simoum (^semen, poison) of the Arabs, blows at the summer solstice from S. and SE. over a surface scorched by an almost vertical sun, and thus accumulates heat, which dries up all moisture, relaxes the muscular powers, and renders respiration dif^cult. But though it enfeebles, it does not necessarily kill. The real peril of the route, which from very remote ages has been trodden by the caravans, lies in the scanty supply of water, and in the obliteration of the track by the whirlwinds of sand. (Bruce, Travels, vol. vi. p. 458 ; Buickhardt, Nuhia, vol. i. p. 207.) The difficulty of passing the Libyan Desert was, in fact, diminished by the islands or oases, which served as stepping-stones across it. Of these oases a more particular description is given elsewhere [Oasis], but they are too important a feature of this region to be quite omitted from an account of it. He- rodotus (iv. 181) mentions a chain of these patches of verdure extending from E. to W. through Libya, isometimes they ai-e little more than halting- LIBYA. places for the caravans, — a spring of water, sur- rounded by date -trees and a few acres of herbage : others, like the oasis of El-Khargeh, are spacious and populous tracts, over which nomad hoi'des wander with their cattle, and a few form entire provinces and kingdoms, such as Augila and Fezzan (Eegio Phazania of Ptolemy). One geological fea- ture is common to them all. They are not elevations of the plain, but depressions of its limestone basis. Into these hollows, which are composed of limestone and clay, the subsoil water percolates, the periodical rains are received, and a rich and varied vegetation springs from the strong and moist earth of the oasis. But even the arid waste itself is not a uniform level. It has considerable inequalities, and even hills of gravel. Probably amid the changes which our globe has undergone, at some period anterior to the history, if not the existence of man, the Sahara, whose level even now is not much above that of the Mediter- ranean, was the bed of an ocean running athwart the continent. Its irregular breadth and outline fiivour this supposition. It is widest in the western half of N. Africa, between the present kingdom of Morocco and the negro countiy, and narrowest be- tween the present states of Tripoli and Kliassina, where it is broken up by watery districts. As it ap- proaches Aegypt it becomes again broader. Libya is, indeed, a land of terraces, ascending gradually from the three seas which bound it to central plateaus, such as the Abyssinian highlands, the Ltmae JIontes, and the Atlas chain. Before the importation of the camel from Arabia — and this animal never appears in monuments of the Pharaonic times — the impediments to large com- panies crossing the Sahara must have been almost insurmountable. The camel was introduced by the Persians : Darius succeeded in establishing his gar- risons in the oases ; and in the time of Herodotus they were the stages of a traffic which penetrated Libya nearly from east to west. The Desert, how- ever, was not only a road for commerce, but itself also productive. It exported dates, alum, and mineral salts, which, especially in the district be- tween El-Siwah, the ancient Ammonium, and the Natron lakes, cover the soil with an incrustation through which the foot of the camel breaks as through a thin coat of ice. The salt was a market- able article with the inhabitants of Nigritia, S. of the Sahara. The components of the salt are muriate, carbonate, and sulphate of soda ; and these, both in ancient and modern times, have been extensively employed in the operations of bleaching and glass- making. Libya shows few, if any, traces of volcanic action ; and earthquakes, except in Aegypt, appear to have been unknown. Yet, that the continent has undergone changes unrecorded in history, is manifest from the agatised wood found on the eastern extre- mity of the desert in the latitude of Cairo. The Bahr-be-la-Ma, or river without water, is another proof of a change in the elevation of N. Africa. The streams, which once filled its diy hollows, have been violently expelled by subterranean action, and the silex, agate, and jasper in its neighbourhood indicate the agency of fire. (Newbold, Geolog. of Aegypt, Proceed, of Geolog. Society, 1842.) It is still an unsettled question whether the ancient geographers were acquainted with the coun- tries S. of the Great Desert ; i. e. with the upper part of the river Quorra, commonly called the Niger. Herodotus (ii. 32) relates, on the authority of some Cyrenians, that certain young men of the tribe of i